A year ago, I developed a regression equation to estimate what a pitcher’s strikeout rate (K%) should be. That formula used a trio of strike type rates found at Baseball Reference, including a pitcher’s looking, swinging and foul strike percentages. While the original formula was a strong estimator, I have since tweaked it slightly.
Yesterday we looked at some sell high hitters. At the outset, I noted that selling high is mostly a thing of past – everybody knows it’s good to buy low and sell high. And everyone is a lot smarter about their player evaluation too. These days, the cool kids are buying high. To buy high, one need only identify which top, breakout performers are likely to remain among the top players. Sometimes, owners will sell these players at a relative bargain in their haste to sell high.
When the Milwaukee Brewers selected Taylor Jungmann with the 12th pick in the 2011 draft, he was seen as a polished prospect with an advanced feel for pitching who would move quickly through the organization. If everything went to plan, Jungmann would be in the major-league rotation by late 2013, with a long career as a mid-to-back of the rotation starter ahead of him.
At the time, I wholeheartedly agreed with these sentiments. I saw Jungmann pitch several times during his college career at the University of Texas, and it was easy to see why he was viewed as such a sure thing. He had a mid-90s heater with a sweeping curve that projected as a plus pitch, and a change-up that seemed plenty good enough to avoid nasty splits.
I’m not ashamed to admit that I once had a love affair with Edinson Volquez. He was wild, unfaithful at times, but I was younger then. (That’s how time and the aging process work, as I understand them.) The willingness to live on the edge, the danger he brought, it was part of his allure.
We occasionally reconciled through the years, but for only brief periods. As I matured, I grew to know my boundaries, and too often, Volquez crossed them. Eventually, I understood that he was just no good for me. I taught myself not to answer the phone. Eventually, he stopped calling.
Welcome to your regularly scheduled Carlos Carrasco update. It’s another season, but two starts in, Carrasco has already disappointed his biggest fan. It’s easy to point to his 3.51 SIERA, ridiculous .400 BABIP and 53.8% LOB% and claim he’ll enjoy better luck moving forward. Similarly, it’s also simple to call him a head case, perform no analysis whatsoever, and move on. But of course, I’m not going to do either of these things. With a repertoire that seemingly appears fantastic, why isn’t Carrasco the best pitcher in baseball?
At least not just deep leagues in the case of the first one. And they’re not just a couple of soft-tossing left-handers whose nicknames are spelled the same way, although that’s basically where the similarities end, besides the fact that both started out in Texas’ organization.
You want deep? Then let’s drill, baby, drill, as injuries to a couple of established American League stars in Week 2 have opened up spots for some deep league fantasy options to get a chance to shine.
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Swinging strikes are half (more than half?) the battle. But you can use pitches for grounders, too.
Take Marco Estrada, for example. By whiff rates, his change (18.4%) is plus, but his curve (9%) is not. That’s okay! By grounder rate, his curve is plus plus (60.8%). That means he has two great secondary pitches and qualifies to be a Guy I Like.
In order to help you spot good grounder pitches, I’ve run the benchmarks on each pitch type below. Should pair nicely with a Cabernet and this post which shows the benchmarks for whiff rates per pitch type.
If you happen to be a FG+ subscriber, and you happen to have visited Justin Masterson’s page, and you happen to have read his 2014 FanGraphs+ Profile, you saw these lines: “Fantasy owners will look at his 2010-11-12-13 roller coaster and be nervous. I’ll be buying at the discounted price and laughing all the way to the fantasy-value bank.”
As the author of those lines, I feel it is my responsibility to address what has been an all-around putrid start to the season from the supposed ace of a playoff-contending staff. Besides, I own Masterson across multiple leagues and my own nerves would probably benefit from some analysis.
We know very little this early into the season. Your Roto position matters little, your sleepers struggling doesn’t mean a great deal (unless it can impact playing time, and closers, well, we know about as much now as we did in the preseason: zilch.
However, the “small sample size” caveats will, eventually, begin to fade. And in fact, there may actually be some information we can glean from the early going, at least as it pertains to pitcher strikeout rates.
Strikeout rates are among the first statistics to stabilize. “70” is not a magic number, but after about 70 batters faced, a majority of the future variance (R2=0.5) in strikeout rate can be explained by strikeout rate to date. That is, after 70 batters faced, pitcher strikeout rate has begun to “stabilize.”
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