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Despite the early rash of pitching injuries, this season has already seen its share of dominant hurling. Julio Teheran, Yu Darvish, Felix Hernandez, Jose Fernandez, and Masahiro Tanaka have had stellar outings, and of course there was the game in which both Aaron Harang and Matt Garza took no-hitters into the 7th. Yet the best pitching line of the season belongs to none of them--it's the complete game, 11 strikeout 1-hitter posted by Andrew Cashner on April 11. Astoundingly, this is his second 1-hitter, and it comes only four starts (and an offseason) after his first. This year, all four Cashner outings have been Quality Starts. Has he finally become the ace San Diego was hoping for when they traded for him in 2012? Or are we simply being tricked by small sample size? Here is Andrew Cashner's spraychart thus far this year, compared against last year.

My immediate impression is that Cashner has gotten a lot more groundballs, especially to the left side of the infield. Checking the data, his ground ball rate this year is 60.8%, while his previous rates were 53.3% in 2012 and 52.5% in 2013. His line drive rate is 16.2%, better than the 22.5% (2012) and 18.8% (2013) that he posted previously (the league-average is 20%).

A 10% jump in ground balls, presumably, would raise a pitcher's BABIP, because ground balls are more likely to find holes than fly balls. Yet Cashner's BABIP this year is .240, which is .050-.070 below league average. That goes along with an incredible 85.9% strand rate, about 15% better than the 70.9% (2012) and 72.5% (2013) from his last two years.

Based on these data, Cashner's current production doesn't look sustainable. His line drive rate should go up and more of those ground balls should find holes. But there's that curious case of the ground balls going to the left side. It's becoming increasingly clear that pitchers can exert some control over where balls are hit. Has Cashner adopted an approach to direct balls at the left side of his infield? If so, that would explain his low BABIP, and imply that it could be sustainable.

However, this zone chart does not support that conclusion. Ignoring the middle of the zone and pitches high or low, there are 122 pitches inside and 108 outside. Cashner's fastball seems equally distributed around the zone. His slider and changeup stay low, but are also equally distributed. This tells us that Cashner should induce a lot of ground balls, but it says nothing about what side those ground balls should go to. Maybe applying a lefty-right split will bring something to the surface.

There is definitely a demonstrated tendency to pitch lefties down and away. And yet, of the 12 balls put in play so far, there is an even division--4 each to pull, center, and away. In fact, both the tendency and outcome seem to be his M.O. The 2013 charts below show that Cashner concentrated pitches on the outer half, but achieved a roughly equal distribution in play. Lefties are seeing the same pitch selection and location from Cashner as they saw last year.

If Cashner's approach toward lefties hasn't changed, what about righties?

Against righties, the tendency is also to pitch away. It looks like Cashner is pitching away, then coming inside with a fastball to jam hitters and produce weak pull-side groundouts. That seems to be what he did last year, as the charts below demonstrate.

Cashner has not altered the way he attacks the zone, either overall or specifically for righties or lefties. His velocity hasn't changed this year. Neither has his pitch selection. In other words, there's no reason to think that Cashner's high strand rate and low BABIP represent anything other than a product of small sample size. Cashner was a good pitcher in 2013. Cashner should be a good pitcher in 2014. But proclaiming him an elite-level ace based on a few (admittedly excellent) games would be premature.

NOTE: All statistics accurate as of 04/21/14

By Sam Whitefield
AriBall.com

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