The Pod Projections are back! My projections are based on the methodology shared in my eBook Projecting X, and the process continues to evolve and improve.

Interestingly, I have seen many commenters ask for advice when choosing between this Monday’s Pod Projectionee, Carlos Carrasco, and today’s choice, Jacob deGrom. You’ll see when I unveil my full deGrom projection below, but it’s a rather close call, as they have very similar forecasts.

With that said, deGrom essentially came out of nowhere last year to post a sub-3.00 ERA in 22 starts and earn NL Rookie of the Year honors. He generally posted ho-hum minor league peripherals, but perhaps fueled by a faster slider, his coming out party occurred in the Majors. Before beginning my projection, I shared four reasons why deGrom was for real. Since I gave it away above by comparing the projection to Carrasco’s, I’ll tell you that I still feel the same way.

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It’s time for our Depth Chart Discussions to begin. In an effort to suss out every team, we’ve divided them into four parts (infield, outfield, bullpen, and rotation) and will begin breaking them down for you over the next few weeks. You can find them gathered here.

The Giants may have won the World Series last year, but before they got to the postseason, their rotation was not the strength of the team. In the regular season they ranked mid-pack at 16th in ERA and near the bottom in WAR at 28th. And it was primarily just Madison Bumgarner that was the strength of the team in the postseason as he threw almost a third of all innings for the Giants in the playoffs. Aside from mid-season acquisition Jake Peavy, the Giants have not added anyone to the staff. That should probably concern fans of the defending champs. Of course, three titles in five years helps ease some concerns. But for fantasy owners under-performance the year prior sometimes leads to value on draft day. Read the rest of this entry »

Two weeks ago, I wrote about the importance of evaluating expected strikeout rate (xK%) in the context of each pitcher’s respective histories. In other words, xK% on its own can only tell you so much about a pitcher’s chance and magnitude of regression toward the mean.

And last week, I refined the expected walk rate (xBB%) metric for pitchers by adding a proxy for pitch sequencing in the form of percentage of counts that reach 3-0 (“3-0%”). This helped better explain the model’s fit with respect to the data, as pitchers who worked into more 3-0 counts tended to walk more batters. (Who knew?)

The logical next step is to combine the two aforementioned analyses: 1) comparing xBB% to BB% 2) for each pitcher over time. I’ll reiterate a couple of key points. Calculating a pitcher’s xBB% can give us a decent idea of how lucky or unlucky he may have been during a given season. Calculating his xBB% and comparing it to his actual BB% on an annual basis can give us a better idea of truly how he typically performs against his xBB% — that is, if he consistently outperforms his xBB%, perhaps the difference between his xBB% and BB% is not a matter of luck at all but a skill or characteristic not captured by the variables specified in the xBB% equation.
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The Cubs biggest move of the offseason may have impacted the rotation, but there are still plenty of questions on how the other four players will perform. The Cubs won the Jon Lester sweepstakes, but the rest of the rotation remains intact. Even Jason Hammel can back after a brief departure to Oakland. While Hammel and Jake Arrieta have plenty of upside, the team will still have to depend on a shaky back-end. Aside from Lester, who can you really trust moving forward?

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This post continues our Depth Chart Discussions. In an effort to suss out every team, we’ve divided them into four parts (infield, outfield, rotation, and bullpen) and will continue to break them down for you over the next few weeks. You can find the Depth Chart Discussion posts gathered here.

By our projections, the Dodgers have the second best starting pitching staff in baseball. That makes for quite an attractive rotation. Let’s discuss these lads, shall we?

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If you knew of me before I started here at Fangraphs, it was probably because of the Starting Pitcher Guide that I release yearly. I have joined forces with Doug Thorburn in recent years, too. He is a pitching mechanics guru who lives and breathes baseball. He’s also an avid fantasy gamer so it was a perfect marriage.

We released the 2015 version this past weekend and you can get it at thespguide.com now. Eno was kind enough to allow me the chance to share a sample with y’all so you can see what we are all about. Doug and I have decided on Gerrit Cole as the profile to share. This year we tackled 380 pitchers across the 30 organizations and wrote up 412 pages and 154,735 words about them. That is an average of about 400 words per player. Of course, some got many more and others aren’t in need of that many just yet. By the way, my writing stops at the mechanics report card and then it shifts to Doug’s work! 

Without further ado, our thoughts on Cole:

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It’s time for our Depth Chart Discussions to begin. In an effort to suss out every team, we’ve divided them into four parts (infield, outfield, bullpen, and rotation) and will begin breaking them down for you over the next few weeks. You can find them gathered here.

The Brewers rotation was exceedingly stable in 2014. They had three starters who threw 190+ innings and another guy who threw 160+ innings. As a result, they only used seven starters all year, which I would imagine was at least tied for the lowest number in the league. But their workhorse starters weren’t just innings eaters. The three guys who topped 190 innings all had an ERA just north of 3.50 while the 160-inning starter had an ERA just north of 3.60. Unfortunately, none of their starters were aces or even close to it, which is why they ranked just 15th in ERA and 17th in WAR.

The stability is expected to continue this year despite Yovani Gallardo’s departure as they have five starters projected to throw between 160 and 180 innings. Again, none are projected to be aces, and several are projected to regress from what they did last year. But if nothing else, they have the classic innings eaters who can keep them in games and give the team a chance to win, a trait that is far more appealing to color commentators than it is to fantasy owners. Read the rest of this entry »

The Pod Projections are back! My projections are based on the methodology shared in my eBook Projecting X, and the process continues to evolve and improve.

If there was just one thing to be thankful for last year in baseball, it was Carlos Carrasco. I had written a lot about him heading into the season and his performance upon returning to the rotation prompted more articles salivating over the quality of his stuff. So he was a rather obvious candidate to earn the honor of my first starting pitcher receiving the Pod Projection treatment.

For those who forget (how dare you!), Carrasco posted the following line over his final 10 starts of the season:

Despite those sizzling results coming over a relatively small sample size, fantasy owners are going gaga over Carrasco. He is currently the 115th player off the board in the NFBC and is the 28th starter selected, ahead of more established veterans like Gio Gonzalez and Hyun-Jin Ryu. And no, I haven’t stuffed the ballots by joining every single NFBC league and drafting Carrasco.

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This will be the last week where I will look back at 2014 starts unless something comes up which requires going back. Since I am not 100% sure I will have games to watch week, I will publish all of the Quick Take Final Thoughts before the upcoming season. I plan on giving some pitchers a second look if they need it.

Note: I usually try to pick the most recent game the player pitched. Sometimes the MLB video has issues and other games are picked. Also, if a say a pitch moves 11-5, it is from the pitcher’s perspective.

Henderson Alvarez

Why I watched: About no strikeouts with a 94 mph fastball.

Game(s) Watched: 9/28/14 vs. Nationals

Game Thoughts

• Everything the 25-year-old righty throws breaks down. This downward action has him at a 55% GB% for his career. Of those pitchers with 400 IP thrown over the last three seasons, his ground ball rate is the fifth highest.

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The outlook on Wily Peralta hasn’t drastically changed over the last year. Coming into 2014, he was a young arm in possession of some tantalizing skills: elite velocity, two plus pitches, and a tremendous groundball rate. He repeated all of that in 2014 en route to his best season yet, but there are still some issues to iron out. His season essentially breaks up into three parts, with his success against left-handers setting the tone in each.

He got off to a great start with a 2.12 ERA in his first 10 starts. The wheels came off for an eight-start run in early-summer, and he was tattooed for a 6.38 ERA before closing out the season with a 3.00 ERA in his last 14 starts, as he held the opposition to 29 earned runs – 13 of which came in two ugly starts at the end of August. His OPS against lefties in the three parts were .681, 1.063, and .759. The blowup in the middle was fueled by the slider getting uncharacteristically smashed for a couple of weeks, as all five homers that lefties hit off the pitch came during that stretch. He allowed a 1.420 OPS with the pitch, despite a 10-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio in the 24 plate appearances. Small samples can really hurt!

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