Steven Matz was effective in all six of his starts in 2015, striking out at least six batters in four of those outings and limiting opposing offenses to three or fewer runs in all six of them. However, Matz didn’t show the world the excellent pitcher he would become until his penultimate start of 2015 on September 8 against the cross-town rival New York Yankees. That was the start when he threw his first major league slider, and it helped him limit the Yankees to one run over six innings and then strike out eight Cincinnati Reds six days later to close out his season.

That new pitch has become an important part of Matz’s repertoire in 2016. Over his first 11 starts this season, Matz threw his slider on 12.7 percent of his pitches, a similar ratio to his other off-speed pitches, a curveball (13.0 percent) and a changeup (11.1 percent). However, four starts ago, Matz cut back heavily on his slider usage, and prior to his pushed-back-a-day June 30 start, we likely learned why. Matz felt tightness in his elbow after his previous start, and an MRI revealed that he had developed bone spurs in his pitching elbow.

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Michael Fulmer opened the season as the Tigers’ top prospect. After just 15.1 innings over three Triple-A starts, the Tigers couldn’t wait any longer, recalling him to debut at the end of April. And boy what a decision that was, as Fulmer now owns a sparkling 2.11 ERA after yesterday’s start in 13 games.

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It’s your favorite time of the week, the moment we dive into the deep depths of the ominous free agent pool. Who will we find?! Will we discover hidden treasure?!

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It took me until Saturday’s two-homer game to realize that OMG, Danny Espinosa has gone bonkers. It took him until April 29th to hit his first home run of the season. He then hit five in May, nine in June, and already has three in July. Danny Espinosa. He of the career high of 21 home runs set all the way back in 2011, his first full season, in more than double the plate appearances. He who we expected, nay, knew, was just a temporary placeholder for top prospect Trea Turner, who was surely going to be up with the big club early in the season and push Espinosa to a bench role.

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Good morning! Sorry I missed you all this weekend, so let’s get caught up on what went down. I won’t cover every save this weekend, but just the situations worth monitoring moving forward since there were a lot of saves.

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Over the years, I’ve made several attempts to adjust both hitter and pitcher performance statistics based on the quality of their opposition, but I’ve never settled on a method that I really like. Those failures will not stop me from trying. In this attempt, I’ve opted to use a plus/minus approach similar to those used in modern defensive statistics like Defensive Runs Saved. Here’s how it works in this case. Whenever a batter records a hit, I am giving him credit of 1.0 hits minus the batting average allowed this season by the pitcher he is facing. So if that hit comes against Clayton Kershaw, that’s 1.0 minus 0.185 or 0.815 hits over what that pitcher would be expected to allow in a typical at-bat. If instead that hit comes against Alfredo Simon, that’s 1.0 minus 0.348 or just 0.652 hits. Meanwhile, if the batter fails to get a hit, he receives 0.0 minus the pitcher’s batting average allowed, which would be -0.185 hits against Kershaw and -0.348 hits against Simon.

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It’s that time of year again, American League starting pitcher tier update time! I still pay no attention to ERA, as it’s not a metric I use for evaluation and ranking pitchers for rest of season performance. Player movement between tiers will only occur when there’s a change in underlying skill, pitch mix, or velocity. Injured pitchers with non-arm injuries expected back relatively soon will remain in the tier they had been. Pitchers with arm-related injuries with up-in-the-air return dates have been removed. I just can’t speculate on that kind of stuff.

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It once again is time for the monthly update for my AL Outfield Tiers! As always, these are my rest of the season ranks for the position and you can check out my previous versions below as well as Alex Chamberlain’s NL versions. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s time for an updated list of potential HR/FB rate decliners! As usual, I scanned the batted ball distance leaderboard, matched each hitter with his HR/FB rate, and identified those hitters whose distance suggests major HR/FB rate downside. Yesterday, I looked at the potential surgers.

As a reminder, please be aware that the other two components of my xHR/FB rate equation are missing from this analysis. So to avoid giving wrong advice, I have stayed away from discussing the hitters in the middle of the distance ranking. Also remember that this ignores park effects, which certainly plays a role.

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It’s time for an updated list of potential HR/FB rate surgers! As usual, I scanned the batted ball distance leaderboard, matched each hitter with his HR/FB rate, and identified those hitters whose distance suggests major HR/FB rate upside.

Please be aware that the other two components of my xHR/FB rate equation are missing from this analysis. So to avoid giving wrong advice, it’s why I have stayed away from discussing the hitters in the middle of the distance ranking. Also remember that this ignores park effects, which certainly plays a role.

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