Gallardo Case Study

Yovani Gallardo is not having a particular successful season as an Oriole with his 5.18 ERA and 5.14 FIP. However, it seemed to me that lately he had been somewhat more successful than he was earlier in this season. This seems to be the case, in August he has had a 3.18 ERA in three starts and he’s improved his ERA from 5.82 in the first half to 4.50 in the second half. Neither of these numbers are particularly good, but the second number is a significant improvement and would be acceptable for a #5 starter. Has Gallardo improved over the first half of the season or is this just good luck?
One of Gallardo’s major problems is that he has a horrible K-BB%. Of 161 starters that have thrown at least 50 innings as a starter, his K-BB% of 3.5% ranks
In the first half of the season, opposing batters swung at 63.9% of pitches in the strike zone and put 31.3% of all pitches in the strike zone into play. In the second half of the season, opposing batters swung at 62.1% of pitches in the strike zone and put only 29.7% into play. As a result, opposing batters did less damage on pitches in the strike zone. Likewise, batters swung at 22% of pitches not in the strike zone and put 6.5% of all pitches not in the strike zone into play. In the second half of the season, batters swung at 24.5% of pitches not in the strike zone and put 8% into play. It’s pretty clear that batters have been swinging at worse pitches in the second half then they did in the first half. Gallardo doesn’t have good enough stuff to really take advantage of this, but he has seen some benefits due to random
Gallardo has allowed just a .287 wOBA on pitches put into play in the second half of the season, with a BABIP of just .143. In the first half, opposing batters had a .438 wOBA in those situations with a BABIP of .353. Going forward, I would expect Gallardo to have numbers more akin to the latter rather than the former. However, it also has something to do with pitch location in those situations. Gallardo threw 44% of pitches in the strike zone in the first half of the season, but just 34% in the second half. This has resulted in a preposterously high 26.9% walk rate with two or more runners on base, but has also resulted in batters doing less damage when putting the ball into play. Given the poor quality of his pitching, hoping batters swing at bad pitches is probably an intelligent