I mentioned on a recent podcast that my updated starting pitcher rankings would be out today, but I’m not quite done so you’ll have to wait a little longer! In the meantime, I wanted to look at some struggling arms and see if there’s any hope. Remember, this time last year saw Jimmy Nelson toting a 5.34 ERA and probably on a ton of waiver wires. From May 1st on, he had a 3.13 ERA and 176 strikeouts in 146.7 innings.

Kenta Maeda (6.58 ERA), Jose Quintana (5.22), Carlos Martinez (4.71), and Justin Verlander (4.60) were a few other arms who emerged from crummy Aprils. Not every quality arm found their footing so it’s far from a guarantee, but a handful of April duds will be gems the rest of the way. Let’s see if we can find some of them and start with a repeat struggler from last year.

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A bad start to the season somehow got worse for Lance Lynn on Monday night. He entered his fifth start of 2018 with a 7.71 ERA, having allowed five or more runs in three of his previous starts. By the time the Blue Jays forced his exit after five innings, Lynn’s ERA rose to a ghastly 8.37.
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Caleb Smith

If I didn’t give Smith a Quick Look, I feel I was failing. I watched the 26-year-old lefty’s game from the 22nd (good camera angle) when he went 6 IP, 2 ER, 10 K’s, and 0 walks.

• Fastball: 91-94 mph. Kept it down and commanded it well. Hitter just couldn’t get a read on this pitch but I couldn’t tell exactly why. Some hitters are seeing it well since it has given up all his home runs.
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Last week, I reintroduced my Small Sample Normalization Services (SSNS), analyzing strong starts by Dylan Bundy, Jose Berrios, and Patrick Corbin in the context of other small samples within their respective careers or recent histories. This time, I discuss three more odd starts among starting pitchers and their implications.

Chase Anderson, MIL SP

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Mike Clevinger had plenty of proponents coming into the season and they no doubt felt that even if his ERA/WHIP combo exceeded last year’s 3.11/1.25 marks, they would at least have strikeouts to fall back on. He’s currently besting both marks with a 1.75 ERA and 1.05 WHIP, but has just a 17% strikeout rate, down 10 points from last year’s 27% mark that sat 14th among pitchers with at least 120 innings. It’s hard to be too mad at the performance with those ratios, but we also know there’s virtually no way he maintains either because he’s not Pedro Martinez. What happened to his strikeout rate?

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A week ago, I discussed the American League starting pitchers who have improved their Z-Contact% (batter contact rate on pitches inside the strike zone) most versus 2017. Today, let’s take a look at the pitchers on the other side — those who have induced fewer in-zone whiffs, meaning their Z-Contact% marks are well above what they posted last season.

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Marco Gonzales

The 26-year-old lefty is straight up dealing with a 10.7 K/9 and only a 1.6 BB/9. No pitcher with a strikeout as high as his has a lower walk rate. His K%-BB% is the 12th best among qualified starters.

Gonzales’s great start is being hidden by a .406 BABIP fueled 4.37 ERA. While he struggled giving up runs in his first three starts, he allows nothing in his last two. Gonzales may finally be living up to some of his prospect status from a few years back.

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Monday night’s Marlins/Dodgers game in LA garnered a lot of attention, as it was the season debut and first ever start for Dodgers uber-prospect Walker Buehler, but his less-heralded counterpart put up six strong innings for the Marlins, too. Jarlin Garcia actually bumped his ERA up with a 6 IP/1 ER outing as he now sits at a 1.00 ERA through 27 innings. He opened the season with six one-hit innings of relief in that Cubs/Marlins 17-inning epic on March 30th, the second day of the season.

He allowed a pair of runs in another extended relief outing, this time four innings at Philly. The Marlins installed him in the rotation after that and he’s netted some insane results: one run on five hits and eight walks with 12 strikeouts in 17 innings of work. Obviously, we know the 1.00 ERA and 0.81 WHIP won’t sustain. But does he have the skills to remain fantasy relevant even as his 99% LOB and .121 BABIP regress?

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Here in the final week of April, sample sizes are starting to build up, but there is still a lot of statistical weirdness out there. Just in the walk rate leaderboard alone there are some confounding data for fantasy owners to ponder. Jose Quintana and Michael Wacha with double digit rates? Vince Velasquez among the lowest one-fourth? It’s like I hardly know these guys.
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Every time an analyst uses the caveat “small sample size, but,” an angel gets its wings. And then that angel takes flight and also analyzes a small sample size.

I preach patience when it comes to the first few weeks of a Major League Baseball season, and I try to practice it, too, regarding both early-season breakouts and duds. Aside from transactions related to the disabled list, I have yet to drop any player I drafted who wasn’t legitimately dead weight (like my decaying shares of Melky Cabrera and John Lackey) or, in ottoneu, a roster burden, such as a hapless $7 share of a helpless Alex Cobb.

That said, I can’t simply wait until mid-May or whatever to make meaningful analyses of players. But I also can’t make knee-jerk reactions about 30 innings or 90 plate appearances. I try to reconcile this cognitive dissonance by engaging in what I called last year Small Sample Normalization Services (SSNS). The intent: first, to attempt to find similarly long and (un)productive streaks in a player’s past; second, to evaluate how similar or comparable those streaks actually are; and, last, to slap an appropriate level of excitement or panic to the performance in question. If we can’t say with absolute certainty that we’re watching a player do something sustainable, then maybe it helps to know if he had done something similar in the past. If not, what befell him afterward? And if so, how should we move forward with him?

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