2015 Spring K% Surgers & Breakout Candidates

So, it’s been a busy preseason and I had a list of all the articles I wanted to publish before the season officially began. Unfortunately, I failed. And as a result, Eno beat me to the punch. But I’m going to do it anyway. A whole three years ago, with help from math wizard Matt Swartz, we discovered that spring pitcher strikeout and walk rates actually do hold value and using them could improve projections, even if just marginally. This was validated recently by another math wizard, Dan Rosenheck. So with that in mind, let’s take a look at which pitchers enjoyed a strikeout rate surge during spring training.

I’m going to look at this slightly differently than Eno did. I’ll be comparing spring K% (rather than K/9) to Steamer’s projected K%. In small samples, K/9 could be greatly influenced by BABIP, of which K% is agnostic to.

I don’t know where Michael Pineda’s velocity sat this spring, but as he gets further away from surgery, you would think there’s a chance it improves. Even without the elite velocity last year, he still managed to induce swinging strikes at nearly the same rate as he did during his rookie season back in 2011. I don’t think I’m saying anything anyone doesn’t already realize, but, he’s going to be darn good for as long as he can stay off the disabled list.

Nathan Eovaldi is one of those hard throwers who doesn’t strike out nearly as many batters as you would expect. He’s a tease, if you will. But those teases are always speculated on by fantasy owners, because we think that any year now the light bulb is going to turn on and suddenly all those expected strikeouts will materialize. It’s going to be tougher in the American League now, but obviously the potential is there for it to finally happen.

Chris Tillman’s minor league strikeout rates haven’t really translated just yet. It’s because only his changeup has generated a SwStk% above 10%, but it still remains below average. It seems like he has far too much to improve upon to push his strikeout rate into the low-to-mid 20% range as he needs to first get at least one pitch just into average swing and miss territory.

In Eno’s article linked to above, he mentioned that Drew Pomeranz’s strong spring could be credited to better mechanics and his changeup becoming a viable option. He threw the change just 1% of the time last year, so if he does indeed start throwing it more instead of his fastball, then perhaps there is strikeout rate upside.

Ya know, based on his spring and a Tweet I remember reading at some point during the spring talking about Clay Buchholz showing good velocity, in the back of my mind I had a real feeling he would enjoy a major rebound. But I don’t act on gut feelings, because gut feelings are really based on statistics. Well, something. So it’s really a misnomer to call it a gut feeling. Anyhow, Buchholz has been good before and has shown excellent quality stuff that hasn’t always led to strikeouts, but has battled injuries and velocity decline. Obviously, his opening day outing yesterday was an excellent sign, even if it was against the punchless Phillies offense.

I’ll just assume that Hector Noesi’s nice strikeout rate was due to the tiny 14 inning sample size.

This is the reason to hype Taijuan Walker, not due to his meaningless 0.67 spring ERA. He obviously has the stuff, which made him a top prospect, so it’s just a matter of staying healthy all year.

It was quite reasonable to doubt Collin McHugh’s breakout season last year, as it was so very unexpected. But his strong spring strikeout rate should make you think twice about doubting him.

Zach McAllister is going to possibly be my biggest regret in the AL Tout Wars league. It was down to my last reserve slot and at the time, McAllister was slated for middle relief. I very much considered him due to his strong spring and increased velocity, but I figured with Danny Salazar nearly locked into the fifth spot in the rotation, why bother rostering a middle reliever? So I passed and went with the questionable Colby Lewis to ensure I could at least compete in wins and strikeouts (yes, perhaps at the cost of my ratios!). After the shocking decision to demote Salazar and move McAllister into the rotation, I was annoyed at the timing of events and then got even more so when I missed out on FAABing him on Sunday night. I was outbid by $3 :-(.