Injury or poor performance from your starting pitchers often times leads to a decision — do you want to replace that starting pitcher with a starter from the free agent pool who could potentially harm your ratios, or pluck a strong middle reliever who could stabilize those ratios, but might limit your win and strikeout totals? There’s no correct answer. However, if you do decide on the latter strategy, let’s review some of the names that should be at the top of your shopping list.
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Yesterday, I perused the Triple-A SwStk% leaderboard and listed and discussed the AL starting pitchers who were at the top. Now let’s flip over to the NL, which unfortunately is a far less exciting group.
Over the last two days, I have listed and discussed the Triple-A starting pitchers who appear atop the strikeout rate leaderboards, in both the AL and the NL. You may have noticed I also talked a lot about the pitcher’s SwStk% and how it matched up with his strikeout rate. If there’s a metric I like to follow even more than a pitcher’s minor league strikeout rate, it’s possibly SwStk%. Though this is just anecdotal, it feels like if a pitcher has posted a high strikeout rate, but just a mediocre SwStk% in the minors before his MLB promotion, he more often disappoints in strikeout rate in the Majors, suggesting his SwStk% was the metric that translates better, rather than strikeout rate. With that in mind, let’s check out the AL SwStk% leaders at Triple-A that have pitched the majority of their innings in a starting role.
Yesterday, I listed and discussed the Triple-A starting pitchers atop the strikeout rate leaderboard. Now let’s flip to the NL.
Last week, I discussed the Triple-A hitter wOBA and HR/FB rate leaders and their chances of a recall to the Majors over the near term. Already, several of them have graduated only days after publishing my articles. Now let’s turn to starting pitchers, or those who have amassed the majority of their innings in such a role. For minor league pitchers, all I really care about is strikeout rate. Obviously, I don’t want to see a 15% walk rate, but the strikeouts are my primary concern. So let’s review the starting pitcher strikeout rate leaders in American League organizations first. On the hitter side, I included who the MLB incumbent(s) is/are because they could create a real roadblock to near-term fantasy value. I’m not going to do that for pitchers as the path to a rotation spot or even a spot start is much easier and could come at any time due to injury. Finally, any names currently in the Majors will be excluded from these lists.
Yesterday, I perused the Triple-A hitter HR/FB rate leaderboard and discussed the AL hitters at the top. Now let’s jump to the NL and determine whether any of these sluggers could find themselves in the Majors within the next month. Once again, I have excluded any hitters who are already in the Majors and this list only includes qualified hitters.
Let’s continue our future minor league callup series, this time moving to the metric I probably care most about — HR/FB rate. Since home runs is a category and wOBA is not in the majority of fantasy leagues, we could directly understand the potential impact a high (or low) HR/FB rate could have for fantasy teams. So let’s now begin in the American League by reviewing and discussing the Triple-A HR/FB rate leaders. Once again, I have excluded any hitters who are already in the Majors and this list only includes qualified hitters.
Yesterday, I discussed the American League Triple-A hitters leading in wOBA and their chances of being recalled in the coming weeks. Today, let’s switch over to the National League. As a reminder, I’m excluding any hitters currently in the Majors.
Now that we’re more than a third into the season and we’re approaching the date in which teams no longer have to worry about Super 2 status, let’s turn to the minor league leaderboards to try identifying who may get promoted over the next couple of weeks. I’ll start in the American League and review the wOBA leaders. I only care about prospects who are earning a call-up. If the hitter in question is not performing well in the minors, regardless of his prospect pedigree, why would we expect the hitter to suddenly perform well in the Majors? For each prospect, I’ll list his age, rank on our prospect lists and current MLB incumbent ahead of him. I’ll exclude any hitters already in the Majors, as some were just recalled this weekend.
Yesterday, I discussed seven starting pitchers whose SIERA marks improved the most in May versus April. Those improvements were driven by underlying skills surges — some sort of combination of a higher strikeout rate, lower walk rate, and/or more optimal batted ball distribution. Let’s now flip to the pitchers whose skills declined the most, leading to the largest increases in SIERA from April to May.