Archive for Tipping Pitches

We are in the dog days of the season now. Some of you have already transitioned to fantasy football (how dare you!), some of you are trying your best to stay engaged, but summer activities are tough to ignore, and then the rest of you are fully engaged – meticulously staying abreast of every bullpen change, every lineup move, and prospect call-up. I want to take a quick look at eight interesting starters and even those of you in the latter group hopefully garner something useful about these intriguing names.

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Sean Newcomb finally had his first bad start of the season and unsurprisingly it came against the Houston Astros. They are third in wOBA against lefties at .347 and also have the third-lowest strikeout rate at 17%, a tough combo for the 24-year old rookie. Newcomb has actually shown a reverse platoon this year so six of the eight batters coming from the right side wasn’t necessarily a warning sign. Being Astros was the warning sign, let’s be real.

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Kevin Gausman is a total mess right now. His strikeout, walk, swinging strike, hit, groundball, and home run rates are all at career-worst levels. Just four of his 16 starts have been quality starts and he’s only gone 6+ innings in six starts. It’s been a nightmare. His splitter is still solid (though a bit worse than last year), but his fastball and breaking ball (it kinda morphs between a slider and curve, but generally sucks regardless) are both just getting smacked around.

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If James Paxton has suffered through his last three starts in the course of a healthy season, it would be annoying and definitely garner some attention, but I don’t think it’d cause a freakout. Given that they’ve come so closely a DL stint – something Paxton has been unable to avoid throughout his career – there are concerns. Paxton faces the Detroit Tigers tonight in Seattle, a game I’ll be watching. I figured I’d take a look at what’s been happening over these last three starts in comparison to the first seven (which includes his first off the DL on May 28th) and see if we can highlight the issue(s) and find something to keep an eye on tonight.

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It is so deflating to lose a piece of work so close to the end. I put together the NL Arms to Buy piece for posting today with one pitcher’s section open to see how he did on Tuesday. I woke up today, woke the computer from its slumber, and it’s gone. Just 100% gone. I did all the recovery methods for Microsoft Word that usually result in getting a doc back, but this one is gone. So frustrating, but hardly the end of the world. By the way, the AL piece last week suggested the NL arms would come out the day after instead of the week after, my apologies on that flub. Let’s try it again!

Jimmy Nelson

Off the top, I recommend checking out Jeff Sullivan’s piece on Nelson from last week. Nelson’s ascent is kind of weird to me. The key factor, as Jeff points out, is that he’s throwing a lot more strikes with career-bests in Zone percentage (51%) and First-Pitch Strike rate (64%). That’s a big plus. A guy with good stuff finally throwing more strikes and trusting said stuff is good, I dig it. He also has career-bests in strikeout (23%) and walk (6%) rate, too.

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Maybe it’s unfair to do a “what’s wrong with this guy?” piece on a guy the night after he goes 7 IP, 6 H, 1 BB, 1 ER, 5 K, but I don’t think a strong outing against KC does much the quell the concerns those have with Justin Verlander. I decided to write this up last night after watching the outing and learned quickly this morning that I wasn’t the only one still concerned as I received this text:

I pay people to address me as that in texts and real life conversations. LOL, just kidding, I don’t have real life conversations. On the year, Verlander has a 4.50 ERA, 1.37 WHIP, 21% K, 10% BB, 9% SwStr, and 1.2 HR in 68 IP. I dug into the numbers and here are the findings:

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Sonny Gray | 3.34 ERA, 1.08 WHIP, 23% K, and 7% BB in 29.7 IP

Gray has only made five starts, but he’s looking as sharp as ever. He missed all of April, but he certainly looks health right now. His velocity is at a career-best 93.4 mph (94 w/the four-seamer; 93 w/the sinker). Here’s what else I’ve seen in the stats and video of his last two starts:

• He’s using the sinker more than ever and working both fastball iterations down in the zone at a career-high clip, too.
• His fastballs are down in the lower third of the zone 52% of the time and they are fueling a career-best 59% groundball rate.
• The slider has always been a weapon, but it’s been a plus-plus monster and generated 9 of his 11 strikeouts on Wednesday.

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Jason Vargas is pitching out of his mind right now. He has allowed just one run in 20.7 innings (0.44 ERA) with a 0.77 WHIP. Perhaps more impressive than the surface results is the fact that he has a 31% strikeout rate powered by a 13% swinging strike rate. His 3% walk rate is great, too, though less surprising given his career 7% mark. Three starts of a 3% for a guy who rarely walks batters isn’t crazy. The rest is just insane, though.

His velocity has always been underwhelming (~86-88 mph) and it’s on the low end this year at 86.6. Vargas is using essentially the same pitch mix, too: 55% fastballs, 30% changeups, and 15% curveballs. By the way, it’s worth noting that this kind of started last year in three late-September as he managed a 2.25 ERA, 0.92 WHIP, 23% K rate, and 10% SwStr rate in 12 IP. So comparing the 32.7 innings from 2016-17 to his 380 from 2013-15, the biggest differences I found were with the fastball and changeup against righties. There’s also a wholesale zone percentage change, up to 51% against a career 45% and sitting 39-41% from 2013-15, which shows up in the fastball/changeup against righties.

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Two arms who got a lot of attention this draft season made their second starts of the season and dominated the opposition. Michael Pineda and Jharel Cotton were bouncing back from opening week duds after both guys had bad second innings that eventually cut short their outings, but neither were exactly pummeled. They rebounded nicely in their Monday afternoon outings. Here are my thoughts on the two starts.

Michael Pineda – 7.7 IP, 2 H, 1 ER, 0 BB, 11 K, 1 HR, 93 pit, 67 strikes, 18 swinging strikes v. TB

Few things are more “Michael Pineda” than following up a 3.7 IP/4 ER bomb with 7.7 nearly perfect innings (Evan Longoria’s double broke up the perfecto with two outs in the seventh). Hell, his first start was also the most “Michael Pineda” ever (4 ER in fewer than 4 IP yet still 6 K, 0 BB) so he’s been everything you’d expect thus far. The fastball velocity was up a tick and had the Rays tied up. They beat the piss out of it in his debut with a 1.417 OPS in 12 PA, the bulk of which came against lefties (9 of 12 PA). Yesterday they were 0-for-11 with lefties again accounting for nine of the plate appearances.

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I updated my starting pitcher rankings in the latest update to our group rankings and there were plenty of movers and shakers, so I’m just going to cover a whole bunch of them here. I’ll be covering the big risers in this first piece, then a separate one for the fallers. There won’t be any sort of unifying theme among the pitchers mentioned, just some free-form stuff. Sound alright? Let’s do it.

Jacob deGrom (+9 spots to SP10): I’ve been eyeing deGrom all offseason to make sure the ulnar surgery recovery was progressing as expected. All along we were told it wouldn’t cause any major issues and it has certainly played out that way thus far. His velocity is there and he has a 17:2 K/BB ratio in 15.3 spring innings. His performance hasn’t gone unnoticed and paired with concerns for some others originally slotted just ahead of him (David Price and Carlos Carrasco), he’s shooting up draft boards.

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