By now, most gamers have noticed Trevor Cahill’s excellent start to the year for the Padres. Another member of San Diego’s rotation is pitching fairly well, too. A 4.13 ERA and 1.38 WHIP don’t result in fantasy gamers flocking to the waiver wire to add a player in most cases, but this pitcher’s underlying stats are mighty intriguing.. This groundball-inducing machine is owned in just 20% of CBS leagues, 4.0% of ESPN leagues and 3% of Yahoo! leagues. A look under the hood hints at some very real breakout potential, and at the least, deep league relevance. Read the rest of this entry »

5/11/17

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: Buy Low Arms

• Drew Pomeranz (5:55)
• Jeff Samardzija (12:10)
• Sean Manaea (21:18)
• John Lackey (27:25)
• Kevin Gausman (30:07)
• Danny Salazar (37:55)
• Kenta Maeda (42:33)
• Jake Arrieta (46:02)

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In my AL-only league, I needed to fill in a couple pitching slots with James Paxton and Corey Kluber on the DL (and Berrios still in the minors). With almost no time for research (8 pm Sunday deadline), I bought both JC Ramirez and Mike Clevinger on a whim. Here’s what I ended up with.

JC Ramirez

Ramirez was exclusively a reliever in the majors until his last five starts. While his 3.74 ERA is not ideal, he has an 8.8 K/9 and 2.9 BB/9. I went back and watched his start on April 19th against the Astros (great camera angle). Here’s what I saw.

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Traditional pitching metrics, such as innings pitched, and pitch counts, have often missed the mark when it comes to preventing pitcher injuries. As a result, I developed the Fatigue Units metric – which shows promise in illustrating how extreme workloads can influence pitchers in the subsequent seasons.

As a quick refresher – Fatigue Units are calculated by looking at an interaction between the number of pitches thrown, the velocity they are thrown at, the time taken between pitches, and the number of days between appearances. In the 2015 and 2016 season – these were your FU leaders.

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Last week, I identified and discussed eight American League starting pitchers that have seen their fly ball rate increase most versus last year. Let’s flip the coin this time and check in on those starters that have seen their fly ball rate decline.

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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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