It's time to admit we were wrong about Bryce Elder

Despite questionable peripherals, Bryce Elder leads the National League in ERA and looks like he's for real

I'll admit, I wasn't sold on Bryce Elder's 2023 season results as being legitimate. 

There's probably a few different reasons for that - being burned about pitching prospects in general, and his StatCast page doesn't exactly inspire a lot of confidence:  

Bryce Elder's statcast page as of Thursday, May 25th / MLB's Baseball Savant

Most of these peripherals tell a story that Braves fans don't want to hear: He gives up hard contact (13th percentile Avg Exit Velocity, 8th percentile Hard Hit%) with below average stuff (Fastball Velocity in the 8th percentile, Fastball Spin in the 4th percentile) and is only okay at generating swing and miss (49th percentile Whiff%, almost exactly average). It's be reasonable to assume that his NL-leading ERA, 2.01, is a byproduct of luck and he could turn into a pumpkin any minute now. His expected ERA, meaning what the average pitcher would produce with this exact same process, is 4.47. 

And yet, Elder's sitting on a 2.01 ERA. How? 

I think there's a few things in here to point out to help understand this "over-performance" from the expected stats. 

First is acknowledging that he has been lucky, yes. Luck is inherently part of the game, and will vary seemingly at random. But the ways that we measure luck don't bear that out, either: Batting Average on Balls in Play, referred to as "BABIP", is an easy way to see if a pitcher (or hitter) is getting lucky or unlucky by looking at the batted ball events ("BBE") of theirs and comparing the results of those BBEs to the league average. 

The average BABIP for MLB is .292. Bryce Elder is at .296 in 2023. He's actually been slightly unlucky on his batted balls. 

So it's not luck.

Something that stands out to me is that, while Elder's hard-hit rate (8th percentile) is pretty bad, his barrel percentage is actually (slightly) above average at 51st percentile. Hard Hit rate is solely looking at BBEs that are 95 mph or higher, and Elder's sitting on one of the worst marks in the league, at 48.2% (MLB Average this season is 36.0%). 

But his Barrel rate is significantly closer to average than his hard hit rate - Elder's at 7.8% barrel rate, with the league average being 6.8%, and Elder allowing so many hard hit balls but so few barrels explains a little more about why he's been successful. 

Major League Baseball

Barrel rate is a combination of exit velocity and launch angle - essentially, are you hitting the ball hard and elevating the ball at a combination that frequently leads to a homerun? 

And that's where Elder's excelled so far - his launch angle allowed on the season is only 6.5°, where the league average is 12.1°. A lot of the reason for the low launch angle is his propensity to cause groundballs - Elder's groundball and flyball rates are 56% and 15.1%, respectively, while the league average is 44.8% groundballs and 23.2% flyballs. 

Yes the ball may get hit hard, but more often than not it's on the ground, so it's usually an out. 

Elder's arsenal consists of four pitches, but the sinker and slider are his two main pitches, combining for over 70% of all pitches thrown by the righty. The launch angle on the 58 BBE's for the slider is 5°, while it's 2° on the 65 BBE's on the sinker. 

Where Elder struggles is against lefties, when he cuts back on the sinker in favor of a four-seam fastball. It's getting hit at 28°, although the average exit velocity of 85.9 mph means it's usually an out. It's definitely his worst pitch based on outcomes, although a lot of that is when he's unable to elevate it and it's over the heart of the plate.

Takeaway here: Do I expect Bryce Elder to keep an ERA of 2.01 for the entire season? I do not, the pure stuff isn't good enough. But it's not all smoke and mirrors - he's got the proper arsenal, command, and sequencing to be an effective pitcher at the major league level. He might be miscast as a #3 pitcher right now, owing to injury, but he's a fantastic option as a #4 or #5, which in a normal season would be all Atlanta needs him to be. 

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