On Friday I wrote the following on Kyle Gibson in my Quick Looks piece:
He increased his Zone% a bit from 2013 t0 2014 (41.9% to 43.6%) and saw his K% increase (12.2% to 14.1%) and BB% drop (8.4% to 7.5%).
While, it may seem intuitive that throwing strikes leads to better strikeout and walk rates, I have never seen it tested. I will remedy this issue right now.
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 2014 Arizona Diamondbacks rotation was….not good. As a staff they had the fifth lowest WAR total in the league and the fourth worst ERA. The staff’s xFIP was three quarters of a run lower than their ERA meaning they were slightly above average in that respect. But the main reason for that was the enormous ERA-xFIP gaps for Brandon McCarthy and Wade Miley, both of whom will play for different teams this year. There are still a couple of guys on the staff who may be in line for some positive regression, and there’s a whiff of upside from a couple of guys. But not one of the five starters projected by Steamer to pitch the most innings for Arizona has a FIP projection of 4.00 or lower. Read the rest of this entry »
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.
Jordan Lyles
Why I watched: Young projected starter
Game(s) Watched: 9/26/14 vs Dodgers
Game Thoughts
It’s been a long, strange off season for the Atlanta Braves, and there aren’t too many positions around the diamond where fans will see familiar faces when the season starts in 2015. Despite a flurry of moving parts, the Braves rotation still seems to have plenty of stability and certainly enough relevance among the fantasy faithful as we’re now just days away from Spring Training.
Lost are Gavin Floyd, Aaron Harang, and Ervin Santana to free agency. The Braves faced some tough calls on major contributors from prior seasons in Kris Medlen and Brandon Beachy but ultimately they lost both of them to free agency as well. They traded Jason Heyward and Jordan Walden for Shelby Miller and Tyrell Jenkins. They traded Chasen Shreve and David Carpenter for Manny Banuelos. They got Michael Foltynewicz in the Evan Gattis trade. They signed Chien-Ming Wang and Wandy Rodriguez to a minor league contract. Most recently, they picked up Eric Stults on a minor league deal with an invite to camp. Phew.
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.
Like their infield and outfield, the Red Sox’s 2015 rotation projects to look nothing like it did at the beginning of 2014. That’s probably not bad news: Red Sox starting pitchers were not very good in 2014. They placed 27th in FIP, 23rd in RA9-WAR, and 15th in fWAR. All told, the Sox gave starts to eleven different pitchers. Here’s a quick look at who started for them in 2014:
| Name | GS | IP | K/9 | BB/9 | BABIP | LOB% | GB% | HR/FB | ERA | FIP | xFIP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clay Buchholz | 28 | 170.1 | 6.97 | 2.85 | 0.315 | 62.1% | 46.6% | 9.2% | 5.34 | 4.01 | 4.04 |
| Jon Lester | 21 | 143.0 | 9.38 | 2.01 | 0.308 | 74.0% | 43.2% | 6.5% | 2.52 | 2.62 | 3.00 |
| John Lackey | 21 | 137.1 | 7.60 | 2.10 | 0.298 | 73.7% | 46.9% | 11.5% | 3.60 | 3.56 | 3.32 |
| Jake Peavy | 20 | 124.0 | 7.26 | 3.34 | 0.301 | 74.3% | 39.0% | 12.6% | 4.72 | 4.80 | 4.29 |
| Rubby de la Rosa | 18 | 100.0 | 6.30 | 3.15 | 0.324 | 74.5% | 45.8% | 11.7% | 4.50 | 4.40 | 4.12 |
| Brandon Workman | 15 | 80.2 | 7.03 | 3.90 | 0.299 | 61.0% | 40.8% | 10.8% | 5.36 | 4.52 | 4.33 |
| Allen Webster | 11 | 59.0 | 5.49 | 4.27 | 0.297 | 65.3% | 46.0% | 4.9% | 5.03 | 4.35 | 4.97 |
| Joe Kelly | 10 | 61.1 | 6.02 | 4.70 | 0.237 | 71.1% | 55.3% | 11.1% | 4.11 | 4.62 | 4.46 |
| Felix Doubront | 10 | 50.1 | 6.26 | 4.11 | 0.280 | 66.4% | 36.3% | 11.3% | 5.19 | 5.30 | 4.98 |
| Anthony Ranaudo | 7 | 39.1 | 3.43 | 3.66 | 0.225 | 82.9% | 34.1% | 14.3% | 4.81 | 6.89 | 5.79 |
| Steven Wright | 1 | 5.0 | 7.20 | 3.60 | 0.250 | 66.7% | 60.0% | 0.0% | 0.00 | 2.73 | 3.47 |
From that list, only Buchholz, Kelly, Workman, and Wright remain in the organization. At a glance, Buchholz seemed to be the victim of some bad luck. That might be true, too, of the starting version of Workman, though we might not see much of that version in 2015.
Joining Buchholz and Kelly in the likely “opening day rotation” are Rick Porcello, Wade Miley, and Justin Masterson. While the additions to the rotation are nowhere near as flashy as their signings of Hanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval, the Sox figure to feature an improved rotation in 2015. Between projected improvement (or more average luck?) from Buchholz and by replacing bad innings from Peavy, de la Rosa, Workman, and Webster with [at least] more average innings from Porcello and Miley, they’d be hard-pressed not to be better.
Unlike the outfield situation in Boston, however, there doesn’t seem to be much mystery in how the rotation will look to start the season (though anything can happen between now and then), so let’s look at those top five guys…
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.
It isn’t that the Baltimore Orioles lack a front end starter, they just lack one until Dylan Bundy makes his comeback. He is already set to hit the ground running in spring training, and given the rest of the rotation, Bundy is by far the most intriguing and highest upside stater in Baltimore. That he may or may not even pitch in the majors this season doesn’t speak well for their rotation. Looking at Fantasy Pros ADP — which utilizes info from Yahoo!, NFBC, Fantrax and RealTime Sports — the highest drafted Baltimore starter is Chris Tillman around pick 228 as the 62nd starter off the board. Before we beat up on the rotation too much, lets take a closer look at each hurler.
Front Five
Chris Tillman
Wei-Yin Chen
Kevin Gausman
Bud Norris
Miguel Gonzalez
Other Options
Dylan Bundy
Ubaldo Jimenez
On the Farm
Tim Berry
Mike Wright
Zach Davies
According to ERA, the Cardinals had the sixth best starting staff in 2014. But according to both WAR and xFIP, they were only the 17th best staff in the league. Every starter who threw at least 100 innings for the Cardinals had an ERA that was much lower than their xFIP/SIERA. Combined, the gap between the staff’s ERA and xFIP was -0.36, the third largest negative gap in the league. And our depth charts/projections don’t have any have any Cardinal starter significantly outperforming his peripherals again. Read the rest of this entry »
This post continues our Depth Chart Discussions. In an effort to suss out every team, we’ve divided them into four parts (infield, outfield, bullpen, and rotation) and will continue to break them down for you over the next few weeks. You can find the Depth Chart Discussion posts gathered here.
In an offseason defined by a bevy of moves, the White Sox biggest acquisition may have come in the rotation. Adding Jeff Samardzija not only announced the team’s plans to compete this season, but it also gave them three fantastic starters at the top of the rotation. The secondary effect of adding a strong top-of-the-rotation pitcher is that the other players in the rotation get moved down a peg. For the White Sox, this was a significant development. While the club should by strong at the top, the bottom of the rotation contains some big questions for fantasy owners.
If you bought FG+ — and you should have, because all those player caps and all that research would help you dominate your leagues this year — you might have sallied over to the player page for Nicholas Tropeano. And if you did that, you probably would have noticed that the player cap and the grades from Kiley McDaniel don’t quite agree.
You can probably just ignore the player cap. Some idiot probably wrote it.
But suppose there’s opportunity there? Suppose that disagreement really means that Tropeano is a guy that should be on your radar?
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.
We all know how valuable a pitcher in Petco Park can be, even if they aren’t on the high end of the talent spectrum. Thankfully for us in 2015, the Padres staff will have some of that upper-end talent paired with a far more capable offense to support it. It is incredible how much one addition can make a difference for a club as the rotation looks so much more formidable now with their latest signing. Here is how the top four stack up:
