On Saturday, I looked at the five pitchers with the largest differential between their rank amongst all starters in BB/9 and their F-Strike% rank that would suggest an improved walk rate in the future. Today I check out the opposite, those pitchers whose F-Strike% would hint at a worse walk rate than what that pitcher has posted thus far.
In past pitcher articles, I have focused on strikeout and ground ball inducing skills and ignored control, though that has not been intentional. A couple of weeks ago, Carson Cistulli found that there was a strong inverse relationship between a pitcher’s F-Strike% and BB/9. This makes intuitive sense since once we already know the pitcher has an 0-1 count on the batter, it is that much less likely he ends up walking him. To that end, I decided to compare where a pitcher ranked in F-Strike% with his ranking in BB/9 to determine whose walk rates might be in for improvement. As a reminder, only “qualified” pitchers were included. And for reference, the league average F-Strike% has been 58.9%, while the league average BB/9 has been 3.30.
Jake Arrieta was drafted in the 5th round of the 2007 draft and moved up through the minors relatively quickly, making his Orioles debut in 2010. With sub-3.00 ERAs at three of his four stops down on the farm, he made his way up the pitching prospect rankings. After getting a mid-season call last year, Arrieta is making it through his first full season at the Major League level. It is likely that Arrieta is owned in every deep mixed and AL-Only league, but the question becomes whether we may be witnessing a breakout season that would enable him to generate value in shallower mixed leagues.
Maybe I should have scrapped the deep league waiver wire and started a new weekly, nay, daily, series entitled “I need a @$%^&*# third baseman!!!!” Unfortunately, since I am one of those poor owners who screams that every morning, I am afraid I cannot offer other owners any help. So instead I will once again point to some meh players who might be available in deeper leagues and might generate some value.
A little over a month ago, I compared the early 2011 average fastball velocity of starting pitchers with their 2010 marks. Looking back, I realize that was quite an early look, only about a week and a half into the season. So after another month of baseball having been played, it is time for an update. Monitoring velocity changes is very important for two reasons: 1) they sometimes hint at a hidden injury and 2) according to this research, every increase or decrease of one mile per hour for a starting pitcher’s average fastball velocity equates to a change of about 0.25 runs allowed per nine innings in that direction.
With Dallas Braden scheduled to undergo shoulder surgery next Monday and expected to miss the rest of the season, Tyson Ross‘ spot in the Oakland Athletics’ rotation just became a little more secure. With a 2.51 ERA on the season, his ownership percentage in CBS leagues has climbed from 3% to 12% since week 4. Let’s see if he is truly worth an add.
On Monday, the Milton Bradley era in Seattleland ended, as the board game man received the dreaded DFA. Oh, and Ryan Langerhans got the boot too, but he is probably used to it by now. With a team going nowhere and an offense struggling yet again to score runs, might as well see if they have anyone younger who might provide a jolt to the lineup. A pair of outfielders received the call, let’s see if they have any fantasy potential in deeper leagues.
As we continue through trading season, I like to use a quick and easy method to figure out which starting pitchers to target if I am need of an additional arm. Though xFIP is not perfect of course, it is the best metric that sums up a pitcher’s underlying skill into one tidy statistic. Every once in a while, I will take the difference between a pitcher’s ERA and his xFIP to give me an idea of which pitchers have been the most fortunate so far and which have suffered from some bad luck. Of course, the idea is that the pitcher’s ERA should soon trend toward his xFIP, assuming his underlying skills used in the xFIP calculation do not change. This could provide fantasy owners with a potential buy low and sell high candidate list. Below are the five pitchers with the largest differentials between their ERA and xFIP in each direction.
Freddy Garcia did not even make our initial AL starting pitcher rankings. After a strong start to the season, at least on the surface, in a month’s worth of work, the question is whether this old geezer has anything left to offer fantasy owners.
Clay Buchholz entered draft season as an obvious bust candidate to statistically-minded fantasy owners after finishing 2010 with the largest ERA-xFIP differential amongst qualified starters. However, Buchholz was at one point a top pitching prospect, like top three in all of baseball, and any scout would tell you that his stuff was good enough to make him one of the best young pitchers in the game. So the question was whether Buchholz’s ERA in 2011 would rise to the 4.00 level his xFIP suggested or if he would continue to improve his underlying skills while battling the luck regression gods, and see his ERA jump to just the low-to-mid 3.00 range. Well so far the bust side has been right, as he has posted a disappointing 4.81 ERA after six starts. Is it time to send his owner some offers? Nope.
