Five AL Starting Pitchers Victimized By Terrible Defense

If you guessed this post might relate to BABIP, you would be right. Last year, the highest BABIP by a qualified start in either league was .339, followed by four between .320 and .330. This season, the Major League average BABIP for starters sits at .297, while for American Leaguers it stands slightly lower at .295. The five starters below lead the American League with the highest BABIP marks. There doesn’t even need to be any deep analysis done to say with near certainty that better BABIP days ahead. But of course, that would be lazy, so analysis there shall be.

Before we begin with individual player analysis, let’s call out the elephant in the room. Three of the five worst BABIPers belong to members of the Yankees. Sure enough, the Yankees rank 25th in baseball in UZR/150 with a -4.4 mark and their team pitching BABIP sits at .309, seventh highest. The team’s defensive futility is quite a surprise, however, as they were tagged with the title of most upgraded defense in baseball and ranked as having the third best expected defense as well.

Chase Headley has been one of the biggest offenders, as his -10.6 UZR/150 is totally out of line with his history. Last year, he posted an insane 28.0 mark, so this decline represents a complete 180. Brett Gardner, who has logged significant time in both center and left field throughout his career, is currently sporting his worst career UZR/150 as well. Carlos Beltran continues to be brutal in right field and Jacoby Ellsbury’s UZR is negative for the first time since 2009, the only other year he posted a negative mark. Why the entire Yankees roster has decided to take the year off from fielding duty at the same time is a head scratcher. Whatever the cause, it’s killing their pitchers.

Nathan Eovaldi continues on his enigmatic path. He averages nearly 96 mph with his fastball, yet has never been able to muster even a league average SwStk%? He has suffered from inflated BABIPs, with marks of at least .317 in two of his previous three seasons, so one must come away thinking this isn’t entirely the Yankees defense’s fault. And with LD% marks against him of at least 22% every single season, along with low IFFB% rates, I would agree. His batted ball distribution suggests an inflated BABIP. Combine that with porous defense and a .358 BABIP is what you get.

He should be better moving forward, because he can’t get any worse, but it looks like we’ll have to wait yet another year when he becomes a post-post-post-post hype sleeper. I still think he should try throwing his new splitter more given its filthy 19.8% SwStk%.

So Michael Pineda has allowed at least five runs four times over his 14 starts, while also allowing two or fewer runs in eight of his starts. He either gets BABIP’d to death or the few balls in play miraculously find gloves. Unlike Eovaldi, his batted ball profile isn’t worrisome. Sure, you’d like to see a higher rate of pop-ups and a high ground ball rate is going to lead to more hits allowed, but his line drive rate is normal. So perhaps this leads to some sort of xBABIP of .300, just above the .295 league average? Surely a .349 mark isn’t deserved, at least in front of a capable group of fielders.

He has also been bitten by the long ball, as evidenced by his 12% HR/FB rate, and that combined with the BABIP has naturally pushed his LOB% well below the average. Only the specter of a future injury that always lingers keeps me from calling him an ultimate buy low. And of course, the poor Yankees defense that might not improve much. But still, I’m absolutely buying.

Remember when I suggested buying CC Sabathia? It was mostly due to a jump in fastball velocity, which wasn’t exactly sustained. But still, I thought his ERA would begin to dip toward his SIERA. Oops, since my recommendation, he has posted a sickly 5.80 ERA (and 3.27 xFIP!). His batted ball profile isn’t all that different than Pineda’s, trading a couple of grounders for line drives, so perhaps an xBABIP would be only slightly elevated. But since he posted a .350 mark in limited time last year and a .308 mark in 2013 and his fastball averages less than 90 mph now, it’s easy to just blame it on pure suckage. I won’t get into that argument, because I don’t know the answer.

Aside from the inflated BABIP, the long ball continues to be a killer. Sure, he has a bad fastball now which may inflate HR/FB rates, but that doesn’t justify any HR/FB rate. That would simply suggest a slightly higher than league average mark. A 17.7% is seemingly far too high to blame solely on his weak fastball. I stubbornly continue to own him in all three of my leagues and continue to trot him out there. Most of the time, the patience strategy works, but not always. Hopefully this isn’t one of those not always cases.

I’ve been through Carlos Carrasco before and his start yesterday brought his BABIP down to .336. He still sports a 4.00+ ERA, which means he might still be acquirable at less than ace level price, but perform almost like one the rest of the way. The Indians defense should be much improved with the promotions of both Giovanny Urshela and Francisco Lindor.

The Blue Jays defense has actually been quite strong this year, ranking eighth in baseball in UZR/150, while the team’s pitching BABIP ranks seventh lowest at .284. Unfortunately, no one told Drew Hutchison this. He owns a rather wacky batted ball profile this year, which makes me wonder just how much we could blame the pitcher, rather than the defense. His 25.8% line drive rate ranks fourth highest in baseball, which by itself is a bad sign and should match with an inflated BABIP. But that comes along with lots of easy outs via the pop-up, as his 14.6% mark ranks ninth.

His strikeout rate is down a bit as his intriguing slider has induced fewer swings and misses, while his solid changeup of last year has gone missing in action. He might not end up paying off as that big-time sleeper in shallower mixed leagues the rest of the way, but I would still be happy to acquire him in a deeper or AL-Only league.