Archive for Starting Pitchers

After posting a 3.12 ERA over 15 starts last season in his MLB debut, which by the way was fully supported by exciting skills, Luis Castillo was rightfully a favorite target for many fantasy owners heading into the year. Unfortunately, his follow-up has been a big disappointment. The 25-year-old has posted a 4.66 ERA, while both his strikeout and ground ball rates have tumbled. He has also been unable to curb his severe gopheritis. When we talk about pitcher inconsistency, Castillo has been the epitome. If we were to ride on a baseball themed roller coaster, it would most certainly be named after him.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve got a decent group to pick from despite an 8-game slate.

(I’ll be citing the FantasyPros roster rates)

Steven Matz – NYM v. MIA (27%)

Matz was having a good season with a 3.38 ERA through the first half, but opened the second half with four starts of a 13.17 ERA and probably fell off the radar for most, especially since he’s on a terrible team. He’s rallied back with four straight gems, posting a 2.25 ERA and 0.75 WHIP in 24 IP with a 29% K-BB rate. He has faced the Giants twice during that run and they’re baseball’s worst team against lefties in the second half (.264 wOBA, 26% K rate), but he gets a Marlins team that has a .300 wOBA in that same time (21st).

Read the rest of this entry »

As is usually the case, the selection of streamable starting pitchers is much heavier on risk than reward, but there is actually a widely-available starter who looks like a pretty safe bet to help your rotation. It’s Felix Pena, who is unowned in at least 85 percent of the leagues on ESPN, CBS and Yahoo and more than 75 percent of Fantrax leagues. In a column I wrote just last week, I made the case for viewing Pena as Patrick Corbin Lite.
Read the rest of this entry »

Obviously, there are flaws for any SPs who are readily available for streaming, but today’s batch seems to be particularly volatile. I’m always down for a pitcher who can deliver that gem of 7+ innings with a  bunch of strikeouts, but when the downside is a sub-5 inning nightmare, you have to carefully calculate if you can take on the risk.

(I’ll be citing the FantasyPros roster rates)

Tanner Roark – WAS at PHI (47%)

The Cards hit Roark for his worst start in the second half last time out, but even with the 5 IP/6 ER dud, he still has a 2.91 ERA in 55.7 IP since the break. Roark has two quality starts, a dud (4.3 IP/6 ER), and a rain-shortened outing that had started well (3 IP/0 ER) against the Phillies this year. The Phillies have been a middling offense against righties since the break, sitting 18th in wOBA at .317 with a 23% K rate.

Read the rest of this entry »

I hope no owner is needing a free agent starter to use as it’s a rough group of lowly owned pitchers. When Ian Kennedy is the top choice, the pickings are slim.

Here are the pitchers owned in 20% or fewer FanTrax leagues.

Ian Kennedy (22% – close enough for RotoGraphs) at Twins

The 33-year-old righty should not be in play, but he’s Sunday’s best option with the chance for a Win (vs Twins) and some strikeouts (8.3 K/9). His flyball nature has helped him post a HR/9 over 1.5 over the past 4 seasons so he’ll have a high ERA. Experienced owners should know what they’re getting with Kennedy.

Erasmo Ramirez (19%) vs Yankees

I’ve never been able to trust Ramirez and I’m not sure I can against the Yankees. There are a couple signs for optimism. Most of his ERA damage happened in his first start when he posted a 10.24 ERA. After those two starts, he went on the DL (shoulder).

Since returning, his ERA has been 3.70 with ERA estimators near 4.00. He’s in the mold of a slightly below average starter with a 7.0 K/9 and 2.2 BB/9. He’s facing CC, so he has a chance for a Win. There are worse choices.
Read the rest of this entry »

For a pitcher who has been ignored by the vast majority of fantasy owners this season, we’ve given Felix Pena quite a bit of attention here at RotoGraphs. Back in July, both Jeff Zimmerman and Paul Sporer noted Pena’s somewhat limited sleeper appeal. More recently, Jeff pointed out Pena’s declining fastball velocity and strikeout rate in his analysis of most-dropped players.
Read the rest of this entry »

I’m highlighting pitchers owned in 20% or few leagues at FanTrax.com

Daniel Norris (15%) vs Cardinals

Where did the 25-year-old’s lefty’s 11.4 K/9 come from? And the 4.6 BB/9? He is pulling a Robbie Ray (12.0 K/9, 4.8 BB/9) with an 89-mph average fastball.

After rooting around on his player pages, he’s basically a two-pitch pitcher, fastball and slider. Both pitches produce an above average amount of swings-and-misses and flyballs. The flyballs have led to a high number of home runs (1.8 HR/9) hence the inflated 5.49 ERA.

Most of the damage was done before going on the DL (groin surgery). In his one start since returning, he struck out seven Yankees and walked only one batter in 4.1 innings. In the start, his fastball was up to 91 mph.

For owners digging for strikeouts, they should be all in with Norris. The walks still worry me some and owners who need to control their rate stats may want to stay way to see another start. He may be a sneaky recommendation as the season winds down.
Read the rest of this entry »

The top 12 of the last 30 day starting pitcher strikeout rate leaders is littered with the usual names. But of course as with any metric over an arbitrary time frame, there are a few surprising ones. Let’s discuss the four, who all happen to be 25 and under.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last September, Jeff and I spent last September highlighting daily starters you could consider picking up for your playoffs and roto stretch run. We’ll be doing the same again this year starting with tomorrow’s super-lite 4-game slate.

(I’ll be citing the FantasyPros roster rates)

Luis Castillo – CIN v. SD (49%)

Castillo entered July with a 5.85 ERA, but has since put together a 10-start run of 3.23 ERA and 1.06 WHIP in 55.7 IP with a 26% K rate and 4% BB rate. Two 5 ER duds during the run push the ERA a bit, but he bounced back strong from each one. The Arizona one was kinda weird, too, because he bookended four perfect innings with the five runs in an inning and two-thirds.

Read the rest of this entry »

I use xwOBA as a leading indicator of good or bad things to come mid-season, for better or for worse. It’d be good to know if such reliance is truly warranted. I further talked myself into the idea when I wrote about several underperforming hitters in early June. Many of the names therein went on some serious heaters afterward, too. It wasn’t as prescient as it was playing the odds: the hitters underperforming xwOBA most extremely through two months always, always (in the Statcast Era^TM) bounce back to some degree.

It’s “predictive,” but not universally so, and only by virtue of common sense, in the same way a pitcher who allows a sub-.200 batting average on balls in play (BABIP) through two months could not reasonably sustain this high level of contact management. (There’s a discussion to be had here about the gambler’s fallacy, but I don’t think it necessarily applies to baseball. For another day.)

In terms of prior work, it’s all Baseball Prospectus‘ Jonathan Judge (only a slight exaggeration): he compared xwOBA to BP’s DRA metric as well as FIP (fielding independent pitching), a much simpler ERA estimator, and showed xwOBA is hardly superior to the field, at least for pitching. However, the article only covered year-to-year, not in-season, correlations.

After our dear and departed (but not dead) Eno Sarris asked Judge if he had looked at in-season correlations specifically, and after our dear and departed (and also not dead) Mike Petriello reinforced the notion that xwOBA could serve as an in-season predictor of regression under certain circumstances, I figured it’s high time I just tackle the question.

So: How predictive is xwOBA of wOBA in-season? For hitters and for pitchers?

Read the rest of this entry »