Concern, Keeper, Kazmir

Public disclaimer on this one as I’m an admitted Scott Kazmir fan. I own him on virtually every one of my fantasy teams, and the part of me that loves good baseball stories just can’t get enough of the path that Kazmir has taken over his career. That’s probably a fatal flaw of mine relative to fantasy baseball success — the tendency to own guys you actually like to root for in real life. And I still root for Scott Kazmir. But that doesn’t mean I’d still start him on my fantasy baseball teams.

Kazmir has had as much of a Jekyll and Hyde season as his Oakland Athletics. He started out the season on fire and by the end of July, Kazmir had pitched to a 2.37 ERA, holding opponents to a .215/.267/.326 slash line. He threw 129.1 innings, giving up just 102 hits, striking out 116 (23% K rate), and walking 30 (5.8% BB rate). He was 9-3. All systems go.

Since the end of July, however, Kazmir has more than just struggled. He’s had three complete meltdowns over nine starts, throwing a total of 48.2 innings. He’s given up 54 hits, struck out 34 (16% K rate), walked 19 (9% BB rate), and pitched to a 6.29 ERA, allowing a .286/.349/.407 slash line. For those of you visually inclined, here’s that juxtaposition in chart form:

	ERA	K%	BB%	BAA
Before	2.37	23%	5.8%	0.215
After	6.29	16%	9%	0.286

We can quibble about sample sizes, and please quibble at will in the comments. But Scott Kazmir hasn’t been the same pitcher over his last nine starts — not by results and not by his repertoire.

Using the same time frame as above (end of July as the line of demarcation), here’s the percentage of pitches Kazmir has thrown. This is using Brooks Baseball, so there are some disagreements with BIS and PitchF/X on whether something is a cutter or sinker, but whatever, as long as we’re consistent, the exercise has value:

So since the end of July, and since his misery began, Scott Kazmir has become much more reliant on his fastball, throwing it almost twice as much as he did over the course of the first half of the season (and then some). He’s just about given up on his sinker completely. And maybe this was all part of the plan — after all, hitters were only averaging .209 with a .318 slugging percentage against his fourseam fastball over the first part of the season whereas hitters were hitting .272 with a .386 slugging percentage against the sinker. His change produced just a .196 batting average, but it was prone to allowing home runs (6 total). After July 30? Let’s chart it:

Before:

	BAA	SLG	ISO
Fourseam	0.209	0.318	0.109
Sinker	0.272	0.386	0.114

After:

	BAA	SLG	ISO
Fourseam	0.371	0.565	0.194
Sinker	0.467	0.733	0.267

Yeeks.

And then, there’s the ubiquitous is-he-or-isn’t-he-hurt-velocity-chart:

I don’t know that this is damning, but over his last nine starts, the trend is pretty clearly headed south — and in context with his change in repertoire, the pitch he’s going to almost half the time is coming in more hittable.

I have mixed emotions on the issue of whether or not he’s hurt. If he’s not, then wow — he’s been ineffective for several starts and awful for several without much of an explanation. If he is hurt, well, smoking gun — but what does that leave you with going forward. With many of you facing keeper decisions, I think Kazmir is one of the tougher ones out there. His cost probably wasn’t prohibitive, he was incredibly valuable for most of the season, but his late season swoon might facilitate a lot of managers choosing to part ways. Depending on the cost, I think that’s a reasonable decision.

Kazmir ought to have two more starts this season, and the results will weigh heavily on my decisions about 2015.