On Thursday, I looked at American League starting pitchers who showed up on the last 30 day SIERA leaderboards that would be considered surprising. Today, I will cover the entire league, but look at the opposite end of the spectrum. These are the pitchers whose skills have really declined over the last 30 days. Is it the beginning of a trend or just small sample randomness over a long season? Let’s find out.
A simple way to determine which pitchers are “hot” is to use the Split filter and choose any one of the small time frames and then sort by SIERA. Since I think subtle changes in mechanics and other various factors could actually trigger a performance spike, I believe looking at the SIERA leaders over the last 30 days could be useful despite the small sample size. Here are some of the surprise leaders in the metric over that time span.
On Saturday, I analyzed the five hitters whose HR/FB ratios have increased the most since last season and using various tools and metrics, tried to determine whether we might see a decline in the second half. Today I will look at the opposite end of the spectrum, those hitters whose HR/FB ratios have declined the most. Will they experience a second half power surge?
C.J. Wilson was paid $77.5M this off season to come in and be a front line starter for the Angels. With Jered Weaver and Dan Haren already on the team, he wasn’t going to be the only ace of the staff, but he has pitched like one. It is now time to sell high on Wilson’s great 1st half of the season. He has 9 Wins, a 2.33 ERA (6th among qualified starters) and a 1.17 WHIP. These stats put him within the top 20 SP in production for the 2012 season (16th SP with ESPN’s Player Rater). His stats don’t match his perifial numbers so he has a good chance of regressing quite a bit in the second half of the season.
One infielder, one catcher, one pitcher. What more could you want, really?
While big-time prospects like Trevor Bauer, Anthony Rizzo and Martin Perez got called up this week — you can find takes on those three here, here and here — these three lesser-knowns should be making their way to a ballpark near you soon.
Last night was Anthony Rizzo’s 2012 MLB debut and he started it off with a bang. He went 2-4 with a double and an RBI. He got the call up after hitting 0.342 with 23 HRs in AAA. While he has dominated AAA, here is a look at what kind of production can be expected from him in the majors this season.
On Saturday, I identified a couple of players who fantasy owners might consider buying high on. I purposely ignored players who were expected to be top guys to begin with, but were having even better season than projected (David Wright, Adam Jones), as I preferred to look at more of the cheaper players with surprising performances. Similarly, the sell low guys will be players that were expected to generate high dollar values. I think it’s tougher to recommend selling low on a player than buying high, because we always preach patience and believe that a player will bounce back to his established level of performance, rather than weight the first 3 months of the season so heavily. At the risk of being very wrong…
We are all familiar with the practice of buying low. Over the first couple of months of the season, nearly all of my trade offers involve attempting to acquire a player who has started off slowly. But have you ever bought high? Did the thought even cross your mind to target Jose Bautista in 2010 after he finished the month of May with 16 home runs? Probably not. But sometimes it could be a good idea because the other owner may be thinking he is selling high and you still get the player for cheaper then he is ultimately worth. But of course, this is a much riskier type of trade and so most shy away from it. If you have the cajones, here are some players who may be worth buying high.
No, that’s not the name of a law firm. Rather, those are the last names of three under-the-radar pitching prospects who made their MLB debuts in the past week. Click below to take a closer look at the trio, and as a bonus you’ll get not one, but two more minor leaguers nearing the bigs.
