Is there a more perplexing pitcher this year than Alex Wood has been so far? His pitches are all there, in the same quantities, at the same velocities, and with the same shapes… and the results — when it comes to balls and strikes at least — are nowhere to be found. Even my favorite pitch type peripherals are all out of whack.

How does a pitcher with the same stuff fail so miserably?

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Yesterday, I took the first look of the 2015 season at starting pitcher’s xK%. I began with the potential surgers, those pitchers whose expected strikeout rates were most above their actual marks. Today will be the opposite side of the coin. These pitchers have posted strikeout rates significantly above what their mix of strike percentage, swinging, called and foul strike rates suggest. They could be in for strikeout rate collapses if they don’t improve those peripherals.

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As we near the end of the month, our samples remain far too small to perform any serious analysis on. But, that’s really only true when we’re using plate appearances or innings pitched as our denominator. My xK% equation is based on per-pitch metrics, which stabilize much more quickly than anything based on innings. No, I don’t know the actual stabilization point, but since a pitcher has thrown more pitches than he has innings pitched, that’s what’s going to happen.

So let’s take a look at those starting pitchers whose xK% marks are most above their actual strikeout rates. These are the guys with significant upside who should enjoy a strikeout rate surge in the near future.

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The buy low and sell high strategy has been a favorite one of fantasy leaguers for as long as fantasy sports has existed, I would imagine. Unfortunately, it’s nearly dead given the wealth of freely available information and the deeper knowledge we now possess about how to evaluate player performance. Nearly dead, not completely dead. To buy low or sell high on a player, you need a story, a narrative that essentially offers up confirmation bias and makes the owner you’re dealing with feel all fuzzy inside when agreeing to the trade.

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So often, the first take takes. In other words, whatever prognostication came first, it’ll stick long after the data has taken a new turn. In most respects, when it comes to the games on the field, Addison Russell, Masahiro Tanaka, and Homer Bailey all started on the wrong foot this year. The trick is finding out — quickly — if there’s a chance that first look is obscuring the true value of these guys.

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Cursing at the injury Gods already? Yeah you are. Let’s see what your free agent pool might offer in your deep league.

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I will continue to implement player grading on the scouting scales of 20-80. I will use Kiley McDaniels scale he discussed in this article.

I will give a value for where I think the pitcher could currently fit in on the average team (CV=current value) and where they could end up (FV=future value). I am sure I will disagree with some grades from others, but I am only looking at one game.

Note: If I say a pitch moves 11-5, it is from the pitcher’s perspective.

Chris Heston (CV: 55, FV: 60)

4/13 vs Rockies

Game Thoughts
• Man I expected less. The 27-year-old righty was not ranked here at FanGraphs, but in the 2015 Baseball America Handbook says he is “… without any pitch that grades out as even average.” The biggest key from the BA book is the mention of his 86-89 mph fastball in 2013 (45 grade) and 2015 (40 grade). Also it mentions his change and curve. Not much is the same now.
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Two starts does not a season make, but Chris Heston is quickly making a positive impression. He’s a pitcher who shouldn’t have been on the radar of gamers entering the year, however, it might be time to re-evaluate the 27-year old right-hander. The Giants prefer keep Yusmeiro Petit in a swingman role, and Heston has bypassed Ryan Vogelsong in the rotation pecking order. Matt Cain remains a little less than week away from playing catch, according to Alex Pavlovic of CSN Bay Area. In other words, Heston has at least a few more turns in the rotation before the Giants could have to make some decisions regarding who the five pitchers are in the Giants rotation. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a tough time of the year for fantasy baseball analysts. We’re not even at the end of week two meaning that in most cases the sample sizes are still too small to really be useful. The downside of this is that the fantasy analysis can become lazy as we wait for more data. Too often you see the vague, unhelpful “sell high” tag attached to any mid-rounder who is off to a high start or “buy low” on the star who has two rotten starts on his ledger thus far. But what does that even really mean? It’s so easy to say and so hard to actually execute.

Nobody who spent a top 20 pick on Stephen Strasburg (6.75 ERA in 10.7 IP) is going to move him for Nick Martinez (0.00 ERA in 14 IP). In fact, they probably aren’t going to move him at all (nor should they). You know what’s easy? Me telling you to go sell high on Chris Heston. But it’s also generic and frankly, shitty advice because it offers no insight into what selling high might be, especially because I know full well that unless Teresa Heston (that Chris’ mom, I looked it up) is in your league, you can’t really cash him in for some great return. The rest of your league is just as skeptical about his dubious 0.69 ERA as you are right now.

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Yesterday, I issued my first challenge. Sparked by Brandon McCarthy’s bizarre outing on Monday, I asked you to prove that his HR/FB rate was not bad luck. The challenge led to some great discussion, which is exactly what I had hoped it would do.

Now it’s time to move on to the second, and likely final, challenge. It’s a topic that I am more interested in and has been debated ad nauseam. Of course, I’m talking about pitcher BABIP. We have been taught that pitchers will tend to regress toward the league average, which has sat around .295 in recent years, as hitters actually possess the majority of control over how often balls in play falls for hits. So early on, we eventually came to accept this.

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