Francisco Liriano has been a tantalizing player over his career. Occasionally, he can look like one of the best pitchers in baseball. But most of the time, his performance fails to live up to his elite stuff. There’s been far more of the former version this year. Through 36 innings, Liriano has a 1.62 FIP. Liriano hasn’t thrown enough innings to be considered a “qualified” pitcher, but his strong FIP would rank first among starters. By now, we’ve seen enough about Liriano to know that, based on his career, this breakout is not guaranteed to continue. But Liriano has adopted an altered approach this season that may keep him from his usual roller coaster performance.

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We all know by now how to best utilize a pitcher’s BABIP data during and after the season. For the most part, a pitcher with a BABIP significantly below the league average is probably going to see that metric rise, while a pitcher with a mark above the league average will likely post a better one moving forward. But that’s not the only use of BABIP. It also affects a pitcher’s strikeout and walk per nine innings rates. This is why many now prefer to use strikeout and walk percentage.

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Julio Teheran is owned in just 52% of Yahoo! leagues but I expect that number to jump up pretty swiftly after last night’s performance. If he’s available, it’s time to put a claim in on him and offer up a hefty amount of FAAB if that’s how your league operates. The one concern around owning Teheran and investing a lot into him this season was the return of Brandon Beachy. With Teheran’s sixth straight quality start, he has all but assured he will remain in the rotation when Beachy returns in the next two weeks.
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On May 17th of last year Yan Gomes of the Toronto Blue Jays became the first Brazilian to ever appear in a Major League Baseball game. Chicago White Sox prospect Andre Rienzo is a strong candidate to be the second – and the first pitcher.

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Rankings update week! Since there was the obligatory confusion in the AL OF rankings update, let me remind you — American League. As in not National League. Though, I do have to admit it is amusing to read which random player is asked about not appearing in the rankings, as it’s never the top guy in the other league. Lots of movement this time as the important rates stabilize and become significant.

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Imagine the panic if Madison Bumgarner started the season with results from his last six starts. Bumgarner has twelve games started under his belt and over the last half of them, he has put up a 5.54 ERA, resulting in four losses. But these last six starts are kind of a case study in why people got sick of standard 5×5 leagues, because his results and how well he pitched aren’t really inextricable.

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Josh Johnson returned to the mound last night for the first time since April 21. The oft-injured 29-year-old (it still surprises me that he’s just 29) impressed against the Giants, throwing seven innings with one earned run allowed with six strikeouts and no walks. Granted, it was a return to the NL and the Giants do not have what we would call a high powered offense, but they can certainly string together sets of hits to put some runs on the board.
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You’ll stretch yourself into pretzels trying to convince yourself that a past great is a buy low. And sometimes it’s worth it — Cole Hamels and Matt Cain seem to be doing just about the same thing they’ve ever done, and betting on their career numbers is a good bet. But sometimes, there just isn’t enough grip on the mat to reach your finger to click that trade proposal button. The mat gets slippery, and for good reason.

Is Yovani Gallardo just a downward-facing dog with no bounce left?

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Yesterday, I took a look at the potential pitcher strikeout percentage surgers based on the regression equation I developed and shared with all of you last week. Today, I will look at the opposite side of the coin — those pitchers whose expected strikeout percentages are significantly lower than their actual strikeout percentages.

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Last week, I published the results of my expected strikeout rate study. I used the looking, called, and foul strike rates data from Baseball-Reference.com. It is important to understand that the regression formula I concluded with is meant to estimate what the pitcher’s K% should be given his different strike rates. This is not meant to be predictive. Instead, in smaller sample sizes, it might be a more accurate picture of the pitcher’s true strikeout ability so far, which would then help shape your projection of him going forward.

With that said, here are the top 10 pitchers whose xK% is higher than his K%.

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