2021 Pod vs Steamer — ERA Downside, A Review

Yesterday, I reviewed the list of eight starting pitchers my Pod Projections were more bullish on ERA than Steamer. Today, let’s now flip to the starting pitchers I was more bearish on, suggesting downside versus Steamer. Overall, the Steamer ERA projections were more pessimistic than mine, so the gaps between the upside pitchers were much larger than the gaps between these downside pitchers. That means this list is more of a crapshoot. Let’s check out the results.

That’s a little more like it, with Pod “winning” on five of the eight pitchers this time. However, unlike the ERA upside group that wasn’t hit that hard by injury, half this group failed to go at least 100 innings! I swear, if anything is learned from reviewing my many lists, it’s to just avoid anyone I discuss, as the odds of them missing significant time to injury increases exponentially.

Also as a reminder, these ERA projections are actually pretty darn close, especially as you get to the bottom of the list. There’s barely a difference between those ERAs, and it’s only a matter of the bullpen stranding a couple of extra runners, some bloops falling in, or a homer here and there being carried by the wind to land just over the fence to push one projection system into the winner column. So like I cautioned in some of the previous reviews, this exercise is definitely more for fun than concluding anything about the accuracy of the two systems.

Kevin Gausman held most of his strikeout rate gains he first enjoyed during 2020, which I was skeptical about given the small sample it came in. More surprisingly though is that the owner of a career BABIP well above .300 just posted the lowest BABIP of his career at just .274. This, despite no real change to his batted ball distribution, except for the lowest IFFB% since his 2013 debut. His HR/FB rate also fell to its lowest mark since 2014, while his LOB% increased to its highest mark since 2016. So finally, all the good fortune was on Gausman’s side. He’s now shown these strong skills two seasons in a row, so I’ll likely be in line with Steamer for 2022.

In my original writeup, I called for a significant drop in strikeout rate for Framber Valdez. I was right. His skills did indeed weaken, but a low BABIP and high LOB% allowed him to outperform his SIERA, which was actually right in line with my projection. Again, that’s the difficulty with pitcher projections. You can get all the skills right, but it’s near impossible to consistently forecast BABIP, HR/FB, and LOB% accurately, so often times how close you end up on the ERA will depend on those three metrics which aren’t entirely in the pitcher’s control.

Finally we land on my first win and it’s Blake Snell, who spent the season in the NL for the first time. His strikeout failed to increase, while his walk rate rose to its highest mark since his 2016 debut. That’s not what one expects when a starting pitcher moves from the AL to the NL. Anyhow, this is what I said initially:

Steamer and I are pretty darn close on Blake Snell’s metrics, except for HR/9, where I’m a bit more bearish than them. Part of that is because I’m projecting his FB% to jump back to his career average, essentially ignoring the drop to a sub-30% rate last year, whereas Steamer is averaging out his 2019 and 2020 marks.

That’s precisely what happened — Snell’s FB%, which was as consistent as it gets sitting between 36% and 38% through 2019, suddenly fell to just 28.3% in 2020’s short season. I ignored that drop and projected a return to his pre-2020 days. Sure enough, his FB% jumped right back to 37.3%, but because his HR/FB rate normalized from 2020’s ridiculous level, his HR/9 actually fell precipitously. The biggest issue here has become the lack of innings, as he averaged just 4.8 innings per start in 2021, which means tallying wins has become a challenge.

A.J. Puk pitched just 13.1 innings and was a complete question mark given his injury history. Those 13.1 innings ended up with disastrous results, but the skills were mighty fine, as his 3.59 SIERA attests.

Given the health of his elbow, I was bearish on Dinelson Lamet’s strikeout rate. Even with nearly 18 relief innings, he still posted a career worst mark. Is he now a full-time reliever or will he get a chance to start again at some point in the future?

It’s unfortunate that Jacob deGrom’s potentially historic season was cut short by injury. But oh golly was his first 92 innings epic. A 45.1% strikeout rate from a reliever is amazing, but coming from a starter is just unbelievable. He paired that with a microscopic, and career low, 3.4% walk rate. At age 33, he’s going to be a risk next year, but his price will dictate if he’ll still be worth it.

Yu Darvish’s skills remained as strong as ever, but somehow his ERA managed to settle above 4.00, even with a better than average BABIP offsetting a higher than average HR/FB, to go along with a league average LOB%. However, he did post the highest FB% of his career, so the slightly higher than average HR/FB rate hurt him more than it has in the past. He might be undervalued given his SIERA underperformance, but he’ll be entering his age 35 season, so there’s age-related downside risk here.

We, and probably everyone else, were wayyyyy off on Jesús Luzardo. I did correctly predict a jump in walk rate, but expected a jump in strikeout rate too, which failed to materialize. He didn’t have much help in the luck metric department, as all three were inflated versus league average. Now in the NL and remaining in a pitcher friendly park, he’s in a great situation to remind everyone of his former top prospect status. His stuff is still there, as his slider posted a 21.4% SwStk%, his changeup a mid-teens mark, and his fastball averaged 95.8 MPH. He’s a “buy cheap and cross your fingers” kind of buy for 2022.