2020 Pod vs Steamer — ERA Upside, A Review

We have completed our reviews of Pod Projections versus Steamer on the hitting side, so now let’s move on over to pitching. I only published two pieces, comparing our ERA projections. Today, I’ll recap the names included on my ERA upside list. Given that even a full season ERA reflects a good deal of good and/or bad fortune, only 60 games and around 12 starts means ERAs landed all over the place, sometimes far off from consensus forecasts. So it’ll be fun to see where we projected these pitchers and where their ERAs actually settled.

ERA Upside
Player Pod ERA Steamer ERA Diff Actual ERA Winner
Kenta Maeda 3.70 4.64 -0.94 2.70 Pod
Sean Manaea 3.71 4.54 -0.83 4.50 Steamer
Masahiro Tanaka 3.89 4.56 -0.67 3.56 Pod
Noah Syndergaard 3.21 3.88 -0.67
Madison Bumgarner 3.87 4.50 -0.63 6.48 Steamer
Kyle Hendricks 3.71 4.32 -0.61 2.88 Pod

In a decisive victor, Pod wins the ERA upside battle! HA. The pitchers here ranged from 41.2 to 81.1 innings, so not exactly a worthwhile sample size. And confirming my injury curse will never end, one of the names required Tommy John surgery before the season even began and failed to throw a single pitch.

It was nice to see my biggest upside play, Kenta Maeda, was actually a winner. Not only that, but he obliterated all projections, so if my projection caused you to go the extra buck, you were a happy, happy fantasy owner. Not surprisingly, Steamer disliked Maeda moving to the AL, though last year, that didn’t matter since both leagues employed the DH. What neither of us saw coming was the strikeout rate surge, which jumped above 30% for the first time at age 32. His walk rate also dropped to a career best, while his already lower than league average BABIP plummeted to just .208. How’d he do all this? By throwing his fastball even less than he already did and throwing his slider and changeup even more. Seems like we see that more often than not with surprise pitcher seasons, as the pitcher reduces his fastball usage in favor of his more effective breaking ball or offspeed weapons.

Sean Manaea couldn’t sustain his 2019 small sample strikeout rate surge, but an inflated BABIP, the highest HR/FB rate of his career, and most importantly, a super low LOB% resulted in an ERA well above his SIERA. With neutral luck, Manaea would have finished a bit closer to my ERA projection. It’s clear that 2019 was the fluke, and this is what Manaea is. I thought a strikeout rate spike would be coming years ago, but with diminished velocity now, that’s going to be tougher to come by. And that unexciting strikeout rate means he’s no longer an intriguing upside guy you want to buy for cheap.

A lost splitter accounted for Masahiro Tanaka’s disappointing 2019, so I was merely betting on some of that lost effectiveness returning. It actually didn’t, but luckily his slider and four-seamer made up the slack, both generating career best SwStk% marks. Now it’s back to Japan for Tanaka, who has graced my roster several times.

Sure, nearly everyone expected Madison Bumgarner to be a bust after departing the pitcher paradise known as AT&T Park, but no one foresaw this disaster of a season! It came in just 41.2 innings, but his strikeout rate plummeted, and suddenly he suffered from gopheritis for the first time, allowing an insane 2.81 HR/9. The obvious culprit was a severe loss of velocity, as his fastball dropped from the mid-91 MPH range, where he sat for four straight seasons, to just 88.6. That’s enormous and would cause any pitcher to decline. Bumgarner is only 31, so you wonder how much of the loss of velocity was the craziness of the season, and whether it will rebound this season. Anyone taking a chance on him this year?!

Shocker, Steamer was wrong on Kyle Hendricks again. I wish I had their historical projections, because I bet they have been wrong every single season. That’s not a knock on Steamer, it’s just a commentary on the uniqueness of Hendricks. A projection system is going to be logical on 95% (I made that up) of players, but the other 5% are going to sit at the extremes and the system can’t possible hit the majority and the extremes. That’s the benefit of a manual system like my own. Hendricks once again handily beat his SIERA, as his BABIP hit its lowest since 2016, while his LOB% spiked to its highest since 2017.

What’s interesting is his SwStk% jumped to a career high, but his strikeout rate was actually the third lowest of his career, if you include his half season debut in 2014. It’s really incredible that with only mid-80s heat, Hendricks continues to baffle hitters. At one point do hitters figure him out and his soft-tossing ways are no longer effective? I’ve owned Hendricks in the past, but he still feels too risky for me. Then again, when I’ve owned him, he has been severely undervalued even compared with my conservative projection, so the market clearly continues to bake in the risk that this is the year he loses the magic.





Mike Podhorzer is the 2015 Fantasy Sports Writers Association Baseball Writer of the Year. He produces player projections using his own forecasting system and is the author of the eBook Projecting X 2.0: How to Forecast Baseball Player Performance, which teaches you how to project players yourself. His projections helped him win the inaugural 2013 Tout Wars mixed draft league. Follow Mike on Twitter @MikePodhorzer and contact him via email.

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