More photos » Tom Mihalek - AP

Atlanta Braves' Casey Kotchman trots towards home after hitting a three-run home run off of Philadelphia Phillies relief pitcher Brad Lidge in the ninth inning.

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It's his knee. Next question.

Seriously though, I began looking into Brad before his went on the disabled list for a bad knee.  His pitching issues are not all attributable to his knee.

Basic Pitching Stats

Here is a comparison of Brad's 2008 and 2009 numbers.

Looking at these numbers, it shows Brad's great ability to keep the ball in the park last and his complete inability to keep in the park this year. Last season he allowed only 2 home runs while he has allowed 7 so far this season. On average, 1 out of every 11 fly balls are hit for home runs or ~9%. Last season less than half the balls that should have been home runs were, while this season, about 2 times as many have been home runs.

Looking at his FIPs and xFIPs (FIPs simulates ERA by taking into account only those factors that a pitcher can control, strikeouts, walks and home runs, while xFIPS takes into account stadium differences by using fly balls by assumes every 11^th fly ball one will be a home run) shows that last season he was very lucky with a xFIPS of 3.06.  This season his xFIPS is 4.60. If these two values were his actual ERA's, I don't think people would be worrying as much. Instead they see an ERA of 7.27 instead of 1.96 and want to overreact. I believe there is some regression to Brad's average ability going on here.

Pitch F/X Numbers

As a heads up, reliever numbers are as a rule very sporadic (more shorter appearances) when compared to starters and it is much tougher to get information from.

Looking at his Pitch F/X numbers I couldn't find a ton of problem, but here is what I did find.

Loss in velocity. Brad's fastball has lost 0.7 MPH from last season (94.1 to 93.4) with his slider increasing by 0.3 MPH (85.0 to 85.3), which as a whole seems pretty bad, but from 2007 to 2008 be lost 2 MPH off his slider and 1.7 MPH off his fastball. If I really expected to see a jump in his ERA, FIPS, or xFIPS, it should have been last season. It could be this year's drop is just enough to put him from a great pitcher to good pitcher

Location, Location, Location. I went and looked at some of the home runs Brad gave and there wasn't a particular pitch that stood out, but the problem is the location, in the middle of the plate. Dan Brooks at his site brooksbaseball.net has a stat called Nibbleness which measure how close pitches are from the edges of the strike zone. A higher number (values in inches) means a ball that is more towards the center of the strike zone. Here are the numbers for Brad this season:

--Rocket Science Alert--  As it can be seen, the more he put the ball over the plate, the worse the results. The times he has given up 2 or more runs, his pitches were 1.8 inches more over the plate and his slider was 2.6 inches over more.

Conclusions

Brad been a little unlucky this year, especially compared to his lucky season last year. Brads bad luck may be due to decrease velocity, but it is mainly due to him throwing the ball in the heart of the strike zone. His knee may cause some of his loss velocity, but it is not his only issue he was experiencing before he went on the DL

I hope you found this information useful and remember to submit your pitcher requests as a FanShot, a FanPost or to wydiyd at hotmail dot com.