How do you judge a pitcher’s true talent? Think of Bud Norris, who recently added a cutter and finally ditched that change that was never any good. Think of Sonny Gray, who’s seemingly lost command of his vaunted curveball. Think of Michael Fulmer‘s new changeup. Matt Shoemaker‘s recent (re)dedication to the splitter. Rich Hill‘s constant injuries. Junior Guerra’s nasty stuff, discovered after a move from behind the plate to behind the rubber.

These changes are so radical and so abrupt that it seems too simple to settle on one number to judge them. So these ranks are futile!

At least these ranks are based on a few numbers in an intuitive way. The base list was sorted for strikeouts plus pop-ups minus walks, for sure. That’s an easy way to ignore balls in play and focus on the the three outcomes that we think pitchers can really handle best. Then I added a list that featured exit velocity in the ideal launch angles, because there’s some evidence that pitchers can suppress their exit velo.

And then, when I encountered a name that has seen a change in production recently, I looked at their game logs. I did! Not only to see what their recent work was like, but then to also check if any of those changes in production were related to large changes in pitching mix.

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If you follow me on Twitter, you know how this ends. Statistically speaking, though, you probably don’t follow on me Twitter, so you probably don’t know how this ends. Then again, maybe you really do know how this ends, because when you clicked this link, you probably had to read the title first. Or maybe you didn’t! Honestly, I don’t want to pigeonhole you. Maybe you’re the kind of person who clicks links all willy nilly with zero regard for content. I’m sure SEO folks love you but also lose their minds trying to understand you.

No matter. Let’s pretend you didn’t read the title. Now you’re presented with blind résumés. Can you guess who Players A and B are?

Did you have to cheat? It may actually be more difficult than you thought. You know the names already, but perhaps you got them out of order: Kyle Hendricks is Player A and Tanner Roark is Player B. But look at that! Hendricks and Roark are almost perfectly identical within every metric. Roark even edges Hendricks in xFIP, innings per start, and WAR per start. It’s kind of a big deal, given Hendricks is owned in more Yahoo! leagues than Roark (85% to 78%).

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His rookie season didn’t get off to a good start, but Sean Manaea has pitched much better since making a change to how he throws his changeup. Eno tweeted a pic of the old and new grip in late May. The lefty’s 5.24 ERA is bloated due to his first three starts prior to throwing his new changeup, but he’s been fairly good since. Dylan Bundy has battled injuries and totaled 65.1 innings — this total includes his Arizona Fall League work in 2015 — from 2014-2015 after undergoing Tommy John surgery on June 26, 2013. The righty isn’t likely to be a major impact player the remainder of the year, but he could help a bit and his keeper-league stock is up. Read the rest of this entry »

Since 2013, I have polled you dashingly attractive readers on which group of pitchers you think will post the better aggregate ERA post all-star break. The two groups were determined based on ERA-SIERA disparity, pitting the underperformers versus the overperformers during the pre-all-star break period.

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The All-Star break is a time to furiously send trade offers before those bottom half teams check out, or at least try to entice them back to their computers for one last look at their teams so that they might help you improve yours. But we’re all in different types of leagues, so instead of a few mixed-league buy low players, I thought I would try to dream up some buy-low players for every situation. I won’t cover all of you, that’s impossible with the proliferation of fantasy baseball styles these days, but maybe I’ll cover more of you.

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Waiver wires – like the southwest being obliterated by consistent triple-digit temperatures – are bone dry at this point. This is why every top-100 prospect who comes up gets obscenely bid up in FAAB proceedings just in case he’s ready to dominate immediately. Perhaps the ripest avenue for talent still left at this point is the disabled list, and specifically, pitchers on the mend. Let’s check in on three Tommy John returners working their way back and see if they can be our second-half saviors, especially as we seem to lose a top arm every day over the last couple of weeks.

Alex Cobb | Tampa Bay Rays

I’m starting with Cobb almost to just get him out of the way. I’ll state out front that I don’t draft TJ returners in their first year back (though I won’t completely ignore them on the wire at this point in the season). Not only are they rarely anywhere near as good as their peak, but even in those instances where they are really good, they frequently run into setbacks which often results in another DL stint (see also: Darvish, Yu this year and Fernandez, Jose last year). Cobb has all that and the fact that the Rays are notoriously deliberate with pitchers working against him.

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A pitcher’s excellent performance early in the season can obscure poor performance later on, as his stats slowly converge toward expectations. If you held onto Jordan Zimmermann too long, you suffered the consequences. The same applies for the opposite scenario; Matt Shoemaker has been one of the baseball’s better pitchers since mid-May after an atrocious start to the season.

Alas, the deeper we get into the season, the more important it becomes to check recent leaderboards. With the way player performance ebbs and flows during a season, a span of five or six starts can probably be considered a small sample size. Still, keeping an eye on these small samples can illuminate interesting trends.

For whatever reason, there seem to be a lot of unfamiliar or unexpected names on FanGraphs’ xFIP leaderboards under the “last 30 days” split. Let’s break them down!

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Adam Conley is having a pretty good season for a 26-year old in his first full MLB season. Adam Conley has looked great at points in this season, including 7.7 no-hit innings at Milwaukee in late-April. Adam Conley even brought a 2.59 June ERA into his final start of the month at Detroit. But Adam Conley has a problem. Well, two problems including that I won’t stop using his full name. Adam Conley can’t get through batting orders three times on consistent basis.

This was crystallized in his start at Detroit on June 28th. He only faced three guys for a third time, allowing a double, walk, and home run that finished off a five-run inning in which he relinquished his 3-0 lead. He had 62 pitches coming into the inning and left with 92. That’s right around his breaking point. He was better against Atlanta in his most recent outing, facing four guys for a third time and going strikeout, flyout, walk, and groundout. But situations like Detroit have been the norm for Conley this year.

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This week over at SaberSim, I released a tool that allows users to view more detailed projected performance for their lineups. Rather than just adding up projected points for each player, this new Lineup Analysis tool allows us to view mean, median, standard deviation, and percentile projections for the lineup as a whole. In other words, rather than combining each player’s distribution separately, SaberSim analyzes the performance of the entire lineup across each simulated game.

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Michael Fulmer opened the season as the Tigers’ top prospect. After just 15.1 innings over three Triple-A starts, the Tigers couldn’t wait any longer, recalling him to debut at the end of April. And boy what a decision that was, as Fulmer now owns a sparkling 2.11 ERA after yesterday’s start in 13 games.

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