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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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.

According to WAR, FIP and xFIP, the Indians rotation was one of the three best in the league last year, which is kind of amazing considering Trevor Bauer had the second highest innings total on the staff. But it certainly didn’t hurt that they had a guy with a 4.30 ERA as a starter prior to 2014 who more than delivered on the promise indicated in his peripherals by winning the AL Cy Young award. But one pitcher does not a good rotation make. In addition to their Cy Young winner, they got sub-3.00 ERA ball from another starter for just over 90 innings, and they had five starters throw at least 90 innings with an xFIP of 3.50 or lower. Assuming everyone is healthy come Opening Day, two of those five don’t figure to crack the rotation. I dare say this rotation might be good again. Read the rest of this entry »

I expected to follow up my xK% differential post from last week with a complementary xBB% differential post. For those who don’t enjoy surprises, I’ll let you know now that that didn’t happen. In its stead, I bring what I hope is good news — news that will not only influence a future xBB% differential post but also may impact general pitcher analysis henceforth and possibly international diplomacy.

The title of this post, however, is a tad misleading. I think I can say, with some degree of certainty — and I hope to demonstrate, with some degree of competency — that pitch sequencing indeed plays a role in a pitcher’s walk rate, as the devilishly handsome Mike Podhorzer has postulated. What I can’t describe, with any degree of certainty, is the magnitude of the role it plays. In truth, I desperately want to prove Mike wrong: there must be other factors, outside of pitch sequencing (and pitch framing, perhaps), that help explain a pitcher’s walk rate. For example, I have tried incorporating O-Swing% and Zone%, two PITCHf/x metrics provided by FanGraphs that I swore would fill in the cracks, but they offer little in the way of additional explanatory power.

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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.

The Mariners’ rotation might not boast the immense quality of, say, the Washington Nationals, but fantasy owners will find plenty of useful pieces in the Pacific Northwest. Of course, the party is led by one of baseball’s undisputed aces, but he’s joined by two solid rotation men and a host of talented upside guys on the back end. Meanwhile, the Mariners, coming off a strong 87-75 record last year, should give their starters plenty of chances to cash in on wins, especially with a bullpen that was among the league leaders in WAR, a lineup that just added Nelson Cruz and a ballpark that caters toward pitchers.
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Yesterday, I discussed some of the starting pitchers ranked inside the top 100 who us rankers most disagreed on. Though it was suggested that a better comparison would be solely between ranks within the position and not overall, I’m not sure that matters since it’s all relative. If one ranker devalues pitchers (Jeff), then all his pitchers will be ranked lower, so it’s moot.

Here is a selection of starting pitchers ranked outside the top 100 who we greatly disagree about.

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The easiest way to tell you who I like is to actually tell you how I like every pitcher, I guess. So, by popular demand, here are my starting pitcher rankings. With a few toys that could be useful to you.

When making these rankings, I started with z-score style rankings based off of Steamer projections. You can find those yourself by using the Pauction Nalculator, for example. That’s a good way to keep your feet grounded in reality, since Steamer projects to the middle.

But breakouts happen. And so I’ve added a couple stats that help me spot breakouts. Strikeout minus walk rate was the backbone of the first ERA estimators ever put together (kwERA), so they aren’t new. And they might be a little better for in-season prediction versus season-to-season. Either way, they are clearly important and can give us a good snapshot of talent, even in a small sample.

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According to WAR, the 2014 Oakland rotation was the tenth best staff in the league. But without 185 or so combined innings from Jon Lester and Jeff Samardzija, it’s going to be hard for them to repeat that feat. They brought in a few new faces, but for the most part, they’ll begin the year by filling the holes with internal options. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I discussed which hitters us rankers most disagreed on based on our consensus top 300. Today I move on to the starting pitchers. Keep in mind that innings pitched plays a major role in valuations. Aside from the boost in both wins and strikeouts that come with more innings, the ratios have more of an effect. For example, an $8.16 Michael Pineda in 155 innings is worth $15.49 in 200 innings! Now it’s on to the head-scratchers.

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