After striking out more than a third of opposing batters he faced during his time at Double-A and Triple-A this season, Astros prospect Joshua James finally got the call to make his Major League debut on Saturday. Given the stacked Astros rotation, it wasn’t that much of a surprise that it took until rosters expanded for James to get his chance. It turned out to be a mixed bag of a start, which is to be expected during a pitcher’s first career Major League start. But let’s rewind for a moment and learn how James got to this point.

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Just shy of a month ago, on the day the Rays dealt Chris Archer to the Pirates, Thomas Bassinger of the Tampa Bay Times looked into why the hometown team’s presumed ace had put together a less-than-ace-quality season. The explanation was clear and compelling. Archer was leaving his slider out in the middle of the strike zone too often when he was facing lefties. That went a long way towards shedding light on why Archer had yielded a respectable .312 wOBA against right-handed batters but a bloated .347 wOBA against lefties in his final go-around with the Rays.
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At the beginning of this week, I identified and discussed a group of hitters who suffered through miserable slumps at the beginning of the season, only to return to form, or better, the rest of the way. I then did the same for some of the players who enjoyed fantastic performances in April, just to regress back to what had always been expected the rest of the way. Though this was by no means an exhaustive study, the lesson for all these players is to trust their entire body of work, not the small sample of a month.

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I think this is about the time of every year that I start to realize just how long the season is and I recall the landscape in May/June and see how different it is now. I wanted to highlight a group of pitchers who have righted the ship on their season and become fantasy assets once again after being cast off.

I didn’t include David Price despite a big ERA difference (4.42 1H, 1.09 2H) because I don’t think it ever got to a point where you could realistically cut him. All of these guys were hitting waiver wires in just most mixed formats, but are now being relied on down the stretch. Some of the guys profiled actually started to turn it around before the second half, but I wanted to include them because the bulk of their emergence has come since the break.

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I have been wanting to write about Steven Matz for some time, and this column is providing me with a reason to do so. Since Matz is coming off two good starts, I’m genuinely intrigued by what might be different for him lately, but he has been a curiosity all season.
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Jacob Nix

Fastball: Come in at 91-95 mph and straight but the 22-year-old righty hit his spots moving it around the strike zone.

By the 5th inning, he’d lost a couple ticks off the fastball. With the velocity loss, he may struggle later in games.

Curve: 76-79 mph with a 12-7 break. He didn’t have a feel for it and bounced a couple up to the plate. It’s not loopy and has above average speed. It could be a really good pitch for him.

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Every season there are numerous starting pitchers who surprise, rewarding those owners who spent heavily on hitting during the draft, with a plan of rostering cheaper breakout/sleeper type pitchers and improving their staff during the season. Though these three surprises haven’t earned a ton of mixed league value, they weren’t really even forecasted to return positive value in even mono leagues. Let’s discuss the trio, who all happen to be left-handed.

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Rain is stupid. OK, not all the time, but it was remarkably stupid last night as it shortened the debut of Chicago White Sox uber-pitching prospect Michael Kopech. The 22-year old flamethrower didn’t return after a rain delay just before the third inning started, but we did get to see 52 pitches as he labored a bit through his two innings. He allowed three hits, but stranded all of them and didn’t walk anybody while tallying four strikeouts.

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If you’re noting a greater sense of urgency in this week’s Two Good Starts, Two Bad Starts, that’s because it features a pair of pitchers set to make their next starts in mere hours upon publication of this piece. Many owners will have likely been anticipating Kevin Gausman’s Tuesday night start, as he is among the most-added pitchers in ESPN and CBS leagues. After a mediocre Braves debut back on Aug. 4, Gausman responded with two much better starts. While that may have been reason enough to pick him up, is it reason enough to start him right away?

Fantasy owners have not been holding Jose Berrios‘ two-game slump against him, as the vast majority of his owners (at least in CBS and Fantrax leagues) have him active — quite likely for his scheduled two-start week. An analysis into his recent starts will help us to see if that looks like the right call.
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The term “consistency” is thrown around a lot in fantasy sports, though it lacks a set definition and is often just a nebulous idea rife with recency bias. A few memorable meltdowns? Horribly inconsistent and can’t be trusted! Can’t recall any truly awful starts? So consistent! My impetus for diving into this was a self-check on someone I’ve deemed rather inconsistent this year, Nick Pivetta. Was I just remembering the week-ruining disasters he dropped on my H2H team or is he truly a volatile arm?

I’m looking at starts with a Game Score of 40 or lower as the threshold for inconsistency. The baseline is 50 and there is no way to truly salvage a 40 GS outing. Jon Gray had one with 10 Ks, which is the closest thing to a salvaged 40, but the 6 earned runs and 11 base runners in five and a third all but canceled out the whiffs.

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