Yesterday, I discussed a bunch of preseason top 100 hitters who are off to slow starts. Today, let’s go over the starting pitchers with ERAs in the stratosphere. The analysis is primarily going to to focus on velocity and pitch mix, and perhaps SwStk% and maybe strike percentage, though the latter two are heavily affected by the tiny sample size and opponent. I’m going to stick with starters generally projected for sub-4.00 ERAs.
Most analysts listened when I made this pre-season request.
The only useful fantasy baseball analysis over the next two weeks should be:
1. Pitcher velo and repertoire
2. Lineups
3. Bullpen usageAnything else is just useless fluff.
— Jeff Zimmerman (@jeffwzimmerman) March 28, 2019
Almost too good. Every time I thought about writing about today’s topic, another writer stepped up. I’m done waiting and it is time to see which fastballs have changed, for the better or worse, since last year.
Instead of focusing just on velocity, I add in the fastball’s spin rate and the pitcher’s overall Zone%. With spin rate, I’ve seen pitchers try to keep up their velocity while dealing with an injury and the pitch’s spin changes. As for Zone%, if a pitcher is having issues finding the plate, they may have something mechanically wrong. By combining the three factors together, I’ve come up with an overall ‘Injury’ value where a -100 score means several negative forces are at work.
4/11/19
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I covered the hitter Z-Contact% surgers and decliners earlier in the week. Today, I’ll switch it up to pitchers, but only discuss the improvers. These are the guys who have seen their Z-Contact% decline the most. Preventing contact on pitches thrown inside the strike zone is the ultimate validation of a pitcher’s stuff in my mind. So let’s find out who has improved most in the metric over this still small sample size.
4/9/19
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Trevor Williams ranked 32nd in Roto value for standard 12-team mixed leagues last season. Yet the Pirates’ righty typically went undrafted in those formats this year (292 FantasyPros ADP), and it’s not hard to figure out why. Williams was below average as a strikeout pitcher (18.0 percent K-rate) and didn’t stand out as a control pitcher or inducer of chases or ground balls. His .261 BABIP and 76.6 percent strand rate were just favorable enough to make owners suspicious.
I liked the 2018 version of Williams. I drafted him in my 12-team Head-to-Head points league and wish I had picked him up in a few more places. Last season, there were three pitchers who allowed at least 500 batted balls, averaged less than 91 mph on exit velocity on flyballs and line drives and averaged less than 83 mph on exit velocity on ground balls. They were Williams, Zack Wheeler and Miles Mikolas. In research I conducted this offseason with Alex Chamberlain, we learned that EV FB/LD has been positively correlated with HR/FB over the last four seasons and EV GB has positively correlated with BABIP. Both EV measurements have also had statistically significant (p < .05) year-to-year correlations.
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Last week, I debuted “The 10” by looking at unexpected gems and we’re staying on the mound again today. While there are small sample all over the place, pitchers are at least accumulating data in areas that often stabilize sooner and can add some insight despite the fact that we’re still almost a week away from Tax Day. Meanwhile, hitters are still ping-ponging between perceived hot and cold starts as evidenced by Nick Markakis jumping 51 points in AVG with a 3-for-4 effort on Monday night.
For this exercise, I’m comparing current velos through a couple starts or handful of relief innings against the player’s full April total from last year. These gains aren’t set in stone, but they are worth monitoring, even at this early juncture. Here are 10 velocity gainers on my radar:
“The key to pitching is to have the ability to throw a strike when they’re taking and throw a ball when the hitter is swinging.” – Greg Maddux
Last week, I introduced a pitcher metric based on the six possible plate discipline outcomes. You can find the definitions and indexes in the wPDI introduction article, found here.
This week, I would like to provide you with an alternative weighting of the indexes. It will parallel the famous quote by Hall of Fame pitcher, Greg Maddux. He preached that the key to pitching is to throw a strike when the batter isn’t going to swing, and to throw a ball when the batter will [swing].
With the wPDI outcome framework in place, we can now properly quantify Greg Maddux’s quote.
After just a start or two, all we really care about for starting pitchers is thus:
1) Velocity
2) Pitch mix
3) Underlying skills like GB% and SwStk%
I’m going to tackle the latter, the starting pitchers who have posted monster SwStk% marks in their first start. I’m going to mainly include surprises near the top of the leaderboard. Sorry Jacob deGrom, you and your ridiculous, second ranked 18.3% SwStk% will not be discussed here.
Today finishes my examination of starting pitcher pitch mix and velocity from the first two days of the month. Some of the starters overlap from my first article and I used their combined numbers.
My goal in examining these starters is to find ones who have changed over the offseason. As owners, we may need to immediately adjust our projections. Also, to save space, when I mention a pitch changes a certain percentage, I mean percentage points (ex. up 10% = up 10% points or from 12% to 22%).
