Neftali Feliz Missing His Spots

Rangers closer Neftali Feliz entered last night's game against the Twins with an 8-7 lead. Six batters, a walk and three hits later, Feliz got the hook from manager Ron Washington with Texas now trailing by a run. After eviscerating hitters in 2009 and 2010, the 23-year-old righty has suffered his share of meltdowns this season.

His strikeout rate is down, his walks are up, and on the whole, he's leaving the Rangers in a worse position to win ball games. Feliz punched out about 9.9 batters per nine innings between 2009-2010, but that K rate has dropped to 6.2 per nine in 2011. His walk rate, 2.3 per nine entering this year, has shot up to 4.8 BB/9. Feliz previously ranked among the game's best in Win Probability Added, a stat measuring how a player affects his team's chances of winning based on things like score, inning and base/out state. But Feliz has a negative WPA in 2011, meaning he's doing more harm than good on the mound.

Superficially, it's hard to figure out why Feliz is scuffling. He's still slinging upper-90s heat, and batters are still coming up empty when they swing. Feliz's 25.2 percent miss rate this year is down from his 26.6 percent mark in 2009-2010, but not alarmingly so. The big problem is that hitters aren't swinging as much against Feliz, and that's because he's missing the zone more often.

Feliz placed 49.6 percent of his pitches in the strike zone in 2009-2010. This year, he has hit the zone 46.3 percent. He's missing to the arm side more often in 2011:

Feliz's pitch frequency by location, 2009-2010

Feliz's pitch frequency by location, 2011

Hitters aren't chasing as many out-of-zone pitches this year, either. Look at opponents' swing rate on would-be balls against Feliz in 2009-2010 and 2011:

 Opponent chase rate against Feliz's pitches, 2009-2010

Opponent chase rate against Feliz's pitches, 2011

Opponents aren't going after quite as many pitches high out of the zone, and they're almost entirely laying off that spot to Feliz's arm side where he's missing so often. Overall, batters are chasing 27.7 percent of Feliz's pitches, compared to 30.3 percent in 2009-2010.

Feliz is missing his spots, and hitters are showing discipline by taking those pitches for balls. That, in turn, has led to more favorable counts: Feliz fell behind 17.5 percent of the batters that he faced in 2009-2010, but that figure is up to 24 percent this season. It's hard for a pitcher to rack up Ks, limit walks and close the door in the ninth when he's working out of 1-0 and 2-1 counts.

Who is getting Squeezed?

Time to check in on which pitchers aren't getting the close calls from umpires:

(ClStk%=called strikes/pitches taken; Data based on PitchFX strike zone.)C.J. Wilson (TEX) ranks number one in terms of the most pitches called balls in the strike zone with 124.  But this is due to volume; Wilson has thrown the second most pitches within the strike zone in the majors this season behind only Cliff Lee (PHI). 

Doug Fister (SEA) and Cliff Lee rank second and third in most missed strikes with 114 and 108 respectively.  Chad Billingsley (LAD) comes in 4th with 107 missed strikes - combine that with his overall 17th ranking in lowest called strike percentage in the zone, and he's a good candidate for the most squeezed pitcher in baseball this season.

Which Pitchers are Really Getting Squeezed?

Earlier in the week we took a look at which pitchers have been squeezed the most based on total pitches called balls within the PitchFX established strike zone.  While it appeared that pitchers like C.J. Wilson (TEX) and Jon Niese (NYM) have been getting a tight strike zone, the truth is that these pitchers tend to stay around the strikezone with the majority of their pitches.  In fact, C.J. Wilson leads the league in called strikes within the strike zone:

(Data from all 2011 games through May 10th)

So in reality, while pitchers like Wilson do lose a lot of called strikes on the borders, it's mostly a product of the volume of pitches they locate there.  In fact, through Tuesday, Wilson was leading all pitchers in total called strikes, regardless of location, with 194.

If we really want to see which pitchers have had a tough time getting calls from umps, we need to look at the percentage of called strikes out of all taken pitches within the strike zone.

 (Data from all 2011 games through May 10th - Min. 40 taken pitches in the strike zone)

Wilson still cracks the top 50, but he's far from the most squeezed pitcher in the league.  Mariners' closer Brandon League is not getting the majority of close calls so far this season.  The league average for called strikes in the PitchFX defined strike zone has been around 77%, meaning umpires have called 23% of pitches in the zone balls.  Of course, the majority of these are borderline pitches as the following graphic shows:

All MLB Called Balls in Strike Zone (Click to enlarge)

League's missed strikes consist of 18 pitches, the majority of which were thrown to the bottom of the zone.  Batters have taken only 42 total strike zone pitches against him, so his "squeeze rate" is mostly a product of small sample size.  However, when we filter the list down to starters....

(Data from all 2011 games through May 10th)

Among starters, Wilson and Niese still near the top of the list of pitchers getting squeezed. And perhaps Nelson Figueroa would still be pitching in Houston if we had robot umpires.

So we've seen which pitchers have not gotten the majority of close calls so far this season.  In an upcoming post, we'll look at pitchers that have benefited most from expanded strike zones.