This week’s column is about a surprisingly good change-up. Because as Kyle Gibson ascended the ranks in Minnesota’s farm system, there were questions about his change piece. He’s thrown over 300 of them now, and it looks good, and now the questions have changed. The new question may be harder to answer.
As you read this, I’m knee deep in moving, with a toddler, a pregnant wife, and an intense case of bronchitis. I’m not asking for sympathy!
Until now, Matt Shoemaker has shown us that he’s got a legit curve, splitter, slider combination, but maybe an iffy fastball. He’s not asking your sympathy!
But we all find a way to make due, like I’m writing this as I sweat in bed and the family is taking a load to the new house without me. And it looks like Shoemaker has found a way to make the package work — by throwing the fastball just about as much as any of his other pitches.
I bought Mike Trout for $10 in 2012. He brought me two top-three finishes in the ottoneu experts league. But I was not up to the challenge, and now he’s $49 and my team is 8th. I see no other option but to sell Mike Trout.
It’s utterly depressing.
It’s also utterly exhilarating.
The packages I’m seeing! They are delightful. I thought I’d break down the two best packages before I hit the accept button. Even if you aren’t in ottoneu, you may find my process interesting. Or abhorrent.
It’s not shaping up to be a great fantasy season for me actually. But this is despite most of my pitching staffs being generally excellent. At least the names on those staffs are excellent — not all of them are active. Lots of red DL tags. That’s the way of pitching.
But pitching changes in fits and starts, and it’s my favorite aspect of the game, so I’m going to make this a Monday column of sorts. The Change will look for changes in pitching mix, look at pitch types to see if newcomers have a promising pitch (maybe a change), and will generally try to help you decide what to do about a few pitchers every Monday, after their last start has provided us some change to analyze.
Today, though, one pitcher is bizarre enough to take our entire attention.
I asked twitter what I should write about, and the requests were too many to get to. So I thought I’d get to as many as I could, and the only grouping I could find was starting pitching. So let’s take a look at these guys without spending three thousand words on them! I’ll try to be succinct.
(Okay, I lied, I picked the pitchers because I love pitchers.)
The Cubs have new pitchers, yes, but do we care? They opted for the better prospect bat as they traded away their two best pitchers, and it doesn’t even look like the best arm they got back — Dan Straily — is going to be promoted to the big leagues right away. So what’s going on in the Cubbie rotation, and should mixed leaguers care?
You guys are out and about. We guys are out and about. In between, we can help answer your fantasy baseball trade questions. Please tell us the settings in your league in a succinct way, as well as give us some idea of your team strengths. Without writing a novel!
You’ll get a response from me or one of our great RotoGraphs staff members for your trouble.
Sergio Romo is out. The committee is in. And so we get our divining rods out and try to figure out who will leave the heap on top.
Yeah but does he have a change-up? That’s a great question for Odrisamer Despaigne, for example. Dude threw an 87 mph slider and a slow 67 mph curve after his excellent 92 mph sinker, which sounds good until you realize his command should be exposed in the future (too many arm slots, too many minor league walks) and when you see that the curve and slider got two whiffs combined (42 thrown!) and the change was inconsistent and ranged from 75-88 mph (!) even if it got two whiffs (12 thrown). Strange to see a rookie throw more breakers than fastballs (24), too.
So which pitchers have the full monty? Which pitchers have the most above-average pitches? Now, thanks to Jeff Zimmerman, we can quantify that. Using the pitch type benchmarks I have for swinging strikes here, and ground balls here, we can decide if a pitch is above-average in those two ways. Using Excel, we can then sort for the most number of pitches that meet our benchmarks.
Even after losing some time to injury, Jason Kipnis has managed 200+ plate appearances this year, and his fantasy line has not matched his work in the past so far. It’s a little too far into the season to just poo-poo it away with mentions of small sample size. But, jump into the numbers, and it looks like issues of sample and perspective are hiding the fact that he’s probably still a top-half second baseman in any league.