Ivan Nova has seen his performance fluctuate quite a bit over his short career. 2011 was his first full season and he returned good results, with a 16-4 record and 3.70 ERA. But his peripherals were mediocre, including a 5.33 K/9 that made him hard to roster in fantasy leagues. Then came 2012 when he took big steps forward. He struck out over eight batters per nine (8.08 K/9) and kept his walk rate under control (2.96 BB/9). Which was good, except that he also allowed a ton of hits on balls in play (.331 BABIP) and an unusual number of home runs (16.6% HR/FB). That led to an unsightly 5.02 ERA.

He finally put it all together last season. He maintained the strong strikeout and walk rates, bowled plenty of ground balls (53.5%), and turned in an ERA of 3.10 with a 3.68 xFIP. Nova got out to a slow start on the season (more on that in a moment), so he only returned a little less than $3 of value over 139 innings. Aside from Yankees fans, fantasy owners are likely to undersell the soon to be 27-year-old, but he’s a solid option capable of supporting a fantasy rotation.

First and foremost, Nova is not somebody to confuse with more elite pitchers, nor does he possess much upside. He’s somebody who can produce average stats across all four starting pitcher categories, which is quite useful. Most pitchers who are used to fill out a fantasy rotation have specific strengths and weaknesses. Maybe they strikeout a lot of hitters but also issue too many walks. That would lead to a high WHIP and inconsistent ERA. Or maybe they’re just as solid as Nova, but they pitch for a terrible team and therefore have little chance of winning games (ahem, Jose Quintana). Assuming neutral luck, using someone like Nova can make it a lot easier to manage categories.

Nova sputtered out to a rough start in 2013. Three of his first four outings went poorly, at which point he landed on the disabled list with a strained triceps. He then suffered an oblique injury while rehabbing his arm. He made a pair of relief appearances in late May and then was demoted to Triple-A. He returned to more regular action in late June, which is when he began to pitch well. He did falter a bit in late August through mid-September, which coincides with a drop in velocity. It’s possible he was suffering from a minor injury or fatigue.

Monthly Pitch Usage

According to Brooks Baseball, Nova began phasing out his four-seam fastball in favor of a sinker. He split usage of both pitches over the season, but increasingly favored the sinker as the season progressed. That may be a good move as his primary fastball allowed a .357 BABIP in both 2012 and 2013. The pitch was the main culprit behind his rough 2012 season, and it’s quite possible that it’s a bit too hittable.

From the table above, not only does his sinker generate more ground balls than his fastball, but it also generates more whiffs. It would seem that the primary fastball is best used as a setup pitch to help his sinker and curve ball. Nova also mixes in the occasional change-up against left-handed hitters, but it does not appear that he is confident in the pitch.

After reviewing his pitch usage, Nova feels a bit incomplete as a pitcher. His four seam fastball has been poor over a fairly large sample, yet he has a good sinker and curve ball. A useful third pitch would be a weapon that improved all of his offerings and kept hitters guessing.

As for expectations, Nova has a rotation job all but guaranteed in New York. With health, he’ll get a shot at 200 innings next season. If he pitches to similar peripherals as last season, he should turn in around $8 of value. He will probably be available in many leagues for only a couple dollars, although I’m sure you can find plenty of Yankees fans with unreasonable expectations. Given his expected value and cost, it seems pretty obvious that Nova should be an early target for the back of your rotation. However, it’s still early in the offseason, we may find that savvy owners aren’t letting him slip as far as I expect.

Like Patrick Corbin, who I profiled yesterday, Zach McAllister impressed me in 2012 while filling in as a stream starter for my fantasy teams. He profiled as slightly worse than Corbin heading into 2013, so I tabbed him for more stream starts. That seems to be the right role for him, since he returned negative $2 of value last season. McAllister should enter the season with a rotation job, but owners in shallow leagues will be able to ignore him on draft day.

Read the rest of this entry »

Jordan Zimmermann has become an extremely reliable starter. In the last three years his ERA has been between 2.94 and 3.25, his WHIP has been between 1.09 and 1.17, and his strikeout rate has been between 18.6% and 19%. Those rate stats along with 12 wins in 2012 resulted in an ADP of 20-25 among starters for Zimmermann prior to the 2013 season. Despite posting similar rate stats, Zimmermann outperformed his 2013 ADP and finished as the 11th most valuable starter according to our valuations thanks to a jump up to 19 wins.

Zimmermann helped himself in the win category by pitching a little deeper into games. He made the same amount of starts in 2012 and 2013, but he threw 17.2 more innings in 2013. That works out to Zimm leaving the game with an average of 1.65 more outs per game. He also got a bit more help with run support as his run support per innings pitched was five runs compared to 4.7 in 2012. So he was leaving later in games and probably leaving with a lead more often. But those improvements aren’t huge and weren’t worth seven extra wins. When you also consider that we’ve only had 42 19+ win seasons in the last decade and that only six pitchers have had back to back 19+ win seasons in that time frame, it’s highly probable that Zimm’s win total will decline in 2014.

Because of the increased win total, Zimmermann is likely to be drafted as more of a top 15 starter as opposed to a top 25 starter like he was last year. But if his win total does indeed decrease, he’s going to have improve in other areas in order to produce a similar value next year and to be worthy of his draft day price. And given the consistency in the rate stats that was detailed above, an improvement in any of those areas may seem unlikely. But I think Zimmermann may have a proverbial ace up his sleeve. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 82
Today’s episode of The Sleeper and the Bust stars features a few changes. A new co-host! Jason Collette joins Eno Sarris! A new intro! From Ian Miller aka Teen Archer! The wifi at the Winter Meetings was crap, so we said, “F it! We’ll do it live!”  No laptops, just two dudes handing an iPhone back & forth to one another.

As usual, don’t hesitate to tweet us any fantasy questions you have that we may answer on our next episode.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or via the feed.

Approximately 40 min of joyous analysis.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Gerrit Cole finished 60th in our end of season starting pitcher rankings. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that he finishes quite a bit higher than that in 2014, because the only reason he finished that low this year is simply because the Pirates didn’t call him up to make his major league debut until June 11, giving him time to pitch only 117.1 innings on the season.

While we look back and remember Cole as blossoming into an ace, it’s probably fair to remember that his time in the bigs didn’t exactly start out with total dominance. For his first few weeks, there were some questions about how few bats Cole was managing to miss despite owning one of only two fastballs to average more than 96 miles per hour (minimum 100 innings). In his first start, Cole struck out only two Giants; in his next, just a single Dodger. He didn’t strike out more than five hitters until his ninth big league start. Read the rest of this entry »

Entering the 2013 season, Patrick Corbin was one of my top sleeper targets. I had enjoyed the left-hander’s debut in 2012, when he was an above average stream-starter for my fantasy teams. Last season, I drafted him in all of my leagues, although I sold him before his best – and worst – work in all but one league. According to Zach Sanders, Corbin was worth $12.57 last season.  As we’ll soon discover together, it was a very front-heavy performance. A disappointing finish to the season makes him an uncertain target for the 2014 season.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of the best parts about the winter is obviously tracking all the latest player movement, but sometimes when that rumor mill starts churning, the fantasy nerd in me can’t help but start thinking about making some oddball offseason moves with the hope that the whispers pan out to be truths and I’ve somehow stolen what could blossom into a killer fantasy commodity. Some of the rumors are bigger than others, but a sneaky one that recently popped up sort of intrigues me as a fantasy player who likes drafting closers with upside and hates chasing saves throughout the year. That rumor has the Orioles turning last year’s trade deadline acquisition, Bud Norris, into their full-time closer. Read the rest of this entry »

Remember when the Mets traded Scott Kazmir for Victor Zambrano? Predictably, the trade looked as horrible as we all thought it would through 2008, when Kazmir enjoyed four straight seasons of a sub-4.00 ERA fueled by his electric fastball-slider-change-up combination. But eventually, it seemed like the Mets may have known what they were doing after all, although there was still no excuse for such a poor return. In 2009 and 2010, Kazmir’s ERA approached 5.00 and 6.00, respectively, as he lost his fastball and his strikeout rate plunged. Fast forward to 2013 and if you had been asleep from 2009 to 2012, you would have thought you had missed nothing. Just another solid performance from the southpaw.

Read the rest of this entry »

The 2013 season was a mixed bag for Tim Lincecum. Nothing epitomized his season more than his starts on July 13th and 22nd. The first was a no hitter against the Padres while the second was a 3.2 inning, eight run shelling against the Reds. All season long, he mixed great and poor outings with no rhyme or reason. The Giants were nice enough to reward him handsomely with a two-year, $35 million contract before he could reach free agency, but should fantasy owners be similarly generous?

Read the rest of this entry »

The kid with the creepy mustache turned in his finest season in 2013. Although it wasn’t backed up by the win column, Derek Holland was one of the finest starters in the American League, besting the likes of David Price, Doug Fister, Jon Lester, and Hisashi Iwakuma by way of wins above replacement. Perhaps because he only managed to eek out 10 wins, his 3.42 ERA (3.44 FIP) and 189 strikeouts seemed to be often overlooked in fantasy circles. In formats which don’t value wins, however, Holland was ace-like.

Read the rest of this entry »