Collette Calls: Third Time Not the Charm for Weaver

Regular readers of this column will recall I was bearish on Weaver in my bold prediction series and cited a few reasons for that opinion. The first one I mentioned was Derek Carty's observation that Weaver added bulk to his frame. Carty mentioned his time in scout school taught him dramatically adding mass can disrupt your muscle memory and mechanics and lead to injury. The second part I had was based off work by Alex Chamberlain, which noted that Weaver's expected strikeout rate was much lower than his actual strikeout rate. I ran a scatterplot of all starting pitchers with at least 100 innings pitched in 2017 comparing their swinging strike rate against their actual strikeout rate (red arrow points to Weaver's spot):

I went on to show how that looked in tabular form and how his strikeout rate was much higher than pitchers with similar outcomes:

The high-level view of Weaver's statistics says he has certainly earned his numbers given his indicators are very much in line with the numbers he posted in 2017:

What is more concerning is that he has been rather lucky by StatCast measures as his .319 wOBA is 25 points below his expected wOBA based on the contact he has allowed. If you own Weaver, you know he is giving up quite a bit of quality contact this season, and he has been extremely fortunate in that area as there is a 252-point variance between his .875 wOBA and his expected wOBA of 1.127 when batters make solid contact or barrel up the baseball.
"Barreled" contact differs from solid contact, as explained by the StatCast glossary:

To be Barreled, a batted ball requires an exit velocity of at least 98 mph. At that speed, balls struck with a launch angle between 26-30 degrees always garner Barreled classification. For every mph over 98, the range of launch angles expands.

For example: A ball traveling 99 mph always earns 'Barreled' status when struck between 25-31 degrees. Add one more mph -- to reach 100 -- and the range grows another three degrees, to 24-33.

Every additional mph over 100 increases the range another two to three degrees until an exit velocity of 116 mph is reached. At that threshold, the Barreled designation is assigned to any ball with a launch angle between eight and 50 degrees.

The crazy part of these struggles for Weaver is that his swinging-strike rate is practically identical to where it was last year – 9.6 percent last year and 9.5 percent this season. His 29 percent strikeout rate has normalized back to the pack as he is at an even 21 percent this season. The reduced strikeout rate coupled with the increase in walks and homers has gotten us to where we are at with him.

The other issue in play is how Mike Matheny has managed him. I have often mentioned the "Times Through The Order Penalty" with pitchers and how some pitchers could be even better if their managers paid more credence to the TTOP problem. Weaver has been one of the worst pitchers in baseball when allowed to face hitters a third time in a game. League wide, pitchers have a 5.58 ERA and a .263/.334/.459 slash line when facing batters for the third time in the same game. Weaver has the seventh-highest ERA in the league in those situations at 9.77 as 17 of his 43 earned runs have come in that split:

In sum, I do not believe there is anything wrong with Weaver's skills, his health or his execution. I believe that if his manager kept him on a shorter leash, Weaver's overall numbers would be better.