I will never recommend chasing after a hot streak or benching a player until he “shows signs of life”. But sometimes, especially when it comes to pitchers, players do make real changes that have a positive effect on their performance. While I have no idea if these particularly pitchers have, it’s always interesting to identify who the best pitchers have been over the last 30 days from a skills perspective.
Tyler Chatwood has emerged as the best pitcher on the Colorado Rockies. Through 44.2 innings, Chatwood already has accumulated 1.4 WAR. Jorge de la Rosa and Jhoulys Chacin may rank ahead of him, but it’s only due to pitching more than twice the amount of innings. That’s pretty shocking considering Chatwood’s performance in the majors prior to 2013. In 206.2 innings, Chatwood had a career 4.96 ERA, and his 4.98 FIP and 7.76 xFIP didn’t leave a ton of argument for improvement. At the same time, Chatwood was promoted way too aggressively. Considering Chatwood converted to pitcher his senior year of high school, began his professional career the following season and was pitching in the majors at age-21. But two years later, that inexperience has become less of an issue. The raw Chatwood is starting to take steps toward becoming a finished product.
Desperate for pitching in your deep league? Of course you are! So that means that this is your lucky day as I feed you a spoonful of starting pitcher options for your consideration.
Yesterday, I unveiled the best pitcher expected walk percentage equation yet. By simply looking at the percentage of total pitches that are thrown for a strike and the rate at which the strikes thrown are put into play, we can get a pretty good idea of what a pitcher’s walk percentage should be. I was literally in the middle of typing up today’s post putting the equation to work on 2013 data to get an idea of which pitchers should have a higher or lower BB% when another light bulb went off.
For my birthday, I’m giving myself a present.
That present? A good scolding.
Because maybe I’ve made too many excuses for Zack Greinke over the course of his career. Maybe I’ve wishcasted him into a role he doesn’t occupy. Is he really a fantasy ace? What’s going on with him this year? And if the answer to the first is No, then how much do we care about the answer to the second. These are the things I contemplate on the day that I hang up another number next to my name.
Jarrod Parker wasn’t right early in the season. Through April, Parker had given up 43 hits in 29.1 innings, and carried a bloated 7.336 ERA. There were some analysts who started to wonder if there was something wrong with the 24-year-old. Just before worry could turn into legitimate concern, Parker pulled himself out of his funk. The turning point was a May 17 start against the Royals. Since that start, Parker has a 2.19 ERA over seven starts. That’s hardly a large sample, but it’s enough to put those April fears to rest. Much of Parker’s early struggles came from an inability to locate his fastball. While that issue hasn’t completely gone away, Parker has been able to survive by making a few tweaks to his approach.
About a month ago, I shared the pitcher expected K% regression equation I came up with that does a great job of estimating what a pitcher’s strikeout percentage should be given the combination of his called, swinging and foul strikes. Since then, I have wanted to do the same for a pitcher’s walk percentage. Unfortunately, there have been many attempts in the past, but with much less success than for a pitcher’s expected strikeout percentage. I believe the highest R-squared attained has been in the low 0.50 range, which isn’t bad, but clearly suggests that there’s a lot more going on that isn’t being accounted for.
When the Toronto Blue Jays, by way of Mike Aviles, picked up Esmil Rogers for John Farrell this offseason, I thought…well, not much. I don’t care for Farrell, and as far as returns go, Aviles for Farrell and then Aviles and Yan Gomes for Rogers seemed fine.
When I dove into his stats from 2012, I saw a guy who improved pretty dramatically when he got out of Colorado. I also saw a guy with a pretty strong profile for relief success – a fair number of strikeouts, a walk rate that wouldn’t kill you, and an above-average groundball rate.
So I thought the Jays had picked up a decent 7th inning guy.
I did not think they had picked up a solid 5th starter in this deal, mostly because Rogers only had 22 major league starts to his name, accompanied by an ERA over six in 100 innings or so. He also wasn’t a guy who had ever been successful at the Triple-A level as a starter.
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Jered Weaver has made a career out of outperforming his expected ERA metrics. In his first seven seasons, he has posted an ERA below his SIERA in six of those and sports a career 3.27 ERA versus a 3.94 SIERA. Along with Matt Cain, he has become the poster boy for the outlier group whose luck metrics don’t regress to the league average like the majority of Major League pitchers. He’s the exception to the rules.
Homer Bailey is pitching like an ace. In his seventh professional season, everything has come together for the one-time fifth-best prospect in baseball. It’s been a long rise to the top for Bailey, who didn’t have a sub-4.00 ERA until his sixth professional season. While his 2012 performance was a major step forward, Bailey has managed to get even better in 2013. Through 90 innings this season, Bailey has nearly matched his season-high in WAR. His 2.68 FIP rates 11th among qualified starters. Bailey may have taken a while to reach meet his lofty expectations, but the wait is well worth it given his current performance.
