Four AL Starting Pitcher Targets For Final Month

In deeper leagues, especially those of the mono-league variety, everyone is typically always in search of better pitching. Hitting too, of course, but that’s for another article. The problem with deep leagues is that no one has depth. So to fill one hole you will almost assuredly create another one. It’s simply much more difficult to trade when your bench is filled with scrubs, except when it’s categorical, like trading an excess of saves for a starting pitcher. But that doesn’t happen often, so the alternative is to simply aim lower. Trading for a Chris Sale level pitcher is great and all, but it’s not the only way to improve your pitching staff. So here are four names who have all drastically underperformed their SIERA marks so far this year, which means they could likely turn you a profit in a trade if their fortunes turn.

Rick Porcello

Porcello was just activated from the DL for last night’s start after missing about a month with inflammation in his right triceps. Normally, that’s a scary sounding injury. But, he’s back, and he pitched well, striking out five batters over seven shutout innings, while walking no one. So it doesn’t appear that there need to be any concern over his performance strictly due to the injury. But, one would certainly be concerned about his performance even before the injury as he had posted a ghastly 5.81 ERA! However, he appears near the top of the SIERA/ERA differential leaderboard as the unluckiest American League starting pitcher this year.

Coming into last night’s start, his ERA was nearly two full runs above his SIERA. We know all about the terrible Red Sox defense, but no defense is bad enough to explain such a SIERA/ERA disparity. Porcello’s .332 BABIP ranks seventh in baseball among all starters who have pitched at least 110 innings. He has struggled with BABIP issues in the past, and in fact has only posted a sub-.300 mark in two of his seven seasons. But aside from the inflated BABIP, what has killed him has been the home run ball. A career high HR/FB rate has destroyed his season, and things are made worse by his career high fly ball rate.

He’s not going to save your pitching staff, of course, but he should be markedly better from here on out. And, he could probably be gotten for a suck. Heck, last night’s good outing might very well make his owner feel like this will be his only opportunity to get rid of him.

Taijuan Walker

Three weeks ago when I published my final AL SP tier update for the season, I moved Walker up a tier despite an ERA approaching 5.00. In his three starts since, his ERA hasn’t dropped at all, but his peripherals remain excellent. His percentage of strikes thrown has jumped from last year and now his control, which had been a question mark, is suddenly pretty good. And he’s getting swings and misses at an above average clip. Of course, we expected this from a guy armed with a mid-90s fastball. But like other high velocity guys, perhaps we expected a bit more in the strikeout department.

The problem hasn’t been his fastball as its generating a respectable SwStk%. His splitter/changeup has been fantastic as well, inducing both grounders and whiffs. And his curve ball has been meh, but fine enough to continue throwing it at the low clip he has. The big problem is with the pitch that he was supposed to feature, given the future grade slapped on it — the cutter. Last year it generated just a 5.7% SwStk%, with no ground ball tilt, and this year it has barely improved to 6.5% and again without the grounders. So it’s not getting grounders or swings and misses. And yet he throws is 9% of the time. There’s one obvious path to improvement — ditch the pitch!

The problem is that he throws the pitch primarily to righties and since his other two non-fastball offerings are platoon busters, he might need a different pitch to throw to righties. Whatever happens though, it’s hard to blame a weak cutter on causing a full run difference between his ERA and SIERA. But at least we could point to ways he could improve and he becomes that much bigger a breakout candidate next season.

Drew Hutchison

WINS! Thanks to ridiculous run support (he leads baseball with 6.71 runs of support), Hutchison is 12-2, despite a 5.06 ERA. Though his strikeout rate has declined from last year, his season has really been torpedoed by a .339 BABIP, which has suppressed his LOB%. An inflated line drive rate could certainly be blamed here and somewhat supports that high BABIP. But line drive rate itself is flaky, so you wouldn’t expect such a high mark to be sustained.

Counteracting all those liners is a high IFFB%. His mark ranks eighth among qualified American League starters and he is tied for 18th in total pop-ups induced. So it’s hard to believe his BABIP remains as high as it has, especially since the Blue Jays do not have a poor defense. It would be foolish to expect Hutchison to keep receiving such strong run support, but that offense is scary and it can continue to earn him some cheap wins. So if nothing else, he’ll win some games and add to your strikeout total. His underlying skills suggest that he may also be a slight positive in both ERA and WHIP the rest of the way as well.

Hisashi Iwakuma

Iwakuma missed about two and a half months with a strained lat muscle and has been pretty up and down in his 10 starts since returning. His peripherals have been just as good as always, but has posted a mediocre 3.72 ERA during that time. We can’t blame the BABIP, as it has sat at just .240. Instead, it’s the home run ball. His HR/FB rate since returning from the DL has been 16.1%, which is actually an improvement from the ridiculous 27.8% mark he posted over his first three starts of the season. Part of that 16.1% is from the four homers he allowed in his first start back from the DL. Since that unfortunate start, his HR/FB rate has been a much more normal 10.6%. And his ERA has also sat at 3.30, just what we would expect from a healthy Iwakuma.

But, he just allowed seven runs in his last start and his ERA jumped back above 4.00. He was an unsexy name in the preseason, and one I thought was being undervalued, so it’s unlikely that anyone has changed their mind for the positive at this point. If anything, owners likely value him even less. This is a good thing because he could very well come quite cheaply and be a great source of WHIP, at the very least, the rest of the way.