Archive for Starting Pitchers

1/21/21

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to Fangraphs! With a standard $20 membership, you help maintain and improve our database of stats and graphs as well as our staff of 8 full-time employees and over 50 contributors. The premium ad-free membership at $50 year supports site growth and also includes faster load speeds and better site performance. You can also support monthly for just $3.

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• @sporer – Host
• @justinmasonfwfb – Co-Host/Producer

NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS/INJURIES/RUMORS

• George Springer to TOR (1:30)
• Michael Brantley to HOU (7:22)
• Jason Castro to HOU (12:30)
• Jose Quintana to LAA (16:20)
• J.A. Happ to MIN (21:40)

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The Padres are at it again, this time participating in a three-team trade that sees them acquiring starting pitcher Joe Musgrove. Musgrove has been a popular sleeper for the past couple of seasons, despite having never posted an ERA below 4.00 or a strikeout rate above 22%. He did accomplish both over 39.2 innings in 2020, though, but obviously such a tiny sample size doesn’t mean a whole lot. His career SIERA is a bit lower than his ERA, offering hope for better and a velocity surge at times also excited many. He’s been a tease so far, so will his new home park give him a better chance of breaking out? Let’s consult the park factors.

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I’m continuing my attention on fringe starters. They are the starters who once the season starts, managers are going to have to make a quick decision on adding or dropping. These pitchers will be in play all season. I’m using NFBC’s ADP and starting at the bottom and selecting any starter drafted by half the teams.

Here is an evaluation of eight more starters. You can find the other editions here:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5
• Part 6
• Part 7
• Part 8
• Part 9

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Let’s start off with the obvious here, what is Z-Contact%? If you check out our handy dandy glossary you would see “Pitches on which contact was made on pitches inside the zone/Swings on pitches inside the zone.” For pitchers, quite simply how often do opposing hitters make contact on their pitches when they throw inside the zone. Here are the leaders from 2020.

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Last week, I reviewed my starting pitcher K% surgers list, so today, I’ll review my starting pitcher K% decliners list, which was assembled using my pitcher xK% equation. Strikeout rates tend to bounce around throughout the season, so it’s pretty silly to be evaluating the accuracy of this list considering the pitchers only made 11 or 12 starts. But it’s all we have, so let’s get to it.

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1/15/21

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live. Support the show by subscribing to Fangraphs! With a standard $20 membership, you help maintain and improve our database of stats and graphs as well as our staff of 8 full-time employees and over 50 contributors. The premium ad-free membership at $50 year supports site growth and also includes faster load speeds and better site performance. You can also support monthly for just $3.

Follow us on Twitter

• @sporer – Host/Producer

2021 STEAMER GEMS

• Franmil Reyes (2:43)
• Jesse Winker (7:22)
• Brandon Nimmo (13:36)
• Alejandro Kirk (18:35)

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I’m continuing my attention on fringe starters. They are the starters who once the season starts, managers are going to have to make a quick decision on adding or dropping. These pitchers will be in play all season. I’m using NFBC’s ADP and starting at the bottom and selecting any starter drafted by half the teams. Here is an evaluation of eight more starters (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8).

#523 Bryse Wilson

I’m a little surprised Wilson is being drafted this high (i.e. at all). In 42 career innings over three seasons, he has a 5.91 ERA supported by a 5.3 BB/9. He has been unplayable. I could just go through the plethora of negatives, but instead, I’ll state the few positives (career numbers).

1. He was decent in AAA in 2019 with a 3.42 ERA and 1.21 WHIP over 121 innings.
2. A 94-mph four-seamer with a 10% SwStr% and a popup inducing 32% GB%.
3. A 93-mph sinker with a 11% SwStr% and 73% GB%.
4. And what looks like an average changeup (12% SwStr%).

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Let’s move over to the pitching side where I’ll start my 2020 forecast reviews with strikeout rate, or K%. As a reminder, there is never, ever, ever a reason to evaluate K/9 instead of K%. A denominator based on outs is at risk of being heavily influenced by BABIP, walks issues, field errors, HR/FB rate, etc, because higher numbers in those metrics extend innings and result in additional batters faced, giving the pitcher more opportunities to strike out a batter, even though the denominator has remained the same. That can’t happen when your denominator is total batters faced, like in K%, as more batters faced in an inning will reduce K%, as it should, as opposed to having no effect on K/9.

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The biggest trend in pitching right now is moving away from the fastball. With another 2-point drop, fastballs account for just half the pitches thrown, down from 64% back in 2002 when we started keeping the data. It slowly trickled down to 58% by 2011 and held there for five years before the current downturn that has seen at least a 1-point drop every year since 2016.

We are going to look at the pitchers with the biggest drops in usage and see what’s going on and how well it served them. Looking at 131 pitchers from 2020, just one pitcher added 10 points to his usage (Nick Margevicius 64%) while a whopping 24 shaved 10 points off from their previous season (some missed 2019 so I compared to their 2018). Six came from the Pirates (Joe Musgrove, Chad Kuhl, Derek Holland, Trevor Williams, Steven Brault, and Chris Stratton) as the departure of pitching coach Ray Searage seemed to foster a change away from heaters.

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I’m continuing my attention on fringe starters. They are the starters who once the season starts, managers are going to have to make a quick decision on adding or dropping. These pitchers will be in play all season. I’m using NFBC’s ADP and starting at the bottom and selecting any starter drafted by half the teams. Here is an evaluation of eight more starters (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7).
Read the rest of this entry »