On Thursday, I discussed the American League starting pitchers who have experienced the largest changes in their fastball velocity since last season. Although still extremely early, and at a time where velocities are at their lowest points of the season, the data stabilizes rather quickly and still provides a ton of insight. Today we’ll check in on the National Leaguers.
Pitchers tend to post a better ERA in April than any other month. That’s usually blamed on various factors ranging from weather to hitters working on their timing. Even though April is a good month for pitching, it doesn’t mean everyone pitches well. Some good pitchers have struggled this April, and you might be able to acquire them cheaply.
Let’s reflect on human nature. We all know not to overreact to a couple bad starts. Yet according to experiments, we can’t help but frame a player’s value based on his performance. I may know that Cliff Lee is a great pitcher going forward, but his 6.00 ERA may still trick me into selling low on him.
Here’s a big old dashboard of the 38 starting pitchers with an ERA of 4.50 or higher through April 9. Or you can head straight to the dashboard itself.
We’re only a week and a half into the season and therefore no American League starting pitchers have started more than two games. With such a tiny sample size to work with, there simply isn’t enough data to analyze that would yield any sort of insight. However, we know that velocity stabilizes very quickly and so it would therefore be worthwhile to check in on the biggest velocity surgers and decliners. Velocity gradually increases as the season wears on, so it would be most accurate to compare current velocities with last April. However, too many pitchers came up later in the year and had no velocity readings to compare to. So to make things easier, I am comparing to the full season.
Padres pitcher Ian Kennedy is ready for a rebound. After just 11 innings, it’s starting to look like his move to San Diego will pay off. Kennedy opened the year as a late-round flyer in most fantasy leagues. After three years of consistent production in Arizona, everything seemed to fall apart for Kennedy last season. Kennedy not only walked more batters, but also saw his home run rate jump to obscene levels. This continued even after a mid-season trade to one of the largest parks in the game. When the dust settled, Kennedy’s ERA was a disappointing 4.91. Since he wasn’t an elite option before the drop-off, Kennedy became nothing more than late-round fodder. Based on what he’s shown thus far, it looks like the old Kennedy is back.
Week 1 is in the books, and with the tiny sample size comes the emergence of several deep league options, overlooked on draft day, who are providing hope that they can help owners in the immediate term.
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Nathan Eovaldi followed up his 2014 debut — three runs, six hits, eight strikeouts, no walks in seven innings — with another strong performance Sunday. He lost the game, but eight strikeouts against no walks in seven innings is impressive, even when set against three earned runs on six hits. Is he a must-acquire suddenly? After all, he’s averaging over 96 on his fastball.
I remain skeptical, but I’m always willing to admit I’m wrong, so it is without biases that I try to appraise Eovaldi’s 2014 arsenal.
With most teams only through their opening series, we’re not in any position to be making wide-sweeping arguments about the 2014 season. And just like fans across the country overvalue the first week of the season, many fantasy owners place too much stock in their early-season performance. Sure, it counts, but it’s tough to stay patient when your team is stuck in the cellar after the first few games, especially if you’re a Cliff Lee owner and saw him implode on Opening Day or if you bought into the Khris Davis hype and have yet t0 see him get on base in 2014.
But while we’re unable to say much about the season as a whole, I have three observations about the first handful of games that hopefully provide a kernel of insight.
(1) Do not fret about early-season offensive woes. You’re not alone.
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages…I’m going to have a hard time concentrating today. As you can see in the byline below this article, I am a shameless pro wrestling fan — with WrestleMania XXX coming up this Sunday, I’ll do my best to prevent my subconscious from letting this turn into an endless stream of irrelevant wrasslin’ references. Let’s take a swig of beer for the workin’ man and get this show on the road, shall we?
Roenis Elias is making his first major-league start tonight, and he’s a pretty interesting guy to talk about. The 25-year-old Cuban has lively raw stuff and a decent track record in the minors over the last couple seasons, but no one went into Spring Training expecting him to crack the major-league rotation. However, with Hisashi Iwakuma and Taijuan Walker on the shelf to open the season, and veteran reclamation project Scott Baker pitching so poorly in March that the Mariners released him, the left-handed Elias finds himself making the jump from Double-A to the big leagues.
A new season beginning means a new set of tiered rankings. As usual, I’ll be sharing with you lovely readers my American League starting pitcher ranks. All my rankings lists are based on projected value moving forward with no accounting for what the pitcher has already done (which of course is nothing for the majority of pitchers at this point). I am extremely patient before moving a pitcher up or down, mostly ignore ERA and focus primarily on a pitcher’s underlying skills. Though tier rankings are supposed to consider all pitchers within a tier as essentially interchangeable, this list is a straight copy and paste from my projected dollar values, so it will begin in order. For your debating pleasure, my tiers have been named after Parks and Recreation characters.
Who’s ready for some tiers? National league pitchers have been hit particularly hard in the lead-up to the season, creating some interesting situations within the tiers. Where should you value Mike Minor now? What about Cole Hamels? A couple notes about tiers before we begin. You’ll notice this is the NL post, so you won’t see Justin Verlander ranked. Despite this, someone in the comments will say “where’s Justin Verlander, you idiot?” Don’t do this, don’t even do it ironically. The tiers should be viewed as tiers, not straight rankings. If I have Minor and Hamels in the same tier, but Minor is ranked higher in his tier, that doesn’t matter. Being in a tier means I perceive those players to have similar value. Finally, I’m going to rank players according to my favorite Game of Thrones characters (topical!). There will be no spoilers, I promise. On a final note, don’t even try to argue with the rankings of Game of Thrones characters. You will be wrong! Off we go.
