Valuing Danny Duffy

Putting a future value on Danny Duffy is fairly difficult because he has never performed like he is right now. Here are some of his stats after his one run complete game last night.

• 9 wins
• 2.82 ERA, 3.14 FIP
• 10.0 K/9
• 1.8 BB/9
• 1.0 HR/9

Let’s start with the biggest changes and the one value which sticks out, the 10.0 K/9. Duffy is getting more strikeouts by getting hitters to swing at his pitches at career high rate (52%) and they make contact at a career-low rate (72%). This dual combination has led to a career high swinging strike rate (14%). By using the simple rule K% = 2 * SwStr%, Duffy is projected to have a 28% K% and it is 29% this season. With these matching up, I expect little regression with his strikeout rate.

A search for why the transformation as occurred begins with a 1.5 mph increase in his fastball velocity. The velocity increase raised his swinging strike rate on the pitch to a 13.6%. With the fastball velocity increase, his other pitches are playing up with his slider (15%) and change (21%) being at career highs in swinging strike percentage. I am not sure why these two pitches are performing better this season. They made be playing off his fastball as hitters are concentrating on his fastball. The pitches have a bit more movement and this could be the cause. Also, he may have changed his deception some. Or it could be a combination of several factors. All I know it is working.

Besides the increase strikeouts, Duffy continues to bring is walk rate under control which hurt his value early in his career. In 2012, his BB/9 was at 5.9 and this season it is a third of that value (1.8). The drop in walks along with the increase in strikeouts put his season’s K%-BB% at 23% for 6th best in the league.

The final aspect to understand with Duffy is he lives up in the strike zone and will give up a ton of fly balls which hurts and helps him. More fly balls mean more home runs and he will likely always have an HR/9 at or above 1.0. One the good side, the additional fly balls lead to more easy outs and he will normally have a suppressed BABIP (.286 on career) and an ERA less than his FIP (3.58 ERA vs 3.98 FIP in his career).

The big question is if Duffy can keep the high strikeout and low walk values going forward. It’s tough to tell, but we still have a month and a half of starts to monitor. Additionally, Duffy pitches at a spring training park with a Pitchf/x system installed so we will have an idea where his velocity sits next spring. I see his 2017 value being a major discussion point this offseason.

What’s left of Carlos Gomez?

Gomez was designated for assignment by the Astros and may end up a free agent soon. He was a top hitter from 2012 to 2014 when he averaged over 20 HR, 35 SB, and .270 AVG per season.

Examining his stats, the two big keys to his decline are his declining power and complete inability to make contact this season. With his power, it climbed steadily until he was 27 and has been falling fast as seen here.

Additionally, his Contact% (66%) abruptly fell to a career low. Gomez has always been a free swinger, so with his ability to make contact deteriorating, he has seen his strikeout rate jump 10 percentage points to 31% and batting average drop to .210.

Looking forward, overcoming both factors is going to be tough for him. He has not been able to stop the three-year decline in power. Even if he does, how much will it jump up? I don’t see him turning this issue around much. I could see him make quite a bit more contact since the drop was all at once. Even if the contact rate increase, will the lack of power just make him a bottom of the order player which produces some stolen bases?

With him, I am watching two items. Where he ends up this year and does that team try to make an improvement in his contact rate. The second is what his spring training and early season contact rate are next year. Right now, I don’t see him being productive and should only be taken as a late-round flier.

Michael Pineda’s Sky High ERA

Michael Pineda has seen a nice steady rise in his velocity to go with a 10.4 K/9 and a reasonable 2.6 BB/9.

With these great numbers, Pineda has a 5.07 ERA because he is getting hit hard as seen by his 1.4 HR/9 and .338 BABIP. The biggest issue I see with Pineda is he is basically just a fastball-slider pitcher (rarely throws a bad change). Hitters are holding off swinging at the slider (which he rarely throws for strikes) and looking for his fastball. Here are the triple slash lines when he is ahead, even, or behind in the count.

Behind: .345/.510/.628
Even: .312/.319/.563
Ahead: .186/.192/.314

He becomes dominant once ahead, but hitters are sitting on his fastball in all other counts because it is the only pitch he can throw for strikes. Unless he can start throwing the slider for strikes or develop a third league average pitch, he is going to continue to get hit hard.

Leaders in Home Runs Plus Stolen Bases

A few years back I created a metric to help find pitchers who are showing signs of a possible injury. I named the metric PAIN (Pitcher Abuse INdex). While I can easily publish the information at all times, I have not been able to dive into the results  as often as I would like. With the new arrangement with BJ Maack and me with the MASH Report, he will be looking at more of the daily and rehab updates and I can then dive into some deeper topics. Today, I will give an update on possible pitcher injuries.

There are just two inputs into the PAIN metric, fastball velocity, and Zone%. I have found drops in both to be indicators of possible pitcher injuries, so I decided to include the pair in the metric. Initially, I had to do a little back fitting to get the system to work. I have made a few minor tweaks over the years, but it has remained relatively constant.

One of the more recent tweaks I have made is to lower the bar for the players at risk. Initially, I made 100 the threshold for risk, but looking back, values of 90 are injured quite often. At some point in the future, I may adjust the formula so 100 is the threshold again.

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Yes, I came up with that brilliant title all by myself. So, Dylan Bundy, he has been a top prospect for seemingly forever. He was selected fourth overall in the 2011 draft and his eventual arrival to the big leagues was eagerly anticipated. His high 90s fastball fueled a near 30% strikeout rate over three different levels during his 2012 debut. Unfortunately, the good times soon came to an end, as he ended up succumbing to Tommy John surgery, which caused him to miss the entire 2013 season. He returned in 2014 to pitch 41.1 innings, but his strikeout rate in High-A over a rather small sample collapsed to just 12.8%. Then in 2015, he was shut down with a shoulder injury and managed to throw just 24 innings. And now, he is back with the Orioles after debuting for two games back in 2012. Phew, it’s been quite the roller coaster ride indeed.

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Cardinals Pitcher Call-Ups: Reyes and Weaver

The Cardinals called up Alex Reyes and he made his first major league appearance for the Cardinals bullpen last light. Reyes is a talent pitcher and here is some comparable pitchers with similar grades to his 2016 Baseball America prospect grade.

The list is dominated by hard throwers with good curve balls which describes Reyes.

Moving onto his Triple-A production this year, the 21-year-old has been a strikeout machine with 12.8 K/9, but he has some issues with walks (4.4 BB/9). Last night he averaged 99 mph with his fastball and was 98 mph in the Arizona Fall League last year. Besides the fastball, he has an above average curve ball. He is a talented pitcher and should be a top 20 pitcher for years to come if his change up is serviceable.

But to put it simply, all the talent doesn’t really matter this season. Reyes will not be useful in most leagues since he will be relegated to the bullpen and is currently not in line for Saves. In redraft leagues, let others fight over him. In keeper leagues, understand his value is limited this season. Now, if I was a non-contender in a keeper league, I would look to see if one of the contenders has Reyes and would try to pick him up for a piece which could help them win a championship.

Luke Weaver is the pitcher owners should be targeting this season instead of Reyes. To start with, here are some comparables for Weaver using MLB.com’s 2016 grades.

The list of pitchers doesn’t bring a ton of excitement to Weaver’s debut on Saturday. The key when looking at these grades is if he can get his curve or slider to be his third league-average pitch. Weaver has been extremely productive in Double-A posting a 1.40 ERA and 10.4 K/9, but a pitcher can dominate the minors with just two pitches. If viewing his start on Saturday, watch to see how his curve and slider work. If he can’t get them going, he may struggle the second or third time through the order.

As for fantasy, I think he is worth a stash in all leagues to see how he performs. I think he could be in the Cardinals’ rotation until the season end because he has only thrown 83 innings this year after throwing 124 IP last year so workload may not be an issue.

Dylan Bundy: Quick Look

I have been intrigued on how Dylan Bundy looks since moving to the Orioles rotation in mid-July. With his injuries and starting the season in the bullpen, I wanted to get an idea of what to expect from him as a starter. For the game, I picked his last start on August 7. Here are my thoughts:

• His fastball was at 92-97 mph with sink at the lower velocities. He had good command of this pitch and seemed to constantly hit is spots with it. This will help him get ahead of hitters who are looking for a pitch in the middle of the plate. His fastball seems to have a couple different movements and I would not be surprised if he has a four-seam fastball and a slower two-seamer.
• His split-change was at 85-87 mph also with plus late sink. This pitch was the best pitch he threw.
• His final pitch is a classic 12-6 curve at 77-80 mph which he used as a chase pitch for called strikes.
• As with any pitcher, when he hung the curve or change, they got crushed.
• If he throws like he did during this game next year, he is going to be a strikeout machine.

For next season, I like the possible production from him and he could be a top-20 to 40 pitcher …. if he stays healthy which is a huge if. I think he will be more valuable in shallow leagues where the replacement level is higher. In deeper leagues, he may end up a wasted pick if he goes back on the DL again for the season. Right now I would put a 140 IP, 9 K/9, and a 3.50 ERA on him for a 2017 projection.

T.J. House: Back in the majors

Going into last season, I had a huge crush on T.J. House after he put up some great numbers at the end of 2014. I bragged him up over the offseason and picked him up where ever I could. Right out of the gate of the 2015 season, House stunk it up and ended up the DL with an injury.

The biggest key I took away from my House love affair, for non-prospect who break out, any kink in their armor will probably make them unplayable. In House’s case, his velocity lost 2 mph from the previous season. There was no way he could keep up his 2014 production with a batting-practice fastball.

His return to the majors is only to the Indians bullpen and his fastball, which he should throw harder from the bullpen, only sits at 90 mph. He is unplayable in all leagues right now, but I will always remember the bond we shared that one offseason.

Parsifal had his Holy Grail, Ahab had his Moby Dick, Sam the Sham had his Ring Dang Doo. What we’ve got is Cheap Starting Pitchers, for which we search obsessively, frustratedly, and often self-destructively. It appears, though, that a strategy for drafting cheap starting pitchers that we proposed back in the pre-season has some promise, and we’d like to report on it for you. Read the rest of this entry »

Corinne Landrey just wrote about Tyler Anderson last week, outlining some loose comparisons between he and Clayton Kershaw. I commend you to read that, but also this. By the way, she doesn’t really think he’s Kershaw, just wanted to point out some interesting similarities. I’m always fascinated when a pitcher finds success at Coors Field so I wanted to see how he was doing it.

He only has 11 major league starts, but eight of them have already been at home. Small sample size caveats are in full effect, of course. The first I noticed about Anderson is that he seems to have different paths to success for home and road. He doesn’t necessarily change how he pitches batters home and road, but the resultant statistical profiles are interesting. He has taken these paths to virtually the same ERA in (3.04) and outside of Coors (3.06).

HOME

In Coors, Anderson leans on his fastball-changeup combo using them a combined 74% of the time. His fastball comes in around 90-92, about average for a lefty, but his 81 MPH changeup helps the heater play up a bit while also being really good, too. He throws it to righties and lefties alike. Righties get it 33% of the time, but lefties get a steady diet as well at 26%.

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Talk to any pitcher about command, and you might be surprised how imprecise they feel they can be. “I have command to one part of the zone, low and away,” said Javier Lopez. “Almost everyone has better command to one side of the plate or the other,” said Zack Greinke. Even Corey Kluber, who has great command of his breaking ball, said that he only aims his breaking ball for the beginning of the break, and then is at the whim of the actual break he gets for where the ball ends up. When Ben Lindbergh asked PITCHf/x how far the glove moves from target to ball on the average pitcher, they told him the glove moves 13 inches. When I asked for leaders on 3-0 counts, it was Dallas Keuchel… with a nine inch average.

So command is a general thing. And yet… there is such a thing as the useless pitch, the pitch with so little command that it serves no purpose. Pitches 2.5 feet from the center of the strike zone are balls 97% of the time. They very rarely get swings, and unless the pitch is behind the batter, they can’t serve much of a purpose if they don’t entice the hitter at all. The idea of the noncompetitive pitch was first mentioned by Jessica Mendoza and then statified by August Fagerstrom.

I ran correlations between non-competitive pitch percentage and walk rate (r2 = .085), strikeout-minus-walk rate (no significance), and soft hit rate (no significance), so at best, it’s a casually interesting way to try to quantify that elusive skill we call command. Let’s see what the leaderboards can tell us about this year’s best and worst at avoiding the noncompetitive pitch.

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Introduction

I plan for this new series, Mixing Fantasy and Reality, to examine in detail how real happenings in baseball affect fantasy valuations. I had several projects I have worked on like xBABIP values and velocity differences in which I plan on including. The MASH Report took up quite a bit of my time compiling and tracking all the injuries and I didn’t have time for other outlets. Today marks a new beginning where I have an opportunity to make additional information available. This series will run on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday

I am not going to completely ignore injuries. If a major injury happens or I think one will happen, I will include the information. Additionally, every Thursday I will write a detailed article exclusively on a few in-depth injury topics like my HURT and PAIN reports.

As for future articles, the format will likely be two to four main areas of discussion and maybe some interesting tidbit not found elsewhere. I am not sure if I will have a set topic rotation or if I will just follow the news. For a few articles, I will need to set some ground work to reference in future articles, so don’t expect all the articles to be full of background information like the first few. I hope you enjoy the change and let me know if you have any suggestions.

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This week I’m feeling a little shallow. The two players I’m covering are probably unavailable in very deep leagues but are certainly under-owned in smaller leagues. I’m talking 14, 15, or maybe even 16 team leagues with small benches. To my friends playing in those deepest of deep leagues, I’ll get you next week.

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Welcome to the final American League starting pitcher tiers of the season. The trade deadline deals resulted in several pitchers departing to the National League, with precious few arriving. With only about two months left in the season, potential innings limits are going to play a major role in rest of season value.

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