Adventures In The Trade Trade 2: Starting Pitchers

Having last week identified some hitters who seem to us to have been lucky or unlucky so far this season, and then suggested what their trade value might be if their luck evens out, we now work the same magic with starting pitchers. These guys’ granular stats, we posit, indicate that they’ve pitched significantly better or worse than their Fantasy-relevant numbers suggest that they have.

We propose that they’ve been unfortunate, and that their fortunes will change. So we ask ourselves (1) who are these guys? (2) what will their stats look like over the rest of the season if their luck balances out and their full-season numbers are about what they were projected to be? and (3) what other pitcher’s expected performance will our guy’s rest-of-season stats resemble?

Our methodology is simple. We first tried it last year, with some success, and then in the preseason, where it would have pointed you towards Dallas Keuchel and away from Julio Teheran. So it shows promise. To find guys who’ve been lucky, we look for starting pitchers who are the top third of their cohort in Batting Average on Balls in Play and in Flyball/Home Run percentage, but the bottom third in Hard-Hit Percentage.

We figure that a guy who’s not getting hit hard but giving up a disproportionate number of hits and home runs is a good candidate to turn his season around. And we turn the method on its head to identify the lucky guys who do get hit hard but—because they’re giving up fewer home runs and hits than they should be—don’t yet have the scars to show for it. We think those guys are headed for a fall.

Please note that we’re not suggesting that you trade, say, Danny Duffy for, say, Jeff Samardzija, even though we do in fact think their numbers may be similar from here on. For one thing, straight-up starter-for-starter swaps virtually never happen in redraft leagues. Rather, what we envision is using this expected equivalency in multi-player deals. For example: You own Duffy, your counterparty owns Samardzija. He also owns X, a hitter who, by common consent, is much better than Y, the guy you have at the same position.

The counterparty, being astute, will embrace the view that Samardzija’s probably a better pitcher than he’s appeared so far to be, and that he is likely to produce his originally projected stats the rest of the way. You, however, knowing what you know, think that Samardzija’s luck will even out, and that he will do even better than his projections. So you use Duffy and Y to reel in Samarzdjia and X, and get a shiny new hitter and pitching stats similar to what you’d have gotten from Duffy.

Here’s what you’ll find below: First, the pitchers we think have been lucky and whose Fantasy-relevant stats should decline; then, the ones who’ve been unlucky and whose stats should improve. The first pair of numbers after each name are the guy’s current ERA and WHIP; the second pair are his rest-of-season ERA and WHIP if he stays healthy and pitches the way his pre-season projections suggested he would. After that, we suggest pitchers whose stats should be comparable to this guy’s the rest of the way. For these comparables, we’ve done our best to identify pitchers with similar strikeout rates on teams of similar quality (so as to equalize Wins). We came up short occasionally; please don’t give us a hard time about it.

The Lucky Guys

—Derek Holland. 2.43/1.16; 5.36/1.44. Absolutely no one. Of course nobody imagines that Holland will continue to do what he’s been doing, or anything like it, so he likely has no trade value. If you’ve got him, you’re probably going to hang on to him on the off-chance that he’s for real, rather than sell him at the discount he deserves. If you don’t have him, you don’t want him.

—Dan Straily. 3.56/1.00;4.33/1.37. Charlie Morton; Trevor Bauer.

—Ian Kennedy. 3.03/1.07; 4.34/1.35. Patrick Corbin.

—A.J. Griffin. 3.15/1.02; 5.52/1.50, unless you think that Griffin, in his second year off TJ surgery, is once again the pitcher he was in 2013, in which case the projection is 4.06/1.17. If so, he’s Taijuan Walker, or maybe Jeremy Hellickson if Hellickson starts getting strikeouts again, or Marco Estrada if you think he comes back to earth.

The Unlucky Guys

—Jon Lester. 3.45/1.40; 2.98/1.01. Madison Bumgarner, minus the dirt bike.

—Jeff Samardzija. 5.26/1.21; 3.39/1.19. As Alex Chamberlain of Fangraphs recently noted, Samardzija’s stuff doesn’t usually translate into glittery numbers. Still, Zack Greinke if you think he—Samardzija, not Alex—can continue to strike out 11 guys per 9, he’s Danny Duffy. If you think he can’t, he’s Jose Quintana.

—Lance McCullers. 2.98/1.12; ????. We really don’t know what to do with this one. McCullers is in the top 10 in Pitcher WAR as it is, and the numbers we’re looking at suggest he’s nonetheless been unfortunate. If that’s the case, and his luck evens out, he’s at least Chris Archer, or Zack Greinke if you think he’s all the way back, or even (dare we say it?) Clayton Kershaw.

—Tyler Glasnow. 7.98/2.08; 2.50/1.13. Let’s not forget that Glasnow is one of the top pitching prospects in baseball. He throws hard for a guy who gets hit hard as infrequently as he does, and has great stuff for a guy who throws as hard as he does. All of which makes him: Noah Syndergaard, minus the Thor complex! Now that would be an interesting trade.