A diverse pitching arsenal can help a starter successfully navigate a lineup several times since hitters have a harder time sitting on a single pitch. I went through the 2018 starters and found four pitcher groups who are the two ends of the spectrum. Either they rely on two pitches or have a diverse arsenal.

Many articles have been written about times through the order but the Holy Grail of research articles is the one MGL wrote a few years back. In it, he quantified how much having a third pitch helps. The research holds up even now. I took the 206 starters who threw at least 30 innings and found the percentage of pitches which were fastballs and next highest thrown. Normally, the average was around 75%. Then, I divided up the pitchers into 5% increments. Next, I subtracted the ERA from an average of their ERA estimators (FIP, xFIP, kwERA, SIERA) and here the average values. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I reviewed my preseason list of nine potential strikeout rate surgers. Today, let’s find out how the 10 pitchers I identified as potential strikeout rate decliners actually performed.

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Among starting pitchers who finished in the top 20 in Roto value this season, few were further under the radar on draft day than Blake Snell and Mike Clevinger were. Though Snell was the fourth-most productive starter in terms of Roto value (according to ESPN’s Player Rater) and Clevinger ranked 17th, neither were among the top 190 players in ADP in NFBC or ESPN drafts.

In addition to a surge in their totals of innings pitched, both Snell and Clevinger experienced surprisingly strong improvements in their walk rates. Free passes were a weakness for both of them in 2017, but this season, Snell trimmed his walk rate from 10.8 percent to 9.1 percent, and Clevinger lowered his from 12.0 percent to 8.3 percent. Both pitchers were already proficient at getting strikeouts and had done a fair job of avoiding homers. With even stronger skill sets heading into 2019, fantasy owners could see Snell and Clevinger as particularly appealing options in a pitching pool defined by uncertainty and risk.

But should we?
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In mid-February, I used my pitcher xK% equation to highlight nine pitchers that may have strikeout rate upside for 2018. The important thing to remember is that xK% is not a projection and isn’t meant to be forward-looking. Rather, it’s descriptive, or backward looking, the same way you might think about FIP/xFIP/SIERA. I have found many pitchers who consistently over/underperform their xK% marks for whatever reason, so I never blindly use previous xK% marks as my next season forecast. That said, let’s find out how the pitchers with the greatest positive divergence between 2017 K% and 2017 xK% performed in 2018.

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Yesterday, I sat down to write this article only to discover there was another topic I had to cover first. Classic 5×5 Roto is one of the original forms of fantasy sports. And, despite attempts to tinker with the inputs, it remains the king of fantasy baseball.

A common change to the classic 5×5 categories is to swap out pitcher wins for quality starts. Although all agree a quality start doesn’t exactly measure its name – after all, a six inning, three run performance is pretty mediocre – everybody also agrees the stat is less capricious than pitcher wins. This season, Jacob deGrom won 10 games with a 1.70 ERA over 217 innings. He led the league in quality starts. Ryan Yarbrough won 16 games with a 3.91 ERA in 147.1 innings. He only made six starts, none of which were a quality start. Yeah, wins are sloppy.

Despite the flaws with wins, they’ve become vastly preferable to their number one alternative. It’s time to ditch the quality start. Don’t believe me? Behold, a table!
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A quick look at 26 names who were in consideration for the backend of my Top 100:

Jeff Samardzija, SF: Even writing off ’18, I’m still seeing a meh 21% K, 10% SwStr, and ugly 1.2 HR/9 from ’15-17

Clay Buchholz, FA: The CT/CH rebirth spurred 98 great IP, but ended w/a flexor strain clouding future

Zach Eflin, PHI: 2H fade (5.76 ERA) doesn’t erase all the growth as we still saw 10 pt jump in K% to 23%

Trevor Williams, PIT: Definitely awesome during 2H, but it’s just not bankable going fwd; he’s a 4.00 ERA arm

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Last week, I started digging through the free agent pitchers and found those arms who could improve on their pitch mix. Three prime candidates, Jeremy Hellickson, Matt Harvey, and Derek Holland, stood out. This installment includes the older pitchers from MLBtraderumors free-agent starter list while still ignoring those who may or may not become free agents. I’ll look into them once it’s official they are a free agent.

As I said in the previous article:

I’m just going to focus on the each of the pitcher’s 2018 pitch mix. I can’t assume they’ll develop a new pitch, so I need to work with what they showed last year. The two most common ways for pitcher to improve is to drop a horrible pitch or drop their fastball usage. These changes don’t guarantee an improvement but for now, the focus is on pitchers with upside beyond their projection.
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After going through the pitchers, I found they fit into three main groups depending on if changing their mix could help. This ranking is in no way a ranking of pitcher talent but I’m sure someone will bring it up in the comments. These are just pitchers who I believe can improve by adjusting their current pitch mix.

Major Improvement Candidates

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Rob Silver, the 2016 National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC) Main Event winner and high-stakes fantasy baseball extraordinaire, messaged me on Twitter a few days ago to ask a question: Which source of pitching statistics are most accurate? I’m paraphrasing. Also, I could paraphrase the question any number of ways: Which source should we be using? Which most reliably correlates with pitcher performance?

It was a question for which I had no answer. Admittedly, I use a variety of sources, none of which align with one another — something I have noticed before but about which I can do nothing but shrug and accept it as a quirk of being a sabermetrician who bears the struggle of dealing with publicly available data.

The sources cryptically mentioned above include the following:

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Shohei Ohtani was one of the most hyped rookies in recent memory. Fueling the excitement was the fact that he came over from Japan and he was a two-way player, both pitching and hitting, and doing each well…very well. Obviously, attempting to translate performance from a foreign league to MLB is difficult, and then you have to actually forecast the upcoming season, which is far tougher than a regular run of the mill projection for an MLB veteran.

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Earlier this month, I highlighted a couple of pitchers who improved their results by changing their pitch mix with a new team. With the positive results, I decided to apply the logic to this upcoming class of free agents. The reason I wanted to focus on free agents because I expect a pitcher’s current teams to keep the pitcher doing what he has always done. After going over 15 pitchers, four stood out with real upside.

I’m just going to focus on the each pitcher’s 2018 pitch mix. I can’t assume they’ll develop a new pitch, so I need to work with what they showed last year. The two most common ways for a pitcher to improve is to quit throwing a horrible pitch or drop their fastball usage. These changes don’t guarantee an improvement. For now, the focus is on pitchers with upside beyond their projection.

I collected the free-agent pitchers from MLBTradeRumors and took the youngest pitchers for this investigation. I didn’t include any pitcher who has any kind of option on their contract. I’ll go back and examine them once it’s known for sure who they are or aren’t a free agent.

After going through the pitchers, I found they fit into three main groups depending on if changing their mix could help. This list is in no way a ranking of pitcher talent but I’m sure someone will bring it up in the comments. These are just pitchers who I believe can improve by adjusting their current pitch mix.

Major Improvement Candidates

Read the rest of this entry »