Hitters have to be jealous of pitchers in at least one respect. A pitcher can add a new pitch — maybe by fiddling with the grip or the release — and that new pitch can make them into a totally different guy. Hitters can fiddle with their mechanics, but it’s rare that there’s a readily available obvious and easy change they can make that rises to the level of a New Changeup.

Speaking of new changeups, check out Carlos Martinez.

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As you are likely (hopefully) aware, I’m not a fan of small sample size analysis. In fact, it could be argued that I’m far too patient, requiring the sample size to be quite significant before I change my opinion/projection on a player. But a pitcher’s SwStk% is different. It’s a per-pitch metric, so it stabilizes rather quickly and conveys very useful information. So with that in mind, let’s browse through the SwStk% leaders over the last 30 days and look to uncover any surprise names.

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A couple weeks ago I shared my Hail Mary infield, a group of infielders you should consider collecting on a struggling team in the hopes that you hit it big with them returning to form. The idea is that you can also get them at a discount, thus a surge to their talent level would net a huge payoff. Today I’m going to hit the mound and discuss the Hail Mary pitchers. Pitching can deliver a bigger payoff in most cases. League standings will dictate which side you’re better off attacking, but a big pitching run can pay huge dividends in relatively short order.

Four of the five hitting categories are counting stats so the accumulation to make a move can be more of a slow burn. Additionally, the one rate stat (usually AVG or OBP) doesn’t usually move too quickly once we get around this point in the season as the ABs/PAs start to pile up. A single exemplary performance from a hitter – even something like 5-for-5 with a homer and six RBIs – rarely has the impact that one huge start does and once start stringing them together, movement comes quickly.

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If you guessed this post might relate to BABIP, you would be right. Last year, the highest BABIP by a qualified start in either league was .339, followed by four between .320 and .330. This season, the Major League average BABIP for starters sits at .297, while for American Leaguers it stands slightly lower at .295. The five starters below lead the American League with the highest BABIP marks. There doesn’t even need to be any deep analysis done to say with near certainty that better BABIP days ahead. But of course, that would be lazy, so analysis there shall be.

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It took a dominant 11-strikeout, zero-walk performance from Taijuan Walker for the fantasy world to finally take notice of him. I don’t have ownership trend data to exemplify this, but I do have an anecdote: he was available in every league I’m in before the start, and he was owned in every league I’m in shortly after it.

The truth is Walker had demonstrated progress, described here by Eno Sarris, in his prior four starts, notching 27 strikeouts to three walks in 29 innings. Someone who hadn’t been paying attention to Walker probably wouldn’t have noticed: his ERA prior to the recent five-game surge stood at 7.33, and he had completed the sixth inning only twice in nine games. Once a hyped prospect, he looked like a 22-year-old who still needed seasoning to reach his potential.

No longer, as you will probably have to give up an asset of value to acquire Walker from a fellow owner now. The price may not be too steep given his poor ratios (4.94 ERA, 1.39 WHIP), but this is likely the highest they’ll be for the rest of the season.

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Among the peccadilloes and eccentricities that we’re willing to confess to in this forum, perhaps the most embarrassing is our continuing thirst for 80’s synthpop, which we were too old for even the first time around. The sillier and stupider the better, as far as we’re concerned: Human League, Soft Cell, Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark, Human League, A Flock of Seagulls, Men Without Hats, and of course post-Vince Clarke Depeche Mode, goth-synth titans so dumb they make Ozzy Osbourne look like Harold Bloom. (Come to think of it: Have you seen Oz lately? Even with the makeover, he does look kind of like Harold Bloom, who’s looked pretty much the same for the last 40 years.)

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It was a Monday night just a few weeks ago that I watched the destruction of two high-quality pitchers (one is a bona fide ace) sink my DFS evening yet again and I actually wrote about it at another outlet. Just three weeks later, I saw my DFS night end before it started as another pitcher had his face caved in and this time by baseball’s worst team both by record and wRC+ against righties. Michael Pineda was rocked for eight earned on 11 hits in just 3.3 innings with nary a strikeout to soften the blow.

It’s the second time in three starts that Pineda has been blown up like this and the fourth time this year he’s allowed five or more earned runs. This is the same guy who has a 16-strikeout game on his ledger this year as well as three others of nine strikeouts. This is the same guy who had a 2.72 ERA through his first seven starts of the season.

But the volatility, my god, the volatility.

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Pitching has been kind of weird this year. We are still definitely in a pitcher’s era. There has been a slight decline in strikeout rate for starters from 19.4% to 19.2%, but it’s still historically high. Meanwhile, starter walk rate across the league has held at 7%. ERA is back up over 4.00 (just slightly at 4.03) after last year’s 3.82 mark, something the league hasn’t come close to since 1992’s mark of 3.85 for starters.

The overwhelming pitching depth from recent years finally started to change the valuations in the fantasy game and now the collective fantasy world is feeling kind of burned. After all, there are only 25 pitchers with a sub-3.00 ERA (at least 50 IP). We had 33 such pitchers through this point last year. A total of 77 were at 4.00 or better at this time last year, a figure that is down to 68 so far this year.

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A week ago, I discussed six American League starting pitchers with the largest increases in fastball velocity from April to May. Today, I’ll check in on seven AL starters who have suffered through a decline in fastball velocity. But since we’re 2 1/2 weeks into June, I’m now comparing May velocity to June velocity. Since velocity stabilizes rather quickly, then the three starts or so in June should be enough to analyze the data.

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When I decided to write this post, I already knew I would investigate which pitchers experience the largest platoon splits. I know this kind of information is helpful for daily fantasy sports (DFS), and I had yet to see someone undertake this task, although perhaps I wasn’t looking hard enough. I would take a relatively simply metric, sure to ruffle the feathers of the nitpicky, and compare its magnitude against lefties to its magnitude against righties for all pitchers. The largest differences between the two rates would warrant my attention. So, too, would the smallest. (Indeed, the absolute smallest would.)

However, I got distracted, as I am wont to do. I walk into a grocery store needing bread and milk and leave with paneer, sprouted tortillas, maple bacon Kettle chips and a 32-ounce bottle of sriracha. Really, I get distracted every time I sit down to write, and I rarely write the piece I originally intended to. My point: I get distracted by things.

Things like Chris Archer, who seems to be the Major League Baseball equivalent of the The Most Interesting Man on Earth.

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