Here is Travis d’Arnaud before he was sent down on June 8th: .180/.271/.273/.241 (BA/OBP/SLG/wOBA).
Here is TDA after his return: .269/.315/.481/.346. He also tore it up (again) at Triple-A.
Here is TDA from August fifth onward: .280/.335/.510/.369. Yan Gomes, FYI, went .278/.313/.472/.340 albeit for the season.
The Oakland Athletics are undoubtedly quite pleased with the breakout at the plate of Derek Norris in 2014. He batted .270/.361/.403 in 442 plate appearances, posting obvious career bests in AVG and playing time, both of which proved useful to fantasy baseball players.
Two aspects of Norris’ production in his supposed breakthrough season seem to warn his owners not to get too far ahead of the backstop’s train, however. He hit 10 home runs, but eight of them came before the All-Star break, in only 28 more PAs than he accrued after the season’s faux midpoint. His uptick in PT could be traced to team need as well as some notable gains in his splits versus right-handed pitchers early in the year, especially in terms of strikeouts, something I chronicled in June, but that discipline against same-handed pitchers faded as the season wore on.
The last backstop with positive value – OK, basically, he was a zero, but we’re looking at the bright side, here – in 2014, according to the Zach Sanders end-of-season catcher rankings, is none other than Tyler Flowers. That finish of 16th among those whose primary responsibilities came behind the plate – so, excluding Carlos Santana and Joe Mauer – made him a viable option for those in two-C mixed leagues all season.
No rational person would have predicted that the Chicago White Sox’s squatter would continue to produce like he did in March/April: .354/.398/.415 in 88 plate appearances. He struck out 35.2% of the time that month and registered a .560 BABIP. The starting surge came without much in the way of extra-base hits, as the .061 ISO that month demonstrated. If Flowers wasn’t going to hit any bombs, what good was he? Some serious regression was on its way, and it was probably going to include a rest-of-the-way batting average of about .150.
A quick skim through Zach Sanders’ catcher rankings reveals some familiar faces.
Buster Posey sits at the top. Breakout sensation Devin Mesoraco is third. Evan Gattis, Miguel Montero and Travis d’Arnaud are all there.
And ranking eighth: Dioner Navarro?
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I’ve been a staunch supporter of Wilin Rosario for awhile now, and was especially high on him coming into this year. As I pointed out in my preseason Bold Predictions column, the 25-year-old had hit 49 homers in his two previous seasons, and was reportedly set to start playing some first base, to keep his bat in the lineup on an everyday basis.
As it turned out, Rosario played first base for a measly 25 innings in 2014, likely due in no small part to the fact that Justin Morneau had his best season since 2010. Still, that extra playing time for Rosario never materialized. He ended up hitting the disabled list twice — once in May with a viral infection, and again in August with wrist inflammation — limiting him to 106 games.
The verb in the headline is a person. But once a person has broken out like Devin Mesoraco has this year, the first instinct is to look for lightning to strike again in the same fashion. Given the season Grandal just had — 15th-best in the end-of-season rankings — maybe he’s even further along than Devin Mesoraco once was. Maybe it’s still fair to wonder if he can Devin Mesoraco.
The Astros apparently listened to their analytics team when they acquired Collin McHugh. You see, McHugh’s spin rate on his curveball is exceptional. Maybe it’s not quite that cut and dry, we’ve talked about his move to the four-seamer over the two-seamer was great for him. But read this newest snippet on McHugh and you’ll see that spin rate was huge for his acquisition:
The Astros’ analysts noticed that McHugh had a world-class curveball. Most curves spin at about 1,500 times per minute; McHugh’s spins 2,000 times. The more spin, the more the ball moves during the pitch—and the more likely batters are to miss it. Houston snapped him up. “We identified him as someone whose surface statistics might not indicate his true value,” says David Stearns, the team’s 29-year-old assistant general manager.
Every season brings with it a new crop of breakouts; some are real, while some are mirages. Oftentimes, a “breakout season” ends up being that player’s career year, and I think we saw that with several players this year. What I’m going to do today is just briefly touch on three players that I think played themselves into unreasonable expectations for 2015.
I really like Santana. In fact, I really like everyone I’m writing about in this column, I just see significant gaps between their actual skill level and perceived 2015 fantasy value. Santana is pretty much the posterboy for this mindset, as I was thoroughly impressed by the 23-year-old this year. I think he has a future as a very valuable utility knife, he’s just not a top-five — or likely even top-ten — fantasy shortstop.
Santana was indeed a top-five fantasy shortstop from the moment he took over as the Twins’ leadoff hitter at the beginning of June — he was ranked No. 10 overall for the season, but was easily top-five from June on. His lowest on-base plus slugging in any given month this year was actually in June, when he put up a .773 OPS. Aside from that month, he was well into the .800s all year.
The problem is, Santana probably won’t be a top-ten fantasy shortstop next year, because he was pretty clearly playing well over his head this year. Through 692 plate appearances between Double-A and Triple-A, Santana hit two home runs. This year in the majors, he hit seven in 430 PA.
I believe in the speed, and think he can be a 20-25 steal guy annually, although I’ll be curious to see if he can replicate the success rate of his 20-for-24 mark from this season. From 2011-2013, Santana stole 71 bases, but was also caught stealing a somewhat startling 39 times.
I’m clearly not buying the power, and he’ll likely never pile up the runs like he did this year, either. While his .319 batting average this year was very impressive, this is a career .273 minor-league hitter in 2,352 PA. His batting average on balls in play in the majors was .405. Furthermore, his ugly plate discipline (4.4% BB-rate, 22.8% K-rate) is uninspiring, to put it mildly.
I think most of you came into this column knowing that Santana isn’t quite the player he looked like this year, but keep in mind when planning for 2015 that he played above his actual talent level in nearly every category this season. Santana is a classic regression candidate in just about every way possible.
The 27-year-old Harrison is much the same story as Santana, in that he likely played above his head in many ways this season. It’s not that he’d never shown power before, it’s that he had never shown much over-the-fence power. Harrison has always produced his fair share of doubles and triples, keeping his isolated power well above .100 for most of his minor- and major-league career.
However, coming into 2014, Harrison had never hit more than seven homers in any given year of his professional career. Whether Harrison’s 2014 approach is sustainable or not is one question, but it’s certainly fair to look at his 13 homers — nearly twice his previous career high in the majors or minors — as a bit of a fluke.
Furthermore, if/when his .353 BABIP from 2014 regresses, he doesn’t have the plate discipline to compensate. Harrison’s 4.0% walk rate this year was actually a massive improvement from his career 2.6% walk rate coming into the season, and it was still awfully low. This all, of course, means fewer opportunities to steal bases and score runs.
Like Santana, I think Harrison has a long, productive major-league career ahead of him as a super-utility type, but I fear we’ve seen his best season.
I’m not going to get too long-winded about Cueto, as Mike Petriello wrote a great column on him just a couple weeks ago. I’m just going to throw my own two cents in. Seeing as Cueto has maintained a sub-3.00 ERA for four years now, I’m obviously not referring to his season as a “breakout” — Cueto’s breakout came in 2011, and it was legit. It’s hard to doubt that he’s a truly elite fantasy commodity, but it doesn’t take a genius to know that we’re probably not going to see his career-high 8.94 K/9 strikeout rate again.
Cueto didn’t really do anything all that different to explain why a guy with a career 7.30 K/9 in nearly a thousand innings coming into 2014 suddenly started striking out a batter per inning. Which is why I just can’t trust it at all. As Mike pointed out in the above-linked column, Cueto generated a ton of whiffs with his change this year, but his overall 9.8% swinging strike rate wasn’t far off his career mark of 9.1%.
Batters swung at 35.6% of Cueto’s pitches outside the zone, a career high, and he threw more first-pitch strikes (62.9%) than ever before. However, just like the change-up whiff rate, both of those marks were very minor improvements on the numbers he’s been putting up for the last few years. I guess I can explain why Cueto suddenly spiked his strikeout rate; he was just a little bit better than he usually is in a few different ways, and the sum of those parts was a career-high strikeout rate.
This year was pretty much the idealized version of an already-great pitcher. I just can’t quite see him ever again having as much fantasy value as he did in 2014.
There are a sundry of middle/set-up relievers that can succeed in the closer role if given the opportunity. A few obvious: Wade Davis if something happens to Greg Holland… Wil Myers for James Shields and who?!; Ken Giles if the Phillies can somehow find a trade partner for the grundle-grabber; and Brad Boxberger if not Jake McGee. I assume David Robertson signs elsewhere and Dellin Betances steps in.
Lets’ look at potential closers using reliever outcomes. Here are the average contact and balls in play-related outcomes for all relievers that qualified and specifically relievers with 10+ saves:
| Command: | K% | BB% | K-BB% | Ct% | SwStr% | Zn% | F-Str% |
| AVG for RP w/ > 10 SV | 0.27 | 0.07 | 0.19 | 0.75 | 0.12 | 0.46 | 0.63 |
| SD for RP w/ > 10 SV | 0.08 | 0.03 | 0.08 | 0.06 | 0.03 | 0.04 | 0.04 |
| AVG for all qualified RP’s | 0.22 | 0.09 | 0.14 | 0.77 | 0.11 | 0.45 | 0.60 |
| SD for all qualified RP’s | 0.07 | 0.03 | 0.07 | 0.05 | 0.03 | 0.04 | 0.05 |
| Balls In Play: | GB% | FB% | IFFB% | GB/FB | HR/FB | LOB% | BABIP |
| AVG for RP w/ > 10 SV | 0.43 | 0.37 | 0.11 | 1.40 | 0.08 | 0.78 | 0.275 |
| SD for RP w/ > 10 SV | 0.11 | 0.10 | 0.04 | 1.02 | 0.05 | 0.08 | 0.042 |
| AVG for all qualified RP’s | 0.45 | 0.35 | 0.09 | 1.50 | 0.09 | 0.75 | 0.289 |
| SD for all qualified RP’s | 0.10 | 0.09 | 0.05 | 0.81 | 0.05 | 0.08 | 0.044 |
Our Filters:
Using these filters, we’re left with a robust list of above-average relievers beyond just closers (scroll down for the noted filters):
What happens if we use the command (K-BB%)/contact (Ct% and SwStr%) related averages for relievers with more than 10 saves this year?
…We’re left with some elite closers and then a few interesting names.
Last year, Danny Farquhar (just missed the list this year) had a top 20 swinging-strike rate – about a percent better than Fernando Rodney, but it was masked by his BABIP and left-on-base rate that killed his surface stats (4.20 ERA vs. 2.40 xFIP). This year, he actually outperformed his xFIP with a 2.66 ERA. After an early season MASH Report on Rodney’s velocity, I eyed Farquhar. At least keep him in mind next year if anything does happen to Rodney.
Josh Edgin (Mets for those of you that don’t know) has a top 65 contact-rate sandwiched between Mark Melancon and Jake McGee and even induced grounders 50% of the time. He has a pretty extensive repertoire as well. In order of usage: Fourseamer, Slider, Curve, Change, Cutter and Sinker. According to his Brooks Player Card, he has great swing and miss rates on his Curve (>56%), Cutter (50%), Slider (>42%) and Sinker (33%). Even his Change approaches 30%. This isn’t the case on his Fastball, but at 93+ MPH, it induces a decent amount of grounders (1.8 GB/FB). Keep in mind he had late-season elbow issues which effected his velocity by a MPH or so, but he could be called upon to get Mejia out of a jam. I like him better than an unhealthy Bobby Parnell and Jeurys Familia from a command perspective for another year.
Zach Duke did his best Craig Kimbrel impression prior to the R2M monster hitting him in August. Prior to 8/1, Duke had a 34.9% K-rate and 27.3 K-BB%. Kimbrel ended the year with a 38.9% K-rate and 28.3 K-BB%. I think August and September brought him back to his realistic value (~2.50 ERA, 1.15 WHIP). It will be interesting to see who closes for the Brewers if they let Francisco Rodriguez go. Both Duke and Will Smith have above average (even for RP w/ 10+ saves) swing-and-miss. Will Smith should have additional command next year, but Zack Duke induces grounders better which I like in my closers/in Milwaukee. They also have Jonathan Broxton. The hierarchy seemed to be K-rod-Broxton-Smith late last season. If that’s the case, they should use Duke more (former starter) and in higher leverage situations. He was equally solid against both lefties (.258 wOBA) and righties (.262 wOBA).
Oliver Perez everybody! I thought I could filter him out by his splits being a lefty, but like 2012, he was more effective vs. righties (and faced 44 more of them). The D-backs have Addison Reed, up-and-comer Evan Marshall as well as Daniel Hudson caught touching 97 MPH so if not by outcomes or splits, we can filter Perez out by opportunity.
Darren O’Day and Andrew Miller is part of one dominating Baltimore bullpen – one that gets referenced by anyone who thinks the Orioles can beat the Tigers in the ALDS. Notice that Zach Britton didn’t make either of the above lists! He was filtered out by his below average K-BB% (13.70%). It’s his 75+% grounder rate (hence the 81+% left-on-base rate and .215 BABIP) that keeps him elite in Baltimore. The only concern you can have with O’Day is a fastball velocity almost 2 standard deviations below the mean for relievers, but his arm angle combined with that slider still induces a 30+% whiff-rate on both pitches. Miller’s slider though is a world apart from O’Day’s: only Pedro Strop, Will Smith, Jake Diekman, Greg Holland and Oliver Perez induces more whiffs than Miller’s 55% according to Baseball Prospectus’ Pitchf/x Leaderboards. I doubt we’ll see a closer-transition next year in Baltimore unless Britton’s GB/FB ratio takes a drastic dive because his HR/FB ratio, which approached 18%, could be an issue.
An xBABIP review
On the last day of the season, @jeffwzimmerman provided me with Pitch xBABIP based on inside edge data. Let’s look at some of the bigger xBABIP differentials to keep in mind:
The last column depicts the z-score for BABIP differential. Francisco Rodriguez was expected to have a BABIP about 120 points above his actual BABIP. I highlighted (red/bad; green/good) the xBABIP z-scores as well so that you know whether or not to actually be concerned meaning sure Aaron Sanchez has the 5th biggest BABIP differential (over 2 standard deviations from the mean), but a .239 xBABIP is still utterly elite (3.34 SD’s from the mean). On the other side of the equation, it’s nice to see Evan Marshall, Carlos Martinez and Adam Ottavino (albeit in Colorado) with large BABIP differentials. Marshall and Martinez even have xBABIP’s over .5SD from the mean.
The last bit of fun
It was a very fun year to be doing bullpen reports for RotoGraphs. Aroldis Chapman broke the single-season strikeout rate of 2012 Craig Kimbrel (50.2%). He struck out 52.5% of the hitters he faced. Andrew Miller (42.6%) and Brad Boxberger (42.1%) also made the top 10 seasons ever. Dellin Betances (39.6%), Wade Davis (39.1%) and Craig Kimbrel (38.9%) made the top 20. Chapman’s swinging-strike% of 20% beat ’12 Kimbrel by .8%, but he couldn’t pass ’04 Lidge, ’03 Gagne, ’04 Gagne, ’02 Gagne or ’05 Lidge. Chapman, Miller, Doolittle, Boxberger, Betances (Wade Davis and Kenley Jansen close behind) all had historical, top 20 K-BB rates. Relievers dominate this list: only ’99 Pedro Martinez (#12), ’00 Pedro Martinez (#21), ’01 Randy Johnson (#27) and ’01 Pedro Martinez (#28) make it into the top 30, but it’s clear that we have a growing list of elite relievers.
From a fantasy perspective, thanks to 45+ saves totals out of Holland and Kimbrel, we had two relievers ranked in the top 20 pitchers. If Chapman didn’t miss time and Betances and Davis consumed the closer role, we would have had 3 others. Last year, Craig Kimbrel and his 4 wins, 50 saves, 98 SO’s, 1.21 ERA and .88 WHIP campaign made him the 3rd most valuable pitcher. This year with Kershaw, Cueto, Felix and Kluber, it would have taken even more.
If we combined the 3 more dominating performances exclusive of saves this year: Aroldis Chapman’s K-rate (52.5%) and saves total (36), Dellin Betances IP (90) – who was dominating in his own right, Wade Davis’ ERA (1.00) and Wins total (9) and Sean Doolittle’s WHIP (.73) – let’s call this guy Aroldellin Dooldavis, we would wind up with a 10.95 z-sum…just above Corey Kluber (10.72), but under Clayton Kershaw (13.74), Johnny Cueto (12.95) and Felix Hernandez (12.50). Even 50 saves wouldn’t have done the trick (12.43 z-sum):
| Name | Age | IP | WHIP | zWHIP | ERA | zERA | W | zW | SO | zSO | SV | zSV | 5×5 |
| Clayton Kershaw | 26 | 198.1 | 0.86 | 4.23 | 1.77 | 3.53 | 21 | 3.38 | 239 | 2.95 | 0 | -0.34 | 13.74 |
| Johnny Cueto | 28 | 243.2 | 0.96 | 3.91 | 2.25 | 3.22 | 20 | 3.16 | 242 | 3.01 | 0 | -0.34 | 12.95 |
| Felix Hernandez | 28 | 236 | 0.92 | 4.29 | 2.14 | 3.37 | 15 | 2.06 | 248 | 3.12 | 0 | -0.34 | 12.50 |
| Aroldellin DoolDavis | 25 | 90 | 0.73 | 2.50 | 1 | 2.25 | 9 | 0.74 | 177 | 1.77 | 50 | 5.17 | 12.43 |
| Corey Kluber | 28 | 235.2 | 1.09 | 2.14 | 2.44 | 2.69 | 18 | 2.72 | 269 | 3.52 | 0 | -0.34 | 10.73 |
| Adam Wainwright | 32 | 227 | 1.03 | 2.79 | 2.38 | 2.72 | 20 | 3.16 | 179 | 1.80 | 0 | -0.34 | 10.13 |
| Jon Lester | 30 | 219.2 | 1.1 | 1.88 | 2.46 | 2.46 | 16 | 2.28 | 220 | 2.59 | 0 | -0.34 | 8.86 |
| David Price | 28 | 248.1 | 1.08 | 2.40 | 3.26 | 0.89 | 15 | 2.06 | 271 | 3.56 | 0 | -0.34 | 8.56 |
| Chris Sale | 25 | 174 | 0.97 | 2.68 | 2.17 | 2.43 | 12 | 1.40 | 208 | 2.36 | 0 | -0.34 | 8.52 |
| Madison Bumgarner | 24 | 217.1 | 1.09 | 1.97 | 2.98 | 1.35 | 18 | 2.72 | 219 | 2.57 | 0 | -0.34 | 8.27 |
| Zack Greinke | 30 | 202.1 | 1.15 | 1.18 | 2.71 | 1.78 | 17 | 2.50 | 207 | 2.34 | 0 | -0.34 | 7.46 |
| Max Scherzer | 29 | 220.1 | 1.18 | 0.94 | 3.19 | 0.93 | 18 | 2.72 | 252 | 3.20 | 0 | -0.34 | 7.45 |
| Jordan Zimmermann | 28 | 199.2 | 1.07 | 2.02 | 2.66 | 1.85 | 14 | 1.84 | 182 | 1.86 | 0 | -0.34 | 7.22 |
| Julio Teheran | 23 | 221 | 1.08 | 2.13 | 2.89 | 1.57 | 14 | 1.84 | 186 | 1.94 | 0 | -0.34 | 7.13 |
| Stephen Strasburg | 25 | 215 | 1.12 | 1.61 | 3.14 | 1.01 | 14 | 1.84 | 242 | 3.01 | 0 | -0.34 | 7.12 |
| Garrett Richards | 26 | 168.2 | 1.04 | 1.96 | 2.61 | 1.64 | 13 | 1.62 | 164 | 1.52 | 0 | -0.34 | 6.39 |
| Greg Holland | 28 | 62.1 | 0.91 | 1.11 | 1.44 | 1.28 | 1 | -1.02 | 90 | 0.10 | 46 | 4.73 | 6.21 |
| Craig Kimbrel | 26 | 61.2 | 0.91 | 1.09 | 1.61 | 1.16 | 0 | -1.24 | 95 | 0.20 | 47 | 4.84 | 6.06 |
When you examine at end-of-season rankings, some players stand out more than others against the backdrop of their rotisserie-successful peers. But a lot happens in the course of a year. It’s unfair to dismiss the accomplishments of players as something … less than fluke but more than breakthrough … without some thorough investigation.
Some players finally realize their potential and have built a foundation of skills (including the “health skill”) on which their new performance baselines can rest. But others haven’t. And that’s usually reflected in their outcomes the following season. It happens to some players unexpectedly, but some are easy to see coming.
More than a handful of players stick out right away as candidates for that kind of result next year. Too many things went their way, and I wouldn’t expect so many to go in their favor once again. We’ve discussed these players in the podcast at one time or another. Sometimes I think that such players are obvious, but there’s always a proponent or buyer.
