Jeff Locke Has Really Bad Peripheral Stats Since Break

Jeff Locke will pitch for the Pittsburgh Pirates today against the St. Louis Cardinals.  When you look at Jeff Locke’s last ten starts, nothing special stands out, except Locke and the Bucs continue to win games.  Locke has four wins and two losses in his last ten.

Jeff Locke has pitched quite poorly since the All-Star break.

Looking even closer, the southpaw has won three straight decisions overall and even three in a row at PNC Park.  Locke has gone 3-1 with a 3.78 ERA in eight starts this season on Federal Street.  The Bucs also win for Locke–6-2 and six straight times the Jolly Roger has been raised.   Locke has allowed just two runs in his last two starts over 11.2 innings.  None of the outings were pretty, he just got it done.

Aug 26, 2014; Pittsburgh, PA, USA; Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Jeff Locke (49) looks on during batting practice before playing the St. Louis Cardinals at PNC Park. Mandatory Credit: Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports

We wanted to see just how well the Pirates starters had been performing in the second half of the 2014 season.  We are curious about stupid things like advanced metrics I guess.  So we headed to Fangraphs early this morning and set up the filter.

There are 67 qualified starters at Fangraphs that have pitched in the second half of the 2014 season. Out of those 67 starters, Jeff Locke doesn’t rank very well. I mean not very well, at all.  Bad.  Really bad. Locke has a negative .7 WAR.  That ranks 67th out of 67 starters in WAR.

Last, absolutely nobody behind him. John Danks is the only pitcher that has been worse in terms of FIP.

Only 12 pitchers are worse in terms of xFIP which shows Locke at 4.52.

Only five pitchers have allowed more walks per nine innings than the Pirates left hander.

So what gives?  Locke gets the ball today and the offense needs to keep piling up runs for him and despite some really awful numbers, he is getting done what he needs to get done.  He wins.