Baseball Savant’s Unluckiest Pittsburgh Pirates Pitcher in 2021

Last season this left-handed reliever was the Pittsburgh Pirates unluckiest pitcher based on Statcast and Baseball Savant data.

2015 marked the first year of Statcast, and it has since become one of the greatest baseball innovations in the sport’s history. Statcast tracks everything from how hard a ball was hit to the defensive positioning of fielders and records pretty much anything quantifiable and measurable.

The database for Statcast, Baseball Savant, is where all this information has been put for any fan to access. One innovation that has been created because of Statcast and Baseball Savant is expected stats, such as expected batting average (xBA), expected slugging percentage (xSLG), expected weighted on-base average (xwOBA), and expected ERA (xERA). These stats are created using the data collected from Statcast. xBA, for instance, is the probability of a batted ball to fall for a hit based on the launch angle of the ball, the exit velocity, and when it’s a chopper or ground ball, the average sprint speed of the runner. A batted ball hit 90 MPH with a launch angle of 10 degrees has a 75.4% chance of falling for a hit, so it would have a .754 expected batting average.

The idea is to give an accurate picture of how good a player actually was based on batted ball data. A hard hit line drive toward right field might fall for a hit 80% of the time but becomes an out 20% of the time. A poor fielder might botch a routine play, causing an earned run to score, which is what xERA separates. So based on that, what Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher was the unluckiest in 2021?

That would be left-hander Anthony Banda. Banda, a former Arizona Diamondbacks and Tampa Bay Rays farmhand, was acquired by the Pittsburgh Pirates from the New York Mets. The Pirates had claimed Banda off waivers, and he did well with the Pirates down the stretch. All told, he had a 4.28 ERA, .287 opponent batting average, .478 opponent slugging percentage, and .353 opponent wOBA in 33.2 innings with the Pirates and Mets.

So what did the expected statistics say about Banda’s season? To put it simply, Banda and Chris Stratton were very similar. For one, Banda had an expected opponent average of just .231, which was very close to Stratton’s .226 mark. While Banda had a .364 xSLG, Stratton had a .374 mark. xwOBA pinned both right around the same at .293 for Strat and .297 for Banda. Finally, xERA placed Banda with a 3.63 mark and Stratton at 3.73.

So why was the southpaw so well-liked by the expected statistics? One reason is that he was average in hard-hit rate and exit velocity. Banda held opponents to an 88.5 MPH exit velo and 36.8% hard-hit rate. But it was his 4.7% barrel rate that stood out the most. Banda would have ranked top 5 in barrels per batted ball event if he had pitched enough innings to qualify.

So, based on measurable, quantifiable batted ball data, that is currently where Banda stands as the Pittsburgh Pirates unluckiest pitcher of 2021. That could mean better things to come from him in the future. Granted, not every predictive measurement likes him as much as Baseball Savant and Statcast, as he has a poor xFIP and SIERA.

Still, his overall Baseball Savant profile almost mirrors Stratton’s. The two pitchers share a handful of similarities. Both were former prospects as starting pitchers, bouncing around with a few teams before landing with the Pirates. Stratton has since become a successful reliever, so maybe Banda can do the same and breakout in 2022.