We didn’t get a lot of earth-shattering moves at the Winter Meetings, but there was impactful activity, including a host of starting pitchers on the move. Al Melchior will be covering Lance Lynn’s deal with Texas soon and Mike Podhorzer had a piece on Tyson Ross, Ivan Nova, and Tanner Roark, so I’ve got the Charlie Morton and J.A. Happ signings for you.
The news just keeps coming, as players are signing a flurry of deals, making it hard for me to keep track of all the moves and those expected to become official. Within just the last couple of days, a trio of mediocre starting pitchers have joined new teams either via free agency or trade. Rather than go through the full park comparisons like I have been all week, let’s summarize the potential effects on Tyson Ross, Ivan Nova, and Tanner Roark. Will the park and team switches make these pitchers any more appealing? Let’s find out.
The Diamondbacks signed Merrill Kelly after Kelly spent four years in the Korea Baseball Organization. I never heard of Kelly until the signing some it’s time to put together a profile for him.
First, here’s a tweet from Homin on Kelly’s profile:
KBO season ended. Merrill Kelly, former #rays prospect will play MLB next year. 92-94 mph FB, cutter, two-seam, CH, CV. Various pitches. No plus pitch, but reliable pitcher. Could be good long RP at mlb level. #rays are scouting him heavily.
— Homin Lee (@Homein22) November 13, 2018
Reports are out that Patrick Corbin has pulled a stunner and will sign not with the Yankees nor the Phillies, but the Washington Nationals in a six-year, $140 million dollar deal (with no opt-outs):
Source confirms that Patrick Corbin's six-year deal with the Washington Nationals is for $140 million.
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) December 4, 2018
Let’s take a quick look at nine pitchers who have slid down draft boards or fallen off the radar completely whether because of injury or poor recent track record who could end up making an impact in 2019. I tried to give a wide-ish range of guys – well, as wide as you can with a group of lottery ticket-type guys.
Jimmy Nelson | Milwaukee Brewers – Nelson put up a fantastic 2017 season with a 3.49 ERA, 1.25 WHIP, and 21% K-BB in 175 IP, but he missed all of 2018 to a torn rotator cuff suffered while diving back into first base after a single because the National League inexplicably still lets pitchers bat. Cool, National League. Cool. Nelson curbed the usage of his fastball, favoring his curveball instead with great results.
I heard in passing from a credible source:
“The effectiveness of a pitcher’s slider relies on it having the same spin as his fastball.”
I figured it would be an easy test and could help to immediately identify top-rated sliders. After looking at the data every conceivable way and came up with the following conclusion: publicly available spin information has near ZERO correlation to a slider’s effectiveness. But while rooting around, I did find two factors which do matter, fastball velocity and the difference in slider and fastball velocity.
The theory behind the quote is that a hitter has a tougher time differentiating a fastball and slider if they are spinning at the same rate. So, the closer the difference, a higher chance for a swing-and-miss.
I compared 2018 pitchers with at least 200 sliders and 200 four-seamers thrown. Then, I compared just the difference, the absolute value of the difference, square of difference. Nothing tangible. Nothing matched.
The emergence of Gerrit Cole as a top-10 starting pitcher and top-three pitcher for strikeouts was one of the more notable developments in fantasy in 2018. As unexpected as Cole’s emergence may have been, he did have a history of being an above-average strikeout pitcher, particularly in his second and third season with the Pirates. Just as noteworthy was a cohort of starters who catapulted themselves well above the major league norm for strikeout rate after having been average or below-average strikeout pitchers prior to this past season.
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After the first twenty-five starters are off the board, it gets a bit dicey. As we’re seeing in the PL Experts Mock, starters went quickly in the first six rounds (23 gone in the first 72 picks!), but just twelve were plucked in the following five rounds. The cliff hits suddenly and owners are taking their time to pick up their fourth and fifth starters.
But when the time comes, who should they target? Here are five names to consider during the middle rounds of your drafts.
J.A. Happ (Free Agent) – At 35-years-old, Happ continued to produce, registering his fourth straight season under a 3.70 ERA while boasting career bests in WHIP (1.13), strikeout rate (26.3%), and over swinging-strike rate (10.4%). His new affinity for the K began when he elevated four-seamers consistently and even a transition to the Yankee squad didn’t hold back the punchouts. The major pushback from owners is his elevated Hr/9, which rose to a 1.37 mark along with his career-high 13.4% HR/FB rate.
There’s a case to be made that all but the worst landing spots will help keep the longballs down while I expect his strikeouts to stay elevated near the 23-25% mark given his strong high heat approach. Mix in his ability to produce solid H/9 and walk rates and Happ transforms into a prime option for owners to pad their rotation.
Alas, we have reached my final recap of the season. Finishing things off, it’s time to review my Pod’s Picks again, but on the starting pitcher side. I limited the list to pitchers that landed in my preseason top 60 and excluded pitchers like Rick Porcello and Julio Teheran that earned their projected value through volume, rather than good ratios. Let’s see how these pitchers performed.
We finally got our first huge move of the offseason (sorry, Mike Zunino!) as the Mariners traded James Paxton to the Yankees for Justus Sheffield, Erik Swanson, and Dom Thompson-Williams. I’ll save the analysis on Swanson and Thompson-Williams for Kiley McDaniel because I can honestly say I was unaware of both prior to the deal. Here is Kiley’s piece and Jeff Sullivan’s piece, which includes analysis of both (and Jeff’s has full analysis on the deal). I’m going to focus on the fantasy impact for Paxton and Sheffield.
