Entering his contract year, Freddy Peralta was one of the biggest offseason moves, coming to the Mets from Milwaukee as a top-20 starting pitcher in fantasy ADP. For Peralta, the Mets, and anyone who drafted New York’s prospective ace this season, 2026 is a year that has not gone as planned. But following a fresh start in Florida, it seems as if Peralta is back on track, at least for now. We will look at this rollercoaster season for Freddy Peralta, what this means for his fantasy value in 2027, and what he can learn from both his time in New York and Tampa Bay.
In that article, using a method recently popularized by Ben Clemens, I highlighted the best starting pitchers from this season in those four metrics, using weighted z-scores to compare across the metrics. Below are the top twenty starters.
In it, Bailey points out that Bennett intentionally throws his fastball up in the zone, using Bennett’s heat map to demonstrate frequency, his 115 Location+ to demonstrate efficacy, and Bailey’s own “Upstairs” metric, describing pitches thrown just above the strike zone, to reiterate the heatmap and emphasize Bennett’s intent relative to other pitchers, as Bennett leads all pitchers on percentage of Upstairs four-seamers this season.
Bailey went on to highlight Bennett’s lackluster four seam fastball in a vacuum, that is elevated by tunnelling with and playing off of his other pitches, particularly his sinker and changeup. All three of these pitches, Bailey points out, have positive run values for the rookie.
But what was most interesting to me was how Bailey concluded the video. He’d already proven Bennett throws with intent, locating his fastball well in relation to his offerings with better stuff to maximize his outcomes. But then he shifted to batted ball outcomes. Bennet’s sinker has elicited a 69% groundball rate and his fourseam a 26.7% IFFB%.
Bailey described himself as having “taken the pop up pill”, comparing infield pop ups to strikeouts in terms of utility to a pitcher. He showed us a list of pitchers with 70+ innings this season and both high GB% and IFFB%. Here’s that list.
Obviously, there’s some aces here and some low ERAs.
Bailey then shows Bennett’s league-leading Launch Angle Sweet Spot rate, which places him atop a list that includes Shohei Ohtani, Trevor McDonald, Janson Junk, and Framber Valdez. Not as impressive as the other list.
The premise seemed logical to me. As Bailey puts it, pitchers with good command throw pitches in locations that get a lot of strikes and a lot of suboptimal contact.
I was left wanting more. I wanted to know if Jake Bennett possesses a skill that historically is repeatable for pitchers. I think we assume we know “ground ball guys.” But is inducing infield pop ups a repeatable skill? And does it impact ERA in the same way a high ground ball rate does? I wanted to know if Bailey had shown why Bennett’s ERA was great this season, and if that “why” was worth turning into a strategy to predict future season ERA for other pitchers.
What happened!? That’s the question we ask the morning after a stinker performance by a starting pitcher when we’re looking over our fantasy results from the night before. It’s not an easy question to answer, and even when you come to a conclusion, someone else may have a completely different perspective. This article series serves as the starting point for answering that question in the context of three individual outings. Read the rest of this entry »
The final study I’ll run is looking at how much stock should a person have in a month of pitching stats. I wanted to understand these correlations since I quote them a ton. The usual suspects top the list with an interesting find on WHIP projections. Read the rest of this entry »
Did you load up the auction calculator a few weeks ago and see Mason Miller listed as the 20th-best starter? Load it up again today, and you’ll only see Miller on the relievers page. That’s because Miller’s 2024 role is hard to pin down. Last year, the year Miller made his debut, the young right-hander in Oakland started six games and appeared in relief in four. As a starter, he recorded a 3.70 ERA and as a reliever, 4.00. So after only 33.1 IP in 2023 without a clear role defined, what’s a fantasy manager to do?
Part one of this installment looked at four-seam fastballs and cutters. Part two analyzed sinkers and splitters. Part three, our final act, will detail sliders, curveballs, and changeups.
There are all kinds of ways to measure the effectiveness of a pitch. Pitch Values (pVals) or “Pitch Type Linear Weights” give us a sense of, from the glossary, “…the changes in average run expectancy from one count to another”.
while the changes in run expectancy between an 0-0 count and a 0-1 or 1-0 count are obviously very small, when added up over the course of the season, you can get an idea of which pitch a hitter was best against.
pVals are not predictive and they don’t explain the true talent or raw characteristics of an individual pitch the same way Stuff+ or other pitch models can, but it does tell us what actually happened. Now, imagine that! You can dig into the specifics of pVals on the glossary page but for now, let’s celebrate this season’s greatest pVals.
Part one will look at four-seam fastballs and cutters. Part two (coming soon) will focus on sinkers and splitters.
It has always been difficult for me to understand pitcher volatility. Well, the volatility part isn’t hard to understand, actually, it’s very simple. Pitching in the big leagues is incredibly difficult and one tiny little element of a pitcher’s game could be off to make the whole outing unravel. But, what is hard to understand is what little element that is. Did a 1 mph drop on a four-seamer really make it all go south? Or, was it a matter of half an inch of location? Is it even measurable? Like, what if it was just bad gas from the previous night’s chimichanga that threw things off? Do you see where I’m going? I want to know why a pitcher does so well one day and so poorly the next. For my first round of this, I’ll start slow and focus on only one pitch, narrowing the question down to, why does one pitch perform well one day and bad the next? In today’s investigation, I’ll analyze and compare Robbie Ray’s July 3rd 2.6 wSL Pval (Pitch Info) with his July 24th -3.4 wSL pVal. Let’s have some fun. Read the rest of this entry »
How do you really know how well a pitcher’s fastball will perform before the season starts? You don’t. You basically just make an educated guess. Choosing good fastballs from the previous year seems to be a good way to go. But, choosing changeups that performed well in the past can bite you. While it may seem silly to get this micro, this niche, it can be a lot of fun to make picks before the season begins, and then forget about them. There’s no IL, no waiver claims, and no bench to ride. It’s just your preseason picks and the ever-rolling season and when it ends, you get to look back and either ask yourself, “What was I thinking?”, or, you get to puff your chest out and spend the winter months assuring yourself that you are a pVal prediction wizard. Pitching coaches should really be calling you when spring training kicks off again. Let’s take a look at where each of us FanGraphs contingent pVal competition participants finished out the 2022 season. As a reminder, here are all the picks you can make, provided to us by our friends at Pitcher List.
