The conventional wisdom says that your starting pitcher needs three pitches. Fastball, breaking ball, change-up is best, but three pitches by hook or crook. If they don’t, they’ll have platoon splits and a tough time getting through the lineup. That’s largely true, of course, but there are always exceptions.
Let’s see what we can learn from the exceptions.
Of course it’s made sense to make trades all season, particularly for value. But now with a third of the season in the books, it makes a little more sense to trade for needs. And so positional rankings become important, particularly when paired with the tiered rankings that our writers will put out in the coming weeks. If you can dramatically improve at a problem position, do it. Especially if your drop at the other position, the one you’re selling, is not so drastic.
Matt Kemp has a reprieve. He’ll be starting in left field while Carl Crawford nurses a turned ankle back to health. So Matt Kemp is starting again. But he hasn’t been starting much recently, and for a man that was a homer short of 40/40 and wanted to go 50/50, that seems strange. We don’t talk about real life baseball that much here, but in this case, real life is the reason his fantasy value is in tatters. And those real life concerns threaten to shatter it permanently.
The Braves finally pulled the plug on Dan Uggla for good, it seems. Tommy La Stella was promoted to help a bottom-three situation, and now fantasy owners want to know how much he can help their teams. Only fair.
To some extent, sure, pick up George Springer in all leagues. Dude obviously has power, and he’s supposed to have speed, and he’s got enough upside to be owned in all leagues. And yet, if you’re talking about buying him, or it’s a shallow league and the dropper is someone with a decent track record… there are still reasons to doubt that he’ll be a star in all leagues.
You want to see three of the best new change-ups in baseball? Call up the highlights for Jacob DeGrom, Chase Whitley, and Chase Anderson. Of course, there’s not a heralded prospect in the trio, so something must be awry. Let’s use the pitch type peripherals to get a sense of their strengths and flaws.
Sure, this goggled sinker-lover isn’t the most attractive reliever on your waiver wire, at least when weighed in terms of physical looks or strikeout rate. And he fails most of the few tests that we have for future closers. But there’s something to love here. Especially with current closer Matt Lindstrom hobbled by an ankle injury (and on the DL).
We have very few tools at our disposal when it comes to closer prognostication. 1) Does the candidate have velocity and strikeouts? New closers had more velocity and strikeouts than the ones they replaced. 2) Does the throw with his right hand? Managers prefer righties about twice as much as they should, given the population. 3) What inning is he pitching in now? There’s no link for this one, but your candidate has to be coming from 7th or 8th inning usage or it would have to be considered a coup.
For the most part, there’s some truth to the fact that you have to get em up to get em out: The average ISO for the twenty guys hitting the most ground balls per fly ball this year is .090 — far below the league’s .145 average. That isn’t to say that it’s as easy as “Hit More Fly Balls = Hit More Homers.” There’s probably an ideal batted ball mix for each hitter.
But, if you have an established hitter that is suddenly hitting a lot more ground balls, and their power is down, it seems reasonable to worry about that power. After all, the guys putting the most balls in play have reached the threshold for stability, and these batted ball stats are more reliable with every day.
It’s very sad. The man that threw the most curveballs in baseball (with the highest whiff rate among curveballs) is now hurt. It’s almost like there’s been work on the subject.
But Jose Fernandez is gone. You can’t have him back, not this year. So it’s time to hit the wire. And let’s use some whiff rates to see what we can find. I’ll just look for surprising league-leading pitches in each category. One standout pitch might be enough for you right now, especially if it comes with some other surprises once we jump in.
The first pitch is a complicated moment in any at-bat. The strike rate on the pitch is rising as pitchers pump it in the zone to get their advantage. And yet the swing rate on the pitch is diving as hitters try to be more patient in an era in which on-base percentage is praised. There’s evidence that this new approach isn’t any worse than the old-school approach — but that’s for baseball as a whole.
There have to be batters that are taking or swinging too much on the first pitch of an at-bat. If you’re a selective hitter, it makes sense to take. You’ll get a lot of 1-0 counts, and you’ll have a great sense of what’s a hittable pitch. If you’re more of an aggressive hitter that reaches often, maybe it makes sense to swing more often at strike one. You’ll avoid more 0-1 counts, and you’ll put some nice pitches into play.