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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If you’ve been following me over on Twitter, then you’ll know that there’s nothing I love more during the offseason than a good ol’ mock draft. I love researching players and setting myself up with my own set of rankings and Draft Day depth charts, but one of the best tools for in-draft decisions is understanding public opinion.

It’s one of those rare instances in life where what everyone else thinks does, in fact, matter. Does no one seem to believe in this guy, so I can easily wait a few more rounds for him (i.e. my earlier Travis Wood dilemma)? Is he a recently outed sleeper whose public opinion has grown more mainstream thus forcing me to take him earlier than I had originally thought? These are always questions we ask ourselves during drafts and given that they usually hit us when we’re under the gun and have no more than a minute and a half (usually) to make that decision, knowing the answers ahead of time make it all the more easy to think and act on the fly.

And since we’re still talking starting pitchers over here this week and mock draft season is just getting underway — I’ve actually done six already, if you can believe that — I thought that looking at how pitching is already being viewed by many would be a good start. You’ll get a jump on things in the early goings and it also might help you make some of those tough keeper decisions you probably have sitting in front of you. Read the rest of this entry »

It goes without saying that the knuckleball is difficult to predict. It can break or flutter in any number of ways, twisting up hitters and catchers alike. It can also drive a fantasy player nuts, because there aren’t enough knucklers throughout history to help project the lone modern-day knuckleballer moving forward.

While largely disappointing, the season, it got better for R.A. Dickey.
As 2013 wore on, the knuckleballer regained some velocity on his trademark pitch and saw his performance improve, not quite to his Cy Young levels but to a place the Toronto Blue Jays would surely be happy with. That late-season progression is a positive for 2014, and the full-season stat line makes Dickey a potential value play in upcoming drafts.
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Dan Haren got off to a rough start in 2013. After coming off a questionable 2012, it was starting to look like Haren was cooked. A phantom trip to the disabled list in late June seemed like a last ditch effort to save Haren’s year. It worked, as Haren posted a 3.29 ERA over his last 15 starts. Haren’s 4.69 ERA doesn’t exactly tell the whole story of his season, which potentially makes him undervalued this season. But is that actually the case?

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One of the more interesting keeper choices I have in one league this offseason is Cubs left-hander Travis Wood. It was late in my auction draft and I was looking for some unheralded young arms who people seemed to be overlooking yet could be in line for a potential breakout. I ended up with Wood for $3. I could have gotten him for a buck, but one guy was simply trying to get people to eat through their remaining bid money and he forced me into the extra money. Given what I had left, I had no problem throwing down the extra cash and I’m happy I did as he put together a fantastic season for himself. Now, given our league inflation rate, he’ll only go to $4 for this year, but the question is, is he still worth it? Does he still have what I saw in him last March and can that be brought to the table once again? Read the rest of this entry »