AL SP: The Youngins
The great thing about having a weak pitching staff, as opposed to a poor offense, is that there are always new pitchers being called up who could potentially generate some fantasy value. This is why I have always trumpeted going cheaper than everyone else on your pitching staff during your draft/auction. Let’s take a look at some of the younger guys who have
After making nine starts for the Rays last year, Cobb is back in the Majors to replace the injured Jeff Niemann in the rotation. Though his 4.14 ERA at Triple-A before his promotion is uninspiring, that came along with a .355 BABIP, so it can be ignored. He posted a pretty good K% of 23.7% and also carried strong rates in previous minor league stops. He has also been a ground ball pitcher, having posted a mark above 50% every single year, which is always a plus. His fastball so far this season has been rather underwhelming, averaging just under 90.0 miles per hour and he has thrown his change-up a whopping 41% of the time. So far his SwStk% hasn’t translated and for a guy with a below average fastball, you always have to wonder if the minor league skills will show up. However, I do think he makes for an excellent AL-Only pickup and I wouldn’t be surprised if he also generates a bit of mixed league value.
The former Diamondbacks top prospect has made quite the debut in Oakland…on the surface. His 2.88 is pretty, but there are alarm bells ringing all over. His SIERA is about two full runs above his ERA, as both his K% and BB% are worse than league average, his BB% being significantly so. The one aspect of his game that tempered my pessimism was his ground ball tendency in the minors. But so far, all he’s doing is allowing line drives. What’s amazing is that his LD% is actually higher than his BABIP! You rarely see that and it suggests that something has to give- my bet is the BABIP jumps from its current .270 mark. Of course, the LD% will come down too, but it’s not a good sign for a rookie hurler. His SwStk% is below league average and supports his mediocre K% and his F-Strike% is poor, backing up his unacceptable walk rate. His Triple-A stats give us some hope though, but he has only thrown 20.2 innings at the level. In keeper leagues, I think his superficially strong start makes him a prime sell-high candidate. I wouldn’t touch him in a mixed league.
Diamond was recently called up by the Twins and has shown decent enough skills for a look in deep leagues an AL-Onlys. Though he has typically posted pretty good ground ball rates in the minors, they were closer to the 50% mark, rather than the above 60% level he has posted so far this year. His minor league strikeout rates and current SwStk% confirm that there is little upside here and his F-Strike%, while solid, isn’t good enough to possibly maintain a sub-2.00 walk rate. That said, a ground ball pitcher with a strikeout rate around 6.0 and a walk rate around 2.50 is plenty good enough to generate fantasy value.
A month ago, Marc Hulet provided a nice summary on Hutchison from a scouting perspective. While the 4.84 ERA is unsightly, a 4.01 SIERA and 95 xFIP- is much more palatable. Hutchison has actually never thrown a pitch at the Triple-A level and has only thrown 31.2 innings at Double-A. This is somewhat shocking for a pitcher who wasn’t exactly an elite prospect. Why he would be rushed to the Majors so quickly is not something I know the answer to. He has shown fantastic control in the minors, but that has not translated so far, as his F-Strike% is well below league average. His pitch selection also leaves something to be desired, as he has thrown his mediocre fastball 77% of the time. If he was throwing in the mid-90s, this might be forgiven, but when you only average a smidge over 91.0 MPH, then you should be mixing in some off-speed and breaking stuff. I don’t see him lasting in the rotation all season and expect him to be demoted to Triple-A at some point.
Mike Podhorzer is the founder of ProjectingX IQ, an advanced fantasy baseball analytics platform that transforms projection data and in-season performance signals into actionable intelligence. He is the 2015 Fantasy Sports Writers Association Baseball Writer of the Year and three-time Tout Wars champion. He is the author of the eBook Projecting X 2.0: How to Forecast Baseball Player Performance, which teaches you how to project players yourself. Follow Mike on X@MikePodhorzer and contact him via email.
If you had seen hutch’s last start, you might not be dismissing him so quickly. Hitting 95 all game right thru to his last batter, with mvement and pinpoint location. His work in progress slider showing plenty of late break and finally seeming under control for the first time. And his change looking solid as always. The orioles’ were pretty complimentary after the game.
He’s the youngest SP in the league and has dominated milb…and while he was up and down in his first bunch of starts he finally showed that kind of dominance in mlb for the first time last start.
Not sure if his slider is consistent enough yet for him to sustain that kind of performance, but what he showed last start was pretty tantalizing.
I wouldn’t say he has pinpoint location. He threw 114 pitches and only 65 were strikes
What do you see as Parker’s future upside?
The Oakland home park and usually good defense will help and so he could very well post better than league HR/FB ratios and BABIPs. I am no scout and have yet to watch him pitch though, so would have to rely on other reports about his stuff and potential of his stuff. But just based on statistics, I do think he can be pretty good eventually. The ground ball rate has to translate though. If he can post a rate around his minor league rate of 50%, then he may be able to be like Ricky Romero in terms of peripherals. So I’d say a 3.50-4.00 ERA is his upside.
No Smyly mention?
Lame excuse, but because he pitched yesterday, I didn’t want to mention any pitchers and exclude a start from the stats I would be looking at. I’m sure I’ll talk about him though in the coming weeks. I did talk about him on the Fantasy Baseball Roundtable show last night though. His peripherals are pretty good and suggests he’s no fluke, but with such limited minor league experience and only 1.2 Triple-A innings, I’m just not confident the strong skills will last all season. Low F-Strike% also tells me that walk rate is going up, possibly way up.
Jarrod Parker’s stat line looks a lot like Jeremy Hellickson’s line to me. Jeremy Hellickson playing in the AL West with half of his games at Oakland Coliseum doesn’t sound so bad to me.
In theory, but you do lose on a lot of SP win potential by pitching for Oakland, and you also never get to pitch against Oakland which is by far the biggest perk of playing in the AL West (especially now that the M’s have gone and started throwing up 21-spots… Seattle has outscored the Tigers and the Rays on the season now, lol!)
“…But just based on statistics”
With young pitchers, would the statistics be entirely relevant? The jump from the minors to the major is enormous, especially as AAA is being used as more of a stop-gap. I’d give SwStr a good year to stabilize for these kids, as they (for the first time in their careers) consistently face the same hitters.
The Jays have been reluctant to expose their young pitchers to the hostile environment of Las Vegas. Henderson Alvarez has never been to AAA either.
You are correct Ian.
The Marlins did the same with their pitchers when their AAA team was in Albuquerque. The Marlins ultimately made a decision to move their AAA squad to NOLA for that very reason: the Southwest is brutal for young arms.