We here at FanGraphs are big fans of Indians starter Corey Kluber. Well, at least Carson Cistulli is. He founded the Corey Kluber Society in mid-June, and as far as I’m aware, made Kluber the subject of the only society FanGraphs has founded to date. Are you a member? And after a breakout 2013 performance, it would appear that Kluber is indeed deserving of such attention.
Prospect analysts generally ranked Danny Salazar between the fourth and tenth best prospect in the Indians farm system heading into 2013. That was a big swing and a miss. Salazar broke out last season and posted gaudy strikeout totals at every stop along with a 96 mph heater and a stingy walk rate. In a ten start, 52 inning sample in the majors, he pitched to a 3.12 ERA and 2.75 xFIP, neither of which appears suspicious in any way. His season culminated in a playoff appearance against Alex Cobb of the Tampa Bay Rays. It should have been the kind of noisy breakout experienced by Stephen Strasburg, but it’s quite possible that Salazar will be undervalued in fantasy leagues this spring.
Clay Buchholz looks good. Clay Buchholz looks real good. Fans begin to wonder, “is this the Clay Buchholz we heard so much about in 2007?” Word is leaked that he is sore. No big deal, he’ll just skip a side session. Or a start. A few starts. OK, he’s on the disabled list. And now he’s dealing with some freak injury that no one can peg down. Welp, he’s missed half the season.
Sound familiar? If you are a Buchholz owner in a keeper or dynasty league, 2013 was the fourth year in a row where Buchholz hit the disabled list. The past three years, his injuries have been A) stress fracture to the L2 vertebra, B) esophagitis, and C) some sort of mysterious trapezius/neck/shoulder strain. When he was healthy, he was one of the best pitches in baseball, posting the lowest ERA among pitches with at least 100 innings and coming in 20th overall in our end-of-season cumulative FVAR rankings, even though he only tossed 108.1 frames.
Matt Cain has been the picture of consistency and high-quality consistency at that. From 2009 through 2012, he pitched around 220 innings each season, posted ERA marks between 2.79 and 3.14 and struck out 171 to 193 batters. A typically weak Giants offense hampered his win total, but he was the fantasy ace who usually cost a bit less than the others. Perhaps us sabernerds simply kept waiting for the bottom to drop out and his apparent good fortune to fade, which depressed his price. But that never happened.
Martin Perez has only thrown 162.1 innings in the majors, but he’s well-known within most baseball communities. He’s been one of the most-hyped prospects in the Rangers’ farm system in recent years, being named the number-three prospect and top pitching prospect by Baseball America in 2013.
Thus, when the Rangers promoted him to the big-league rotation for good in late June, many fantasy owners quickly jumped on the bandwagon and plucked him off waivers (if he was even available). Perez didn’t set the league ablaze like Jose Fernandez or display the makings of a potential ace like Gerrit Cole. He instead provided solid-average production and was a top-100 starter despite spending almost half the season in Triple-A.
As such, the 3.62 ERA won’t give anyone whiplash, but he won ten games and was nearly a two-win player in the majors at age 22. That’s nothing at which to scoff. The question, however, is how that level of production may look over the course of an entire season.
In 2012, the prospect world was down on James Paxton. He was still getting strikeouts based on his curve, but his velocity was down and his control was terrible. Then he got his knee fixed, and suddenly he’s a desired commodity again. His story might remind us: as every baseball manager will tell you, it’s important not to get too high or too low. An even keel provides the best foundation for honest appraisal.
The first thing you probably notice when you look at Jeff Samardzija’s player page is his ERA of 4.34 last year. And if you click over to his 2013 splits, you’ll see that ERAs north of 5.00 in each of the last three months of the season were responsible for the high ERA.
But don’t let the Shark’s apparent struggles in the second half scare you too much. In reality, July was the only one of those three bad months in which Samardzija actually pitched poorly. His strikeout and walk rates went in the wrong direction in July, but they were back within his normal range in August and September. His ERA just stayed bad because his BABIP was over .340 in those months, his strand rate was 66% in August, and his HR/FB rate was 26% in September.
What’s most concerning is that the July blip wasn’t the only significant rough patch that Samardzija has had since becoming a starter. In June of 2012, his strikeout and walk rates also went in the wrong direction, and his ERA ballooned to 10.41 in that month. Just to give you an idea of how out-of-the-ordinary those two months were, here is a chart showing the Shark’s strikeout and walk rates, ERA and xFIP for each of his 12 professional months as a starter. Read the rest of this entry »
Patrick Corbin has been a regular topic of thought and conversation for me the past few weeks, which tells you one thing about me – that I maybe think and talk about baseball more than I should – and another about him – that there is considerable reason to discuss him. Both are true.
First, Brad Johnson projected a wide range of values for Corbin and offered his expectation that Corbin would fall near the bottom of that range. Then, I had a long (for Twitter) conversation about him on Twitter. Michael Salfino asked why Corbin was so underrated; I suggested that his K/9 might be the problem, Eno Sarris pointed out a scary platoon split, and now I am here to tell you not to be worried about either.
A month ago, the Nationals acquired Doug Fister in a bizarre trade that only required the team to give up a decent starting pitcher prospect, a middle reliever and a utility infielder. Aside from making Nationals fans happy that a solid starter has been added to their rotation, fantasy players get to look forward to a starting pitcher making the move to the National League, which is usually beneficial. Fister ranked as just the 57th most valuable starting pitcher this year, but a move to the other league could boost his draft stock.
It’s a little painful to look back and see that pre-season, Max Scherzer was ranked just barely within the top 20 of all starting pitchers. His price tag wasn’t appreciably different from R.A. Dickey, C.C. Sabathia, and Jered Weaver and his ADP was several rounds after all of them. Of course, hindsight is 20-20 but then again, I’m not sure that that his 2013 wasn’t telegraphed pretty clearly.
