If the All-Star break is a momentum-stopper, then this week’s exercise of finding meaning in back-to-back surprising starts could be moot. Charlie Morton, who entered the break with consecutive disappointing efforts, will roll into Wednesday night’s start at Coors Field against the Rockies having not pitched in a game in 13 days. Frankie Montas may have had some success against the Indians and Astros before the break, but Tuesday night’s outing at the Rangers comes after a 15-day hiatus.

Still, taking a peek at these pitchers’ two most recent starts can give us some context for evaluating their upcoming assignments. If Montas breezes through his start against the Rangers, who rank 22nd in wOBA against right-handed pitchers, can we merely chalk it up to a favorable matchup after he held his own against two of the top six offenses against righties? And if Morton flubs his first start of the second half, should we blame it on the Coors Effect?
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If something about Madison Bumgarner’s first eight starts of 2018 have seemed odd to you, it’s because they have been. No matter the fielding independent pitching statistic to which you subscribe — FIP, xFIP, SIERA (although, frankly, it should be SIERA) — Bumgarner’s 2018 has not inspired confidence. Despite a dazzling (and quintessentially Bumgarnerian) 2.90 ERA, his baserunner suppression skills (i.e. strikeouts and walks) have lagged this year, and the various FIPs all portend severe bumps in the road. Granted, Bumgarner has outperformed his FIPs the last three years and throughout his career. I’m here to argue not that we should dismiss our concerns because of this but, instead, that such overperformance has insulated us from what should be potentially serious concerns about MadBum’s long-term health and success.

The problems with Bumgarner’s 2018 season — or at least the peripherals that underpin his 2018 season — thus far stem back not to his broken finger but, rather, something both farther back and much more dire. You may or may not recall Bumgarner fell off a dirt bike last year and injured his throwing shoulder. He returned from that injury almost exactly a year ago and promptly underwhelmed us. Sure, he posted a 3.43 ERA through September and has a 3.23 ERA in the calendar year since his return. It’s not vintage Bumgarner, but it’s not awful. But the peripherals, oh, the peripherals: his strikeout rate (K%) has caved dramatically, falling more than 6 percentage points (27.1% from April 2015 through April 2017; 20.9% from July 2017 onward).

It’s his fastball. Bumgarner’s fastball, once elite (relative to other four-seamers), is broken, and it has been broken for a year.

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With two ratio categories out of four they contribute to, starting pitchers could turn around their seasons much more easily than hitters, who must make up ground in four counting stats. I compare the CBS projected and actual rankings and sorted by the difference for a list of the most disappointing and surprising starters. I eliminated any pitcher currently on the DL. These six are arguably the most disappointing. Will any of them deliver the kind of value over the second half that fantasy owners paid for?

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Since 2013, I have polled you dashingly attractive readers on which group of pitchers you think will post the better aggregate ERA post all-star break. The two groups were determined based on ERA-SIERA disparity, pitting the overperformers versus the underperformers during the pre-all-star break period.

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After trending the wrong way for more than a month, Luke Weaver pulls into the All-Star break with two of his strongest outings of the year. Just when it seemed safe to start Chase Anderson again, he finished his first half with a sputter.
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Coming up through the Astros’ minor league system, hard-throwing Mike Foltynewicz was pretty good at getting the swings-and-misses that fantasy owners crave. Yet in his first season with the Astros and his subsequent three seasons with the Braves, Foltynewicz failed to stand out as a swing-and-miss pitcher or as a source of strikeouts.

Through his first 18 starts of 2018, Foltynewicz has fared a little better at getting whiffs and a lot better at getting strikeouts. His swinging strike rate of 10.6 percent is a career high but only 0.6 percentage points better than his previous best in 2016. His strikeout rate of 28.9 percent is more than one-third greater than his 2016 high-water mark of 21.1 percent, and it is the 11th-highest rate among qualified starters this season.
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Auto Out% (AO%) surgers…huh?! Yeah, I just made it up. But you know what this metric is because my colleagues have written articles about it. It’s simply strikeouts plus infield flies as a percentage of batters faced. These are essentially automatic outs, hence the name Auto Out%. We know that for pitchers, strikeouts are the best plate appearance result because it’s an almost guaranteed out. But infield fly balls aren’t too far behind in terms of out conversion. Yet, we focus far more on a pitcher’s strikeout rate than his popup rate, which is often completely ignored. Combining them gives us even better information than focusing on just one of the pair. So let’s find out which starting pitchers have improved their AO% the most versus 2017.

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I’ve decided to update my 2018 pERA rankings since I’ve been diving for some starter sleepers. Usually, this procedure helps to find underperformers with inflated ERAs. This time, it was mainly under the radar pitchers.

If anyone is unfamiliar with pERA, it combines the swinging strike rate and batted ball data from each pitch along with the walk rate into an overall ERA estimator (full explanation). Besides the few pitchers listed below, here is a link to the full 2018 values.

The top starters are as expected:

Rank. Name: pERA
1. Max Scherzer: 2.34
2. Chris Sale: 2.44
3. Jacob deGrom: 2.52
4. Noah Syndergaard: 2.57
5. Ross Stripling (w/ RP stats): 2.65
6. Trevor Bauer: 2.75
7. Gerrit Cole: 2.83
8. Justin Verlander: 2.88
9. Patrick Corbin: 2.91
10. Dereck Rodriguez: 2.92

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I started the Two Good Starts, Two Bad Starts column a few weeks back when I realized that I often begin to change my perception of a pitcher after a pair of consecutive starts that defy my expectations. It’s rarely a good idea to change your decision rule about starting or sitting a pitcher on the basis of two starts, but at least you can be more open to the possibility that the pitcher in question maybe isn’t as good or as bad as you thought.

In last week’s column, I raised the possibility that Wei-Yin Chen might be viable at some point in some deeper mixed leagues by drawing attention to a couple of good starts that were backed up by a rising whiff rate and increased fastball velocity. In his subsequent outing against the Nationals, his velocity remained higher than it had been, but he got just three swings-and-misses on his way to a seven-run shellacking over 4.1 innings. I’m still intrigued by Chen’s resurgence in velocity, but I’m glad I haven’t dedicated a roster spot to him yet.
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I released my July rankings last week, my fourth update of the year. Today, I want to look at the biggest movers since the very first run of rankings back in March when we ran the consensus lists. We’ll look at three groups of pitchers: those in the top 50 who didn’t even make March list and then the biggest risers and fallers for those who did make that original 162.

Let’s get started!

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