It hasn’t exactly been an easy season for fans of East Bay baseball. Facing a rotation eviscerated by injuries and trades and clubhouse chemistry, once impervious to losing, lost, there hasn’t been much for A’s fans to gloat over. Not that expectations were all that high to begin with, but this? The best that can be said about 2016 is that at least the front office made a firm commitment to its youth as soon as it became obvious that meaningful baseball would not be played in the Coliseum at the same time meaningless football would be. And for that fantasy managers and particularly those digging for championships in deep leagues, should be thankful.

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Chad Kuhl: Quick Look

The 23-year-old righty has been getting some love because of his improved second half when he has posted a 2.37 ERA with 11.3% K%-BB% and a 50% GB%.

I will start with his 2016 MLB.com grades of:

• Fastball: 60
• Slider: 50
• Changeup: 45
• Control: 50
• Overall: 50

His grades weren’t this high until this year. Most places saw him as a low-level bullpen arm.

Year(publication): Overall grade
2016 (BA): 40
2015 (BA): 45
2015 (MLB): 45

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Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: the Pirates picked up a former Yankee and he’s excelling with them. It’s only four starts so let’s not get too crazy, but I think a lot of us were eager to see what – if anything – Ivan Nova would do with Pittsburgh. Not only was he going to be under the tutelage of Pirates pitching coach Ray Searage, but he’d also be going from Yankee Stadium to PNC Park for his home games, a colossal shift for a pitcher with a 1.3 HR/9 rate since 2012 including a horrific 1.8 this year with the Yankees.

On the heels of a complete game against Houston, Nova has a 3.20 ERA and 1.11 WHIP with Pittsburgh in 25.3 innings. His K/9 rate is actually down half a strikeout to 6.4, but his walks have tumbled so much that his strikeout percentage is the same 18% he had with the Yankees. Nova has generally been a better-than-average walk suppressor, but with Pittsburgh he’s on a new level. He’s currently walking just 1% of the batters he’s faced as a Pirate. And that ghastly home run rate is down to 0.7 HR/9. The only time he’s ever been lower was when he had a 0.6 in 2013, unsurprisingly his best season ever.

This isn’t Nova’s first good four or five start run this year. He closed May with a 3.41 ERA in five starts and he opened July with a 2.66 through four starts. So we shouldn’t just assume he’s gone to Pittsburgh and become the next J.A. Happ or something. He could just be having a nice run, something he’s done many times before. The sharp drops in homers and walks have me intrigued, though. Let’s see if there are discernable differences early on. Obviously, league and park change alone will account for some improvement, so we’re looking beyond that to his approach against righties and lefties.

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It’s not an outlandish question to ask. Over the last 30 days, which spans five starts and 32.1 innings, Marcus Stroman has posted the third highest strikeout rate in baseball and the lowest SIERA. Five starts is a tiny sample size, of course, but you can’t fake a high strikeout rate. Let’s go back a little further. Since my cherry-picked date of June 14, he has made 12 starts and has posted a strong 25.2% strikeout rate, low 4.2% walk rate, elite 61.5% GB%, and impressive 2.82 SIERA. You know who else has combined that type of strikeout ability, pinpoint control, and serious ability to induce grounders? Nobody.

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Listeners of the podcast should be well familiar with this format. Paul Sporer and I try to come up with a few salient points about each player to help you make your decisions. So This week I thought I’d help as many of you as I possibly could with one article. So let’s take three (okay six) hitters and three pitchers from the twitter mailbag and have us some fun.

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Funny how we have not written much at FanGraphs about Robbie Ray this season. Eno Sarris lauded Ray’s velocity in brief in the spring; in July I expressed enthusiasm in Ray but didn’t give him the most glowing recommendation; all of which finally culminated with August Fagerstrom’s piece two-and-a-half weeks ago declaring Ray MLB’s newest strikeout madman. That actually seems like a lot of coverage, now that I mention it all, and it kind of is. But it’s all more recent and probably deserved to happen sooner, especially since Ray has posted a strikeout rate of 9.6 K/9 or better in every month this season.

Sarris noted that Ray is mostly a two-pitch guy, thereby dampening his value. Fagerstrom uncovered related weaknesses during Ray’s third trip through the order, likely correlating negatively with his lack of variety. Then again, Fagerstrom acknowledges how big a role sequencing plays in a pitcher’s success, and Ray has been woefully unlucky in this regard, forcing the split between his ERA and FIP (E-F) wide open.

Let’s play pretend. Let’s say Ray never develops a third pitch. Let’s say Ray rides the status quo through next season. Would that be so bad? Probably not, because Ray is doing his best Yu Darvish impression (sound familiar?):

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Yesterday I wrote about Matt Shoemaker, highlighting how crucial it is for him to keep the ball down. One commenter on Twitter wondered if that wasn’t just the case with every pitcher, thus kind of an obvious point, but plenty of pitchers thrive up in the zone. Steven Wright throws a whopping 44% of his pitches in the upper third, far and away the highest among qualified starters this year. Others who live north of 30% include Steven Matz (37%), Justin Verlander (35%), Rick Porcello (33%), Jacob deGrom (33%), Aaron Sanchez (31%), Stephen Strasburg (31%), and Danny Duffy (30%).

Verlander, Porcello, Duffy, and deGrom are also among the top 20 in OPS (meaning they’re among the 20 lowest) in the upper third of the zone along with the likes of J.A. Happ (.375 OPS – leads the league), Jose Quintana (.414), Clayton Kershaw (.506), and Madison Bumgarner (.553) to name a few. In short, no, not every pitcher thrives by staying down in the zone.

He left a fat pitch to Robinson Cano in the first inning which he promptly took 419 feet the other way and I was wondering if this was going to be a long night for Shoemaker.

Yeaaahhh, can't leave it there pic.twitter.com/PlMtHrUmpk

— Paul Sporer (@sporer) August 19, 2016

This is what happens: https://t.co/1zmSHCHOmH

— Paul Sporer (@sporer) August 19, 2016

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Pitch Velocity Effects on Groundballs, Exit Velocity, and Swinging Strikes

Last week, I examined Danny Duffy and several other writers have examined at him also. If you want to read up on various theories on my he is performing great and why that may change, go ahead. Instead, today I am going to concentrate on his fastball velocity changes and how the results change as the velocity changes.

Danny Duffy is starting to get some Cy Young consideration after spending part of the season in the bullpen. One cause for the turnaround is his fastball velocity increasing from 93.8 mph to 95 mph. The average velocity was even higher earlier in the season but it has been steadily dropping.

So what difference does it make if he is throwing 96 mph or 94 mph? Today, I am going to lay the groundwork for finding such an answer.

Simply, I looked at three different factors, exit (or batted ball) velocity (EV), groundball rate (GB%), and swinging-strike rate (SwStr%) and how each compared to a 1 mph velocity block. To help smooth out the results, I looked velocities between whole values like 90 mph to 91 mph and labeled them 90.5 mph. Also, I looked at values between 90.5 mph and 91.5 mph and put them in the 90 mph bin. I know there is overlap, but I hoped the higher number of samples would help smooth at the final results, especially with a limited number of samples at both ends of the data range.

To start off, here are Duffy’s average exit velocities for a given range of fastball velocities.

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Matt Shoemaker’s strikeouts have essentially gone through three phases this season. Through his first six starts, he had just 17 strikeouts in 24.7 IP with a 14% strikeout rate. The fastball was getting pummeled and certainly not generating a necessary number of strikeouts. It yielded a 1.175 OPS and just 5% strikeout rate in 74 PA over those first six. The splitter (.566, 35%) offered hope. He decided to lean on it and it remained dominant over his next 12 starts, while also lessening the burden on his fastball.

Both pitches excelled in the two-month span from May 16th through July 16th. He had a 29% strikeout rate thanks in large part to the fastball’s improved output. The splitter it definitely the carrying pitch and gets its due credit for his resurgence, but the impact it had on the fastball allowed him to reach these heights.

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As you may recall, I jumped onto the Danny Duffy bandwagon rather early on, diving into his ability to sustain his relief velocity as a starter through his fifth start of the season. Since those first five starts, he has continued to pitch spectacularly, posting a 2.43 ERA (3.43 SIERA) and 21.5% K-BB%. But the good times eventually come to an end. And I think Duffy’s value has peaked and is in danger of experiencing a sharp decline.

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