A.J. Griffin and Martin Perez: Deep League Wire

Today, I’ll do something I will rarely do. That is, recommend not one, but two pitchers returning from Tommy John surgery. I typically ignore such returnees, as our own Jeff Zimmerman’s research confirms what we already knew anecdotally – that in their first year back, they suffer serious performance declines. But in a deep league where you’re scraping the barrel and choosing between a near guaranteed mid-4.00 ERA just for the potential for a couple of wins and some strikeouts, the possibility, even if small, of someone league average or better instead looks more intriguing.

A.J. Griffin | SP OAK | CBS 10% Owned

Griffin underwent his surgery in late April of 2014, making him 14 months removed at this point. There was hope he would be ready some time in June, but developed shoulder soreness in early May just when he began his rehab assignment. He seems to be fine now and the silver lining is that it gave him another couple of weeks of recovery time.

He has started four games and pitched 14.1 innings in the minors so far, and although his results are rather meaningless, he does boast a nice 15/1 K/BB ratio in those innings. That’s better than having walked 12 batters, right? More important though is his velocity. I haven’t found any recent readings, with the last coming several weeks ago on June 13th. Then, his velocity was just 86 mph, compared to the 89 mph he averaged in 2013. So that’s obviously not good, but that was several weeks ago, so perhaps getting more starts in allowed him to keep building arm strength that would boost that velocity.

When Griffin was healthy, he was a pretty perfect fit for Oakland. He was a fly ball pitcher with a league average strikeout rate, possessing pretty good control. It was an unsexy skill set for sure, but not that delivered quiet value. He featured a four-pitch mix, with every one of his non-fastballs generating SwStk% marks above 10%. That’s darn good. Nothing was a real standout pitch, though and he lacked any sort of ground ball pitch as well. But that’s why he’s been basically the definition of league average, rather than much better than that. But his ERA has been better than league average, likely thanks to his batted ball mix very conducive to being an Athletic. There’s no obvious opening in the A’s rotation at the moment, but the team is likely to limit the innings of all three of Jesse Hahn, Kendall Graveman and Jesse Chavez, so opportunity shouldn’t be a concern.

Martin Perez | SP TEX | 7% Owned

I think Perez is a little more interesting than Griffin. He’s a ground ball pitcher whose SwStk% spiked in his last fully healthy season in 2013, supported by a lethal changeup that generated a 22% SwStk%. The pitch also induces tons of grounders, so it was truly elite. Unfortunately, that’s all he really has, as all his other pitches have generated weak SwStk% marks, but do induce lots of grounders as well.

Perez had his surgery in mid-May of last year and like Griffin, suffered a setback due to injury that delayed his rehab. Luckily, it was his groin, which is much less worrisome than the shoulder. Even better is that Perez apparently hit 94 mph with his fastball during a start on Monday of last week. That’s big considering he averaged 93 mph with his fastball in 2013, before that fell to just 90.3 last year before going under the knife. While his fastball has peaked at 97 mph previously, he looks closer to rounding into form than Griffin does, unless the latter’s velocity has jumped since mid-June.

The Rangers actually trot out a pretty good defense this season, sporting a UZR/150 that ranks ninth in baseball. Obviously the park won’t help, but keeping the ball on the ground is a good defense against its effects. On the downside, Perez doesn’t have quite the control that Griffin did, so any slip there could be problematic without a jump in strikeout rate.