I’m a sucker for velocity. If a pitcher throws hard enough, I’m willing to forgive more warts on their profile. With that in mind, I’ve fully accepted Mike Foltynewicz as a viable back of the rotation, mixed league arm with upside. Deductive reading skills probably led you to the conclusion he throws hard, and your reading skills haven’t failed you. Among starters who have pitched a minimum of 40 innings, his 94.8 mph average four-seam fastball velocity ranks tied with Stephen Strasburg for the eighth highest. His two-seam fastball checks in with an average velocity of 94.4 mph, tied for the 12th highest mark. He throws his two heaters a whopping 74.1% of the time. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re making our way around the diamond with our updated rankings and today we are diving into the starting rotation, a robust fantasy position with plenty of elite-level talent, but maybe a soft middle. Here are the positions we’ve done so far and you can also access them via the Positional Rankings in the right sidebar:

• Catchers
• First Basemen
• Second Basemen
• Shortstops
• Third Baseman
• Outfielders

We probably didn’t miss anyone here. If you think someone is missing, you can definitely mention him in the comments, but chances are he just didn’t make the cut.

I ranked 150, Zach ranked 122, Mike ranked 100, and Eno – yes Eno is here for the SP Ranks!!! – ranked 134. If they didn’t rank someone that one of the others did, he was given a +1 of their last rank as I’m sure you noticed in the other positions, but there’s a lot of different opinions with pitchers so it’s more prevalent here.
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Like most Americans of our generation, we remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when we got the news about Kennedy. It seems like just yesterday. In fact, though, it was last week, and we were sitting at our computers, as usual, staring at baseball numbers, as usual. We froze with horror and disbelief as we saw that Ian Kennedy had pitched 3 2/3 innings, allowing 9 baserunners and 7 earned runs. Actually, now that we brood about it, that may instead have been May 17, when we were sitting at our computers, as usual, staring at baseball numbers, as usual. We froze with horror and disbelief as we saw that Kennedy had pitched 5 innings and given up 6 earned runs. Or, we wonder, as the mystic chords of memory begin to chime like Peter Buck’s guitar, was it instead May 12, when we distinctly recall freezing with horror and disbelief as we saw that Kennedy had pitched 4 2/3 innings, let 11 guys reach base, and surrendered 5 earned runs? No, wait—it might, after all, have been April 25, when Kennedy pitched 4 1/3 innings, with 9 baserunners and 8 earned runs the outcome, and we froze with horror and disbelief. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s rankings update time! As you may have consistently noticed as the updated RotoGraphs consensus rankings for hitters have gradually been released, two months of performance is hardly a large enough sample size to move the needle all that much for me. Unless there is a clear explanation for a change in performance and/or underlying skills, then more often than not, the player is going to revert to what you had him projected for in the preseason.

For pitchers, it’s essential to remember that ERA is not a skill. It’s just a result. So I don’t really care what a pitcher’s ERA is at the moment. What I’m really interested in is their peripherals and any changes in pitch mix and/or velocity. And even if their peripherals have changed, you then have to ask yourself if its sustainable. Again, more likely is that what we initially forecasted is what is going to be posted the rest of the way, though obviously this is not always the case.

As a reminder, the tiers are named after the best characters from the FXX show, Man Seeking Woman.

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It’s not often I have a streak of deep league waiver wire recommendations that have been so ridiculously poor. Let’s recap, shall we?

Last week, I recommended Marc Krauss. The very next day, he was DFA’d.

Two weeks ago, I recommended Drew Stubbs. He was option to Triple-A that night. But that wasn’t all. In that post, I also recommended Tommy Field. He was DFA’d last Saturday. Though I did end my blurb on him by saying, “This is not a long-term recommendation and his opportunity might be shorter than Stubbs’.”

Three weeks ago, I recommended Jackie Bradley Jr. He was sent back to Triple-A nine days later.

Oof, that’s pathetic. It either goes to show you how difficult it is to recommend these types of players or I have just done a terrible job sorting through the trash to uncover a gem. Probably a little of both. Here’s to hoping my streak has ended and better recommendations are in my future!

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Jason Hammel was never an elite prospect with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, but there was a level of expectation for production that he seemed to fall short of which eventually led to his being traded to Colorado. Predictably, he didn’t flourish there (though he also wasn’t a nightmare, either) and was again traded, this time to Baltimore in 2012. To this point in his career, Hammel was a slightly below league average arm who lacked that reliable offering to thwart lefties consistently and he wasn’t anywhere near dominating righties as a way to make up for it. The move to Baltimore started to turn that tide.

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Most of you know that I love tracking pitches as if they were players. Jeurys Familia‘s slider just got overtaken by the one by thrown by Sergio Santos in whiff rate! David Robertson‘s knuckle curve is now number one in the game by whiffs, not Craig Kimbrel’s! With at least 20 balls in play, no pitch has a bigger grounder rate than the sinkers by Javier Lopez, with Chad Qualls, Charlie Morton, Brad Ziegler and Brad Hand rounding out the top five.

Anyway, I fired up my favorite query for you, and thought I’d point out some notable pitches.

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Prior to just a few weeks ago, Chad Bettis was an absolute after thought; he had struggled in previous chances in the bigs, even when pitching in relief, and didn’t seem to be a part of Colorado’s plans. A couple Rockies injuries and some ineffectiveness later, and Bettis has a sub-3.00 ERA in four MLB starts and a near 4/1 K/BB ratio. In order to get a better sense of what Bettis has been doing, I watched his start from last Sunday against the Giants, where he struck out seven in over eight innings of work.

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When the Dodgers signed Brett Anderson to a one-year, $10 million dollar deal this offseason there was a tinge excitement because a well thought of arm was headed to a well thought of organization and maybe we hoped Andrew Friedman and Co. could somehow keep Anderson healthy. He was also getting away from Coors Field. For what it’s worth, his groundball-heavy approach found some success with the Rockies, but obviously from the fantasy perspective, he is far more interesting in Los Angeles.

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Strikes are good. Your favorite starting pitcher throwing a higher rate of them is a wonderful sign. In fact, I like to identify high strikeout starters with control issues as breakout candidates. Control is much easier to improve upon then strikeout rate and it tends to get better with maturity. So let’s take a look at eight American League starting pitchers throwing a higher rate of overall strikes than last season. For context, the league average Str% is 64.2%

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