We’re following up on an earlier piece covering starting pitchers who have been throwing fewer fastballs in June and July. One way to find pitchers making a pitch mix change is to look at players throwing more or fewer fastballs (sinkers and four-seamers). We averaged the fastball usage in June and July, then compared the pitch percentage to May. 

The visual below shows the starting pitchers throwing more fastballs in June and July.

Though we would love to examine more pitchers, we’re analyzing four that have been throwing more fastballs. If these pitchers have been throwing more fastballs, what’s different in their pitch mix? Does it matter? Why or why not? Let’s dive in.

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One way to find starting pitchers who have been making pitch mix changes is to see who is throwing fewer or more fastballs (four-seamers and sinkers). The table below shows the starting pitchers who have thrown fewer four-seamers and sinkers in June and July. I used a 3-percentage point dip as a cutoff.

I included the average wOBA for their four-seamers and sinkers to show whether it’s a pitch that has been hit hard or not. When a pitcher throws fewer fastballs, there’s probably a reason why. While we would love to examine all these starting pitchers on the list, it provides a starting point.

Let’s examine four starting pitchers who have been throwing fewer fastballs and whether that’s helpful in their arsenal. We covered a fifth name on this list, Joey Cantillo, in a recent swing timing and miss distance article. 

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We covered some of the best starting pitchers earlier in the week. Now, we’re covering the best starting pitchers with an average draft position (ADP) outside the top 150 picks in 12-team leagues. These pitchers have been performing better than the draft community expected.

The visual below shows the starting pitchers who have been drafted outside the top 150 picks in 12-team leagues, sorted by their earned value in the first half. If a player has a blank ADP, that means they were undrafted. 

Though Foster Griffin tops the list, I’ve already examined him in a rookie check-in article in mid-June. Kyle Harrison has been helping to win leagues, though he is on the injured list with a forearm injury. We would love to examine more of these starting pitchers (and maybe we will), but today we’ll highlight five.

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Let’s look at starting pitchers who have been performing well in the first half. The average draft position data comes from 12-team leagues in NFBC formats. Meanwhile, the dollar value is the earned value via the FanGraphs Player Rater data. The visual below shows the top 25 starting pitchers sorted by earned value in the first half, including their draft price and results.

While 10 of these 25 pitchers come from outside the top 150 in ADP, today we’ll examine some of the more highly drafted starting pitchers on this list to identify whether they’ll continue their success for the second half, or might be sell high candidates.

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We’re back with another rookie check-in, covering several rookies that have been making an impact in fantasy baseball leagues. The theme of today’s article is the examination of several left-handed starting pitchers. Two of these rookies have been performing well. The third pitcher has been struggling, but was a highly ranked prospect. 

We’re examining their strengths and weaknesses, notable parts of their arsenal, stuff, and command, intending to provide a recommendation for whether we should be buying, selling, or holding in keeper or dynasty leagues.

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We’ve had about a month to digest the Swing Timing and Miss Distance Leaderboards on Baseball Savant. Like with any new metric, there’s probably some noteworthy information and some noise. Let’s by looking at league averages across as a starting point. Here are the the league averages for these metrics across all pitches:

• Average Miss Distance: 2.67 inches
• Flawed Percentage: 7.5%
• Perfect Contact Percentage: 22.6%
• Tied Up Percentage: 8.8%
• Flailed Percentage: 26.3%
• Early Percentage: 21.8%
• Late Percentage: 14.1%

That will provide context for each metric as we dig into specific pitch types, in the table below. Forkballs, splitters, changeups, and breaking pitches (sliders, curves, slurves, sweepers) tend to lead to a higher average miss distance. Meanwhile, the fastball types (cutters, sinkers, four-seamers) generate misses of roughly two or fewer inches. 

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Earlier in the week, we examined several pitchers who have been pitching better than their SIERA suggests. We’re following that up with pitchers who have been struggling and underperforming their SIERA this season.

The visual below shows the pitchers who ranked in the top 25 among pitchers who have underperformed their SIERA.

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Two of the best predictors of future pitcher success – K-BB% and SIERA – tend to correlate well with each other. So when you see a pitcher outperforming their SIERA while posting a low K-BB%, you have good reason to expect regression.

The visual below shows pitchers with 50 innings sorted by the largest difference in their ERA minus SIERA.

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We’ve covered several rookie-eligible starting pitchers and hitters throughout the past few months. Now, we’re examining five more rookies with small samples and tools. When we say tools, we’re usually talking about power and speed. As usual, we’ll provide recommendations for keeper or dynasty leagues based on the current data. 

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Ret of season projections are a great way to identify players likely to perform better moving forward. The table below shows all the starting pitchers whose rest of season OOPSY-projected ERA is 3.80 or better (as compared to a league average of 4.19) and at lest 0.20 better than what they have shown so far this year (through June 22).

We’ll likely follow this up with another version looking at potential fallers based on the OOPSY projections. Today, we’ll highlight four starting pitchers that should perform better based on their skills and stuff for the rest of the season.

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