Writer’s Note: Feldman ranked 56th on Zach Sanders’ starting pitching rankings.

Hello friends, just thought I’d chime in with a few notes before the weekend on Scott Feldman as he moves back into the division in which he cut his teeth as a Texas Ranger.

There are a number of things to like — not love, but genuinely have an affinity for, I’d say — about Feldman’s approach. In Feldman’s early years as a reliever, he was more of a low-strikeout, groundball type of specialist. In light of what we’ve seen in recent years with relievers, a bit of an odd trend, actually.

But in recent years, he’s forsaken those groundballs for strikeouts — never a bad tradeoff — while still maintaining a grounder rate healthily above league average. In essence, he’s not far off league average in either respect (slightly above in GB rate, a little below on the whiffs). Read the rest of this entry »

It’s surprising Chris Tillman hasn’t developed into a superstar since he was part of Bill Bavasi’s talent dump to the Baltimore Orioles back in 2008 for one Erik Bedard. But after he posted a tidy little 2.93 ERA and 1.03 WHIP in limited action in 2012, he started to grace some sleeper pick lists headed into 2013.

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Jarred Cosart is coming off a funky debut, one that is going to convince more than one less-than-savvy owner to proclaim him a sleeper. The number that counts is 1.95. That was his ERA. 94.5 is another positive number associated with him. That was his average fastball velocity. Unfortunately, the rest of the data set is oozing the disgusting goop of an ugly regression ahead.

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Right before spring training starts  is the time to begin finding players on the fringe. The great to average players have been well documented. Their value is visible in early drafts. To find some fringe pitchers, I looked for ones with an above average fastball, change and breaking ball. The list contains mainly the game’s best pitchers. Instead, I am going to focus on the talent pool’s shallow end and examine Tom Gorzelanny.

First, I will step through how I found a possible sleeper in a 31-year-old left handed middle reliever. I was looking for pitchers who threw three above average pitches and had a chance to start. Using PITCHf/x data, I collected the pitchers who had any above average fastball (two-finger, four-finger, splitter, cutter or sinker), one above average breaking ball (slider or curveball) and a changeup. Additionally, I wanted to make sure the pitcher threw the pitch on a normal basis. Fastballs had to be thrown over 20% of the time and for breaking balls and curveballs it was 10%. Additionally, the pitcher had to have made at least one start (team willing to start him) and had throw at least 30 innings (a bit of MLB experience). Here are the pitchers who met the requirements in 2012 (28 total) and 2013 (16 total).

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Edinson Volquez epitomizes the “you can’t teach stuff” sentiment that’s long existed in professional baseball. Pure and simple, his stuff has kept him in the league. After all, he’s started 154 games and thrown 850.0 big-league innings, yet he’s enjoyed just one good season.

That banner season came in 2008, when he went 17-6 and compiled a 3.21 ERA (3.60 FIP). He was a legitimate four-win player and appeared to be on the cusp of a successful career with the Reds. Some even thought he was going to be an ace. After all, he was only 24 years old and was receiving a plethora of media hype for being the guy traded for Josh Hamilton.

Unfortunately for Cincinnati and for fantasy owners, the development into an ace never happened. His career was subsequently derailed by Tommy John surgery in 2009, a 50-game suspension for a positive PED test in 2010, and general ineffectiveness. To put it in perspective, the right-hander has thrown 574.0 innings since his tremendous breakout campaign in 2008 with an unimpressive 4.94 ERA.

Two things regarding that last point, both of which will be addressed in turn: (1) it’s incredible Volquez has continued to find regular work despite a near 5.00 ERA the past five years, and (2) everything was supposed to change coming into the 2012 season when he signed a contract with the San Diego Padres.

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If you look at anything other than ERA, it’s obvious that Tyler Chatwood wasn’t very good last year. Sure, his 3.15 ERA was the 24th best ERA among the 128 starters with 110 or more innings (Chatwood had 111.1 IP), but it’s just about the only thing on his player page that looks good from last year. His xFIP and SIERA were both 4.00 or higher, his WHIP was an ugly 1.43 and both his strikeout rate (13.9%) and walk rate (8.6%) were well below average.

But there was a point last summer where Chatwood looked pretty good. After his first eight starts of the year he had a 2.22 ERA and his strikeout rate was league average. As Chris Cwik noted around that time, Chatwood converted to pitcher his senior year of high school then got drafted and immediately went to rookie ball. He also cracked Baseball America’s top 100 in 2011, so it’s obvious that people thought his arm had potential. With that string of eight solid starts, it seemed like maybe Chatwood was starting to put it all together. But from that point on his strikeout rate was a paltry 10.5%, and he only had five more strikeouts than he did walks.

Within that bad stretch he struck out just 31 batters in 12 starts. What’s insane is that he had an 11 strikeout game in that stretch. Along with the ten strikeout game mentioned earlier, those were the only two instances in which he topped five strikeouts in his 20 starts. It’s somewhat interesting to note that those two big strikeout games were the two games where Chatwood used his slider most. In the 10 K game he threw the slider 24 times and in the 11 K game he threw it 16 times. That’s a little misleading  because there were several games when he threw his slider 13-15 times and struck out five or fewer batters, but it fell in line with Cwik’s observation after Chatwood’s hot start that the slider was driving his success.

Though Chatwood didn’t always have the same success when he used the pitch frequently, it’s obviously his best pitch. Check out these two charts below comparing his slider to his other offerings. Read the rest of this entry »

Matt Garza is easily one of the most difficult pitchers in fantasy to project right now, I think. Where to start? It doesn’t help that we have no idea where he’ll be calling home in 2014, and in the world of fantasy, which uses raw and rarely-if-ever park-adjusted stats, it’s a huge difference in how we value him depending on if he’s say, a Rockie as a opposed to a Padre. (Not that I think he’ll be either, of course. Put on the spot, I’d say he ends up as an Angel if they miss out on Masahiro Tanaka.)

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If you sort last season’s starting pitchers by average velocity and set a filter for 50 innings pitched, you’ll find Nathan Eovaldi at the top of the list with a 96.2 mph fastball. He shares that distinction with Danny Salazar, who has already had his day in the sun. Elite skills, especially velocity, are the things to look for in an undervalued asset. Eovaldi might be a good late round target based on that velocity alone, but let’s go through the exercise of evaluating him all the same.

Last year was the best of Eovaldi’s career, which spans parts of three seasons. He pitched to a 3.39 ERA and 3.59 FIP, although his xFIP was a less robust 4.15. That’s because he held home run rates well below average. His stinginess with long balls (7.1% HR/FB over 260 career innings) could be his related to his home park, part of his skill set, luck, or a combination of those factors.

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In mid-June of last season, I reminded you readers not to forget about Erasmo Ramirez. At that time, he was still simmering at Triple-A after recovering from some mysterious arm injury. But, he posted his highest strikeout rate at the level and paired it with his always good control. So concerns about his health disappeared and it was time to look forward to his imminent promotion.

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The 2013 postseason included some of the best young pitchers in recent memory. Alex Cobb battled Danny Salazar in the AL Wild Card game and emerged victorious. Sonny Gray twice faced perennial Cy Young candidate Justin Verlander, and he outdueled him the first time. But Cardinals youngster Michael Wacha stole the show with his five postseason outings. He earned the NLCS MVP along the way by allowing zero earned runs over 13.2 innings in that round.

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