If you read my recent piece on Lucas Giolito and Kyle Freeland, then you know I have a growing fascination with pitchers who excel at getting both chases and freezes. (And if you haven’t read it, you’ll find out why I’m fixated with them by going here.) Jakob Junis is this very sort of pitcher, yet it’s been hard to write glowing words about a starter with an ERA above 5.00 and an HR/9 north of 2.0.
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It’s been about a month since the All-Star break and we’ve seen a host of interesting arms put up excellent ERAs. Some of them are just studs being studs (Max Scherzer 1.32, Carlos Carrasco 1.56, Rich Hill 1.78, Aaron Nola 2.16, Trevor Bauer 2.21, and Clayton Kershaw 2.23), but others have come from unexpected sources so let’s look under the hood of those guys to see what’s up.
(listed in ascending order of ERA)
Trevor Williams, PIT | 0.75 ERA, 1.21 WHIP in 24 IP
Williams has the best qualified ERA over the last 30 days (Chris Sale has a 0.00 ERA in that time, but only 17 IP), but there’s nothing supporting it. His insane 98% LOB rate is doing virtually all of the heavy lifting. Obviously, any sustained period of sub-1.00 ERA performance is going to have some outlier metrics involved and it’s usually going to involve a mix of peak skills and good luck, but it ranges from average to truly bleak outside of the LOB rate.
Fastball: The 22-year-old righty threw a 91-96 mph with a decent amount of release side run. Generally, he can control the pitch but its movement can cause it to dart in-and-out of the strike zone. This movement may help him generate weak contact.
A couple nights ago, I sat down to do a Quick Look at two pitchers, Brett Kennedy and Tommy Milone. Both had horrible starts with game ERA’s over 10 and lost quite of bit of fantasy value. After watching each start, both pitchers may end up being usable but owners will need to proceed with caution.
I’ve anticipated this callup for a while after prospect pitcher finder spotted him earlier in the season. Before his major league debut, 24-year-old righty was projected to the be the Padres best starter by ERA. After the start, he dropped below Joey Lucchesi.
The 11th round draft pick was never on anyone’s prospect radar but he has been tearing up the PCL with a 10-0 record, 2.72 ERA, and an 8.1 K/9.
Lucas Giolito did not have a good game on Wednesday night against the Yankees. We can cut him some slack for giving up six of his seven runs in the second inning, but still, allowing seven runs in five innings is not the best look.
But should we view it as a predictable outcome for a pitcher with a 6.23 ERA facing one of the majors’ top offenses? Or can we see it as an aberration? If we look at Giolito’s last six starts, his profile is different enough from the one he built in his first 17 starts of the season that we may need to judge his recent and future results differently. Yes, six starts — and the 36 innings they comprise — represent a small sample, but the changes have been dramatic enough that they merit a closer look.
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I was a big fan of Sean Manaea heading into the season, believing that his above average SwStk% and superb minor league strikeout rates, would lead to a strikeout rate surge this year. Through April, my optimism was paying off, as he had struck out 23.6% of the batters he faced and posted a microscopic 1.03 ERA. Ever since that sparkling month, his ability to punch out batters has completely eroded. Why?
Sometimes I have to stretch a little to include certain pitchers in either the Two Good Starts or Two Bad Starts category. It’s just unwieldly to occasionally call this column Two Good Starts, One Bad Start and One Meh Start, for example.
In the case of Lance Lynn, his recent game log could be more accurately described as One Excellent Start, One Great Long Relief Appearance and One Decent Start. I’m not changing the name of the column, but I’m going ahead and squeezing the square peg into the round hole. If it feels better to convince yourself that Lynn’s final start with the Twins was genuinely good or that his long relief debut for the Yankees was really a start, I am not going to stop you.
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I’ll have much more on these rankings next week. The pitching landscape is in a rough spot right now and the talent globs are more indistinguishable than ever. The second you start to feel comfortable with someone, they trash your line with a dud or three. Stay tuned for more info to help separate these globs in our final two months of the season.
A former top prospect, Kevin Gausman owns a 4.27 ERA/100 ERA-/97 FIP- over his career, spanning 127 games started and 763.2 innings pitched. While that has been perfectly acceptable, we expected much more than just a league average pitcher. With good control and a mid-90s fastball that has apparently peaked at 101.2 mph, his mediocre strikeouts rates have also been head scratching. But perhaps, he has new life after being traded to the Braves on trade deadline day. Will the change in parks help him realize his potential?
Chris Archer has finally been traded. After 26 years of trade rumors (don’t look that up, it’s accurate), he was finally moved in what ended up being a spirited deadline day despite the blizzard of action in the lead up to July 31st. The Rays moved him to Pittsburgh for Austin Meadows, Tyler Glasnow, and PTBNL. Archer has been seen as a disappointment since 2016 with a 4.10 ERA in 498 innings against the backdrop of frontline expectations.