Players · K · Pitcher · 2014 regular season

Hiroki Kuroda

Age: 39
B/T: R/R
Height: 6' 1"
Weight: 205 lb
Number: #18

Born: February 10, 1975 in Osaka, Japan
MLB debut: April 4, 2008

dbWAR: 20.4
IP: 199.0
ERA: 3.71
FIP: 3.60
K/9: 6.6
FIP−: 96

Hiroki Kuroda was a starting pitcher for the New York Yankees. In 2014 he struck out 146 batters over 199.0 innings across 32 appearances, 32 of them starts, going 11-9. His ERA of 3.71 was 0.9% lower than the league average of 3.74 — 9th of 17 on his team, and 250th of 477 among MLB pitchers with 20+ innings. Stripping out defence, his 3.60 FIP suggests the ERA was no fluke. He missed bats on 22.2% of swings (10.6% of every pitch he threw), walked 4.3% of the batters he faced and struck out 17.8%. His 2.6 dbWAR is built from that FIP rather than runs allowed, so it credits him for what he controls and not for the defence behind him.

League context

Percentile among qualified pitchers, 2014 regular season.

FIP3.60

K/96.6

WHIP1.14

WAR2.6

WAR by season

Pitching Regular season

Standard and advanced, by season. Regular-season games only — postseason games are listed separately below.


2014	NYY	32	32	199.0	11	9	191	82	146	35	3.71	3.60	1.14	6.6	1.6	99	96	2.6
2013	NYY	32	32	201.1	11	13	191	74	150	43	3.31	3.56	1.16	6.7	1.9	86	92	3.2
2012	NYY	33	33	219.2	16	11	205	81	167	51	3.32	3.86	1.17	6.8	2.1	83	96	2.9
2011	LAD	32	32	202.0	13	16	196	69	161	49	3.07	3.78	1.21	7.2	2.2	78	96	2.6
2010	LAD	31	31	196.1	11	13	180	74	159	48	3.39	3.26	1.16	7.3	2.2	83	80	4.1
2009	LAD	21	20	117.1	8	7	110	49	87	24	3.76	3.58	1.14	6.7	1.8	87	83	2.2
2008	LAD	31	31	183.1	9	10	181	76	116	42	3.73	3.59	1.22	5.7	2.1	86	83	3.5

Batting Regular season

Standard and advanced, by season. Regular-season games only — postseason games are listed separately below.


2014	NYY	1	3	0	0	0	0	.000	.000	.000	.000	.000	0.0%	0.0%	.000	-0.7	-123	-0.0
2013	NYY	3	6	0	0	0	3	.000	.000	.000	.000	.000	0.0%	50.0%	.000	-1.5	-119	-0.1
2012	NYY	1	2	0	0	0	1	.000	.000	.000	.000	.000	0.0%	50.0%	.000	-0.5	-119	-0.0
2011	LAD	30	71	7	1	4	20	.115	.169	.115	.000	.171	5.6%	28.2%	.140	-9.9	-25	-0.1
2010	LAD	30	68	2	0	2	21	.036	.070	.036	.000	.059	2.9%	30.9%	.057	-14.5	-87	-0.6
2009	LAD	18	39	4	0	2	11	.143	.200	.143	.000	.235	5.1%	28.2%	.168	-5.2	-12	0.0
2008	LAD	30	65	8	2	5	16	.148	.220	.167	.019	.211	7.7%	24.6%	.190	-7.6	3	0.1

Separate from the regular season

Postseason Postseason

Wild Card through World Series. These games are counted on their own: none of them are in the regular-season tables, career totals, league context, leaderboards or dbWAR on this page.

Postseason pitching

Postseason Hiroki Kuroda's postseason pitching, by October and round. Not part of any regular-season figure on this page.
Season	Team	Round	G	GS	IP	W	L	H	ER	HR	BB	SO	ERA	WHIP	K/9
2012 Post	NYY	Postseason total	2	2	16.0	0	1	10	5	2	1	14	2.81	0.69	7.9
		ALDS	1	1	8.1	0	0	5	2	2	1	3	2.16	0.72	3.2
		ALCS	1	1	7.2	0	1	5	3	0	0	11	3.52	0.65	12.9
2009 Post	LAD	NLCS	1	1	1.1	0	1	6	6	1	0	1	40.50	4.50	6.8
2008 Post	LAD	Postseason total	2	2	12.1	2	0	11	2	0	3	7	1.46	1.14	5.1
		NLDS	1	1	6.1	1	0	6	0	0	2	4	0.00	1.26	5.7
		NLCS	1	1	6.0	1	0	5	2	0	1	3	3.00	1.00	4.5
Career		Postseason total · 3 Octobers	5	5	29.2	2	2	27	13	3	4	22	3.94	1.04	6.7

Postseason batting

Postseason Hiroki Kuroda's postseason batting, by October and round. Not part of any regular-season figure on this page.
Season	Team	Round	G	PA	AB	SO	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS
2008 Post	LAD	Postseason total	2	6	6	3	.000	.000	.000	.000
		NLDS	1	3	3	2	.000	.000	.000	.000
		NLCS	1	3	3	1	.000	.000	.000	.000

Box-score and rate statistics only. wOBA, wRC+, FIP and dbWAR are measured against a full league season, and a postseason is a few teams playing each other for a month, so they are not computed for October.

Platoon splits

How left- and right-handed hitters fare against him.

Season

Opponent batting by the side the hitter bats from, 2014. Counted from play-by-play, so totals can differ from the box-score season line by a plate appearance or two.
Split	PA	AB	H	HR	BB	SO	AVG	OBP	SLG	wOBA	K%
vs LHB	446	412	108	12	26	69	.262	.304	.403	.315	15.5%
vs RHB	374	355	83	8	9	77	.234	.264	.358	.278	20.6%

Spray chart

Where every ball he put in play landed, 2014.

Loading 2 batted balls…

Hot and cold zones

Batting average by pitch location, 2014.

Below averageLeague averageAbove average

Batting average by location of the pitch that ended each plate appearance, catcher's view. The bordered square is the strike zone; the outer band is chase territory. Cells with fewer than 8 at-bats are left grey rather than shown as signal. League average on the same attribution is .251.

Pitch sequencing

What Hiroki Kuroda throws in each count, and what he follows each pitch with. Select any cell for the breakdown.

ShowBatter

SinkerSplitterSliderFour-seamCurveballCutter

Select a count to see exactly what Hiroki Kuroda throws in it.

Pitch arsenal

What he throws, how hard, how often it misses, and what hitters do with it.

Season


Sinker	37.8%	1,172	91.0	2,025	44.8%	10.6%	331	.320	.871
Splitter	27.4%	850	86.1	1,039	37.6%	32.7%	240	.163	.396
Slider	21.7%	672	82.7	754	46.9%	33.9%	129	.233	.657
Four-Seam Fastball	8.4%	259	90.8	2,062	42.9%	15.5%	49	.245	.607
Curveball	3.9%	121	76.0	947	46.3%	18.8%	14	—	—
Cutter	0.6%	20	89.0	1,523	50.0%	15.4%	4	—	—

Hiroki Kuroda's arsenal by usage. Velocity is average release speed in mph, spin in rpm, and whiff rate is misses per swing — the cleanest single measure of whether a pitch beats hitters. BAA and OPS are what hitters did against each pitch, credited to the one that ended the plate appearance, and are left blank under 15 at-bats.

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Hiroki Kuroda

Similar players

Nearest 2014 seasons by command, run prevention and role, on rate statistics rather than totals.

James ShieldsKC

ERA: 3.21
FIP: 3.59
SO: 180
WAR: 3.1

Very close

Bartolo ColonNYM

ERA: 4.09
FIP: 3.57
SO: 151
WAR: 2.6

Very close

Kyle LohseMIL

ERA: 3.54
FIP: 3.95
SO: 141
WAR: 1.8

Very close

Wei-Yin ChenBAL

ERA: 3.54
FIP: 3.89
SO: 136
WAR: 1.7

Very close

How these are computed

wOBA uses linear weights measured from this season's own play-by-play rather than published constants, and wRC+ is park-adjusted against that same league. dbWAR is our own open implementation — not fWAR or bWAR — and the full derivation, including its simplifications, is on the methodology page.