The rookies are taking over. After a handful of major-league starts, Tony Cingrani and Shelby Miller have exceeded early expectations. While they were never compared to each other in the minors, both pitchers are succeeding utilizing an extreme fastball-heavy approach. Both players currently rank in the top-10 in four-seam usage, and would have ranked second and third last season. Even though hitters know exactly what’s coming, they haven’t been able to touch either pitcher thus far. The popular thought is that starting pitchers need three offerings in order to succeed in the majors. The track record of pitchers who utilized just two offerings makes it tough to find comparables for Miller and Cingrani.

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Intuitively, it would make some sense for velocities to be down to begin the year. Pitchers may still be building arm strength and finding their feel. But surfing around player pages early in the season, I noticed what seemed to be an abnormally high number of guys with velocity down from where it was last year. As it turns out, velocities are down a smidge. The average four seamer velocity last year was 90.66 and is only 90.48 so far this season. However, the average velocity in April last year was 90.39. So there’s probably some truth to the idea that velocities will rise as a season progresses.

However, there are still a few starters this year that have seen their average velocity come in way below where it was last year. I compiled a list of 70 pitchers who threw 150+ innings last year and all qualified pitchers so far this season. I then compared their average velocities. Below is a list of the guys who have seen a decrease in velocity that is one standard deviation or more above the mean. Read the rest of this entry »

Looking at the pitching waiver wire this week, the top two most-added names are newly-minted closers Jose Valverde & Edward Mujica, which is unsurprising. The third, seeing a whopping +40.2% add rate in ESPN leagues and 24% raise in start rate in CBS leagues, is none other than Pittsburgh’s Wandy Rodriguez.

I get why, of course. You look at the surface-level stats and they seem impressive. 2-0 in four starts! 16/3 K/BB! 1.66 ERA! What’s not to like?
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Another mixed bag with the streamers this past week. If you avoided the Kazmir/Humber showdown, good for you, as it wasn’t pretty. I apologize. If you rode with me on Jarrod Parker and Bronson Arroyo, you came out alright, as they both looked stellar in their respective outings. Not to make excuses, but last weekend’s Friday and Saturday streaming options were straight-up terrible, though being 6-for-12 through three weeks probably hasn’t won me any ardent followers regardless of weekend.

Still, onward we move, to our Friday and Saturday streamers for this week. As always, I’ll try to hit the 50/25/15/5 ownership levels, though some weeks won’t allow for it. This week is one such week where we’re going deep streaming, because the middle-ownership names like Jake Westbrook and Josh Beckett don’t offer a tonne of upside if they’re available.

As for the start-quality metric I’ve been toying with, I’m still playing with it. So far results haven’t been very conclusive, likely because a) starts are a bit fickle/random anyway, and b) we’re dealing with early-season, small-sample values for opponents. I’ll keep playing with it.

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Left-handed pitcher Adam Morgan entered the 2013 season as one of the top arms in the Philadelphia farm system. I got a chance to see him pitch for triple-A Lehigh Valley last week when they visited Pawtucket.

The Breakdown

Morgan was a 3rd round pick (120th overall) in 2011 out of the University of Alabama. He had an up and down college career but showed enough to entice the Phillies to give him $250,000 after his Junior season. Morgan has impressed as a professional. His pro career was punctuated by a strong showing in the Florida State League last season. In 123 innings in the FSL for high-A Clearwater the southpaw struck out 140 batters while only allowing 103 hits and 28 walks. Morgan even ended the year with double-A Reading. Six good starts there apparently convinced the Philadelphia organization that he was ready for triple-A.

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We’re three and a half weeks into the season and nearly at the point where the first major pitching metric stabilizes. We know that K/PA (or K% on the player pages) stabilizes at 150 batters faced, and starting pitchers are creeping ever so closer to that minimum. So at the very least, we have to start taking strikeout rates seriously, but that’s really about it. Let’s now take a look around the American League and some of the movers and shakes in starting pitcher land.

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Last week I briefly touched on some guys who had been getting raked across the coals in the BABIP/LOB% department, making their raw stats look like something out of a horror film. This week I’ll take a look at the flip side; guys who have sparkling ERAs, but looking under the hood implies that your nice new sports car might not be purring quite as well as you had hoped. Just remember, it’s very early and a lot of the underlying peripherals haven’t stabilized yet; we’re just looking for guys we don’t want to make the mistake of overpaying for.

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Yes, it’s still quite early, but I simply cannot help myself from analyzing my favorite advanced pitcher metric — the swinging strike percentage, or SwStk%. The majority of starting pitchers have only started three or four games, but a metric like SwStk% stabilizes relatively quickly, so the typical small sample size caveats don’t necessarily apply to the full degree. The following five pitchers have enjoyed the largest surge in SwStk% as compared to last year. Let’s see if they are doing anything differently, or if it just seems to be a good run.

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Felix Doubront | Boston Red Sox | Home to Oakland and home to Houston

Doubront is listed here simply because he’s widely available and gets two decent matchups next week. While it would be preferable if the starts were on the road (especially the one against Oakland), they are good enough that weekly players should give Doubront a look in H2H matchups, and daily players should give him a long look in the latter matchup.

Doubront has several problems; he issues too many walks (10% BB% in 2012), he gives up too many home runs (15.9% HR/FB), and he gives up a fair amount of hard contact (23.4% LD%). If reading that is sufficiently scary, feel free to skip to the next pitcher. But he does have the alluring ability to miss bats, and he has the ability to get strikeouts. Among pitchers with 160+ IP last year, Doubront ranked 28th in SwStr% and 17th in K%.

With the poor run prevention skills listed above, you wouldn’t be wrong to ignore Doubront. But if you’re in the market for a cheap option in daily cap leagues or desperate for a two-start option, you could do worse than Doubront with his strikeout skills and decent macthups. Read the rest of this entry »

The value of a stolen base may vary from daily site to daily site, but on the site where I play my daily cap contests, a steal is worth five points. Throw in the fact that a runner has to get on base to be able to steal another one and a steal becomes worth seven or eight points. And that’s assuming they don’t come around to score or do anything else in their other plate appearances. You could certainly do worse than seven or eight points from a slot. Needless to say, I like guys who can run a little (or a lot) in daily leagues.

In order to be able to better pick base stealers in daily salary cap formats, I decided to look at the pitchers and catchers who are the most and least friendly to base stealers. Read the rest of this entry »