If you’ve paid any attention to the San Francisco Giants, you’ll know that they stink something awful right now. The parts generally are no greater than the whole. Jeff Samardzija, he of the 5.44 ERA, is not blameless here.

In an alternate universe, though, he could be. Some in(s)ane factoids about Samardzija: Only Chris Sale has as many starts as Samardzija in which he struck out more hitters than he completed innings (6). (In Sale’s first start of the season, he went seven and struck out seven. So close.) Samardzija is also one of only six starters with four-plus starts of eight-plus strikeouts. And among pitchers who have thrown at least 75 innings since August 8, 2016*, Samardzija’s 3.12 xFIP ranks 7th-best, behind only Carlos Carrasco, Noah Syndergaard, Clayton Kershaw, Sale, Michael Pineda and James Paxton. That is elite company.

*Why August 8? I was trying to see who has been better than Ivan Nova since he was traded to the Pirates. Nova shows up 8th on that list above. Seeing Samardzija’s name directly before his floored me.

Samardzija is striking out the world yet has little to show for it. His advanced stats (28.7% K, 5.2% BB) suggest excellence, and his peripherals (11.8% SwStr) affirm them. In short, his 3.43 FIP and 2.87(!!!) xFIP depict a much more effective starting pitcher. It’s his strand rate (LOB%) — a catastrophically bad 58.1% — that has done him in. Normalize it, and he’s sitting pretty with a mid-3.00s ERA.

All that said, I’m here to investigate what changed. Once upon a time, Samardzija was a touted prospect, cracking multiple top-100 lists in 2009. The strikeouts lived up to the hype, yet the results lagged. Then the K’s eroded, and the results eroded further. They K’s are back, and they’re back with a vengeance.

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The starting pitcher ranks have been absolutely devastated early in the season with three of the top 10 on the DL (Madison Bumgarner, Noah Syndergaard, and Corey Kluber) and three others haven’t quite been ace-like: Jake Arrieta, Jon Lester, and Johnny Cueto. All of that opening the door for the likes of Dallas Keuchel, Ervin Santana, Jason Vargas, and Mike Leake to ascend into the top 10. Meanwhile, not even the ranks of the top 10 are safe as James Paxton found himself at #8 with a bullet before hitting the DL for a fourth straight season.

Looking at the top 75 SPs drafted in the NFBC, we’ve seen 21 hit the DL (28%). It’s not like the 54 who haven’t been hurt are perfectly expectations, either. In short, the need for starting pitcher is real and seems to be hitting every league size. We’re all turning over every rock for potential production and as these injuries pile up, teams will have to get deeper into their reinforcements making the minor leagues a giant rock to flipped.

I perused the leaderboards of Double- and Triple-A in hopes of identifying some names who could contribute this year. Some are known prospects, others are guys putting up big numbers thus far. Here are 12 names I’m keeping tabs on:

Jose Berrios | Twins

While he’s no longer a true prospect as he exceeded his rookie limits last year, Berrios is still one of the most intriguing arms in the minor leagues. He really struggled in 58.3 innings last year with the Twins (8.02 ERA, 5% K-BB rate), but he still dominated Triple-A (2.51, 21%). He’s been great at Triple-A again this year (1.13, 17%) and now just waiting for his chance to tackle the majors again. I’m not sure if the Super-2 deadline plays a role in Berrios’ call-up anymore after the time he had in the majors last year, but that date will be passing soon meaning there shouldn’t be any other impediments in getting him to the majors. Well, outside of super roadblock Nick Tepesch.

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With all the talk about hitters increasing their launch angles, and therefore they fly ball rates, that would mean pitcher fly ball percentages are rising as well. Remember though that unlike for hitters, it’s less black and white as to whether an increased fly ball rate is a good or bad thing. It’s heavily dependent on context, such as the pitcher’s outfield defense and home park. So let’s take a look at which AL starting pitchers have seen their FB% jump most versus last year and determine whether it’s a positive change or not.

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Nick Pivetta

Pivetta (Phillies) was not on my radar coming into the season but I was intrigued by his five strikeouts in five innings start. Here is what I saw from the 24-year-old righty in his start on April 30th against the Dodgers:

• Fastball: Four-seamer at 92-97 mph with some release side run. He got a decent number of swings-and-misses with the pitch (10%). He may have a 2-seamer he broke out a few times.

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#2: April 24
#1: April 13

If you’ve tuned in before, you know what this is about. If not: the Small-Sample Normalization Service (SSNS) seeks to, ah, normalize a player’s performance in the context of his own previous achievements (or lack thereof). Most of us are human, and our humanity leaves us vulnerable to the biases that cloud rational thought and critical analysis. Such vulnerability is eagerly exploited by the small sample size, never more so than in April. While midseason small samples cower under the cover of hundreds more plate appearances, April performances have no such luxury.

A month’s worth of playing time is certainly more worthwhile to assess than one week’s worth, but 30 innings or 100 plate appearances can still be pretty volatile. Here are a few still-small samples that recently caught my eye.

All graphs pulled prior to yesterday’s games.

Name: Byron Buxton, MIN OF
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5/2/17

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 18, the best baseball strategy game ever made – available NOW on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER18!

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Strategy Section: 10 SP Value Changes

UP

• Dallas Keuchel
• Patrick Corbin
• Luis Severino
• JC Ramirez
• Jason Vargas

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If you’re a nostalgic fantasy baseballer, you’ll remember that Patrick Corbin generated 3.5 wins above replacement (WAR) in his first full season of baseball before suffering the dreaded curse of Tommy John. (If you’re even more nostalgic, or more likely an Angels fan, you’ll remember he was traded alongside Tyler Skaggs for Dan Haren.) Corbin returned to baseball in 2015, and he shoved, seemingly indicating he suffered no ill effects of his surgery.

Yet 2016 was an unmitigated disaster, culminating in a midseason move to the bullpen and a full-season 5.15 ERA. A low strand rate (LOB%) is the blame — virtually no one suffers a 64.8% strand rate for a full season without some bad luck — but poor control and a home run problem complicated things. It appears to me Corbin ran afoul in two distinct ways in 2016.

It also appears to me he may have recalibrated himself. In his last three starts, he has struck out 23 and walked only four across 19.1 innings, good for a 1.86 ERA / 2.53 xFIP / 2.59 FIP.

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Shelby Miller Considering Tommy John After Diagnosis Of Flexor Strain, Torn UCL https://t.co/0ZNwyt5CMO pic.twitter.com/9iCdR2ZnBc

— MLB Trade Rumors (@mlbtraderumors) April 27, 2017

Poor Shelby Miller. After last year’s disastrous debut with the Diamondbacks, Miller was looking forward to getting back to his previous Cardinals and Braves form. The season started well enough – his spring training was filled with reports about his increased velocity, and how well he was pitching.

Shelby Miller is throwing ? in Spring Training this year. Saw him vs. SEA and he was 95-97. Crazy. pic.twitter.com/gVAPZNN7QM

— Kyle Boddy (@drivelinebases) March 25, 2017

In my initial calculations of STUFF for the 2017 season – Miller was up from 0.56 in 2017, to 0.84 in 2017. That is a huge increase that shows great promise for turning a career around. But now – the dreaded third opinion from Dr. James Andrews, and the discovery of a strained flexor muscle, and a torn UCL, which could lead to Tommy John Surgery, or at minimum, a year off with rehabilitation.

What risk factors were present that could have lead to Shelby Miller’s UCL tear? Let’s look at the research.

Table 1. Known risk factors for UCL reconstruction from research.

The interesting thing about this analysis – is that the 2016 iteration of Shelby Miller has no risk factors that particularly jump out at you. He’s right in the moderate area for everything, save for pitches per game – but that value is quite comparable to every other starting pitcher, if not lower. At the same time, this is a case of the sum of all parts – a compounding situation where it’s death by 1000 paper cuts.

Miller broke into the league in 2012, and his Stuff has remained relatively stable since. The biggest change in his Stuff has been this season – and, I’ve tried to take into account the change in data by re-normalizing Stuff to only 2017 data, and subtracting 0.4 mph from the fastball velocity.

Figure 2. Shelby Miller fastball velocity and Stuff, 2012 to 2017.

2017 is clearly a change here – the velocity is up significantly, and that’s not really something that happens when someone gets older. There are a lot of variables in play that we can’t quantify – how quickly did Miller gain this velocity in the off season? What did his training regime look like?

Interestingly, it has been noted that Miller suffered a flexor muscle strain, as well as the UCL tear. Given the urgency that Miller and the Diamondbacks had in accelerating Miller’s return to good-ness, there is a chance signs of discomfort were ignored along the way. When a flexor-pronator muscle is strained, the tension that the muscle originally supported during pitching is now transferred to the ligament. If you’d like to know more about this – there’s a very interesting discussion on flexor-pronator muscle tears/strains on the “fixing pitchers” podcast – http://fixingpitchers.com/podcast/baseball-pitchers-ice-games/.

This is a very important note for young pitchers – do not ignore your body’s warning signs. If something doesn’t feel right, tell your coach and get it looked at by a doctor.

There are no red flags in this analysis for Shelby Miller – but had the strain been noticed a bit sooner, there is a chance he wouldn’t have torn his UCL.

References

Whiteside, D., Martini, D. N., Lepley, A. S., Zernicke, R. F., & Goulet, G. C. (2016). Predictors of Ulnar Collateral Ligament Reconstruction in Major League Baseball Pitchers. The American journal of sports medicine, 0363546516643812.

Last week, I discussed the American League starting pitchers that have improved their Z-Contact% the most. Let’s now check in on the pitchers whose Z-Contact% has risen the most.

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Last week, I inaugurated RotoGraphs’ Small-Sample Normalization Services, or SSNS. Said services attempt to contextualize good and bad starts within a particular player’s history of achievements (or lack thereof). Assessing player performance based on small samples seems distinctly difficult in April, when, for whatever reason, we perceive players with tattered histories as blank slates. Occasionally, there’s merit to these perceptions. More often, we find out a player’s April is no different than his May or June or July, for example, when a small-sample performance might go less noticed than it would when starting from zeroes.

Here are a handful of players that have caught my eye lately.

Name: Jason Vargas, KCR SP
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