Handing Out Starting Pitcher Lumps of Coal To Aces

It’s easier to identify pitchers you’re excited about, pitchers that you like better than the rankings say you should, than it is to do the opposite. At least for me. It’s easier to believe in a pitcher than to hate on them. At least for me. Lists of sleepers seemingly go on forever, while lists of busts are shorter. At least for me.

The fact remains that only half of the top 20 from 2014’s end-of-season rankings repeated on this year’s end-of-season rankings. We should have reason to hate on at least half of this year’s best pitchers. So, despite the season, let’s hand out some coal to last year’s aces. All of them.

Jake Arrieta is almost too easy. Not only has he not put 400 great innings together yet, but he’s had injuries in the past. His shoulder robbed a decent chunk of 2014, and an elbow problem took two months out of his 2011. He had a bone spur in his right elbow in 2010. If the velocity holds, and the approach — many breaking balls and fastballs — doesn’t even take a step backwards, he’s still not out of the woods when it comes to health.

Of course, that’s going to be our easy fallback for half of these guys. Clayton Kershaw is not immune, himself. He had an AC problem in his shoulder in 2009, and since then, his back and hip have combined to rob a couple months of playing time. If these seem like a long time ago, then you’ve forgotten that he missed time this past season due to his hip injury. And that he once faced surgery on the troublesome joint. (I’ll admit I can’t see Kershaw’s performance falling off without a health problem.)

Zack Greinke, like Kershaw before him, is a repeat top-ten performer. But his injury history is immaculate. Yeah, he’s missed a lot of time with a couple surgeries, but both were due to factors beyond his control. He got hit by a wayward Carlos Quentin one time. An elbow during pickup basketball led to surgery. Other than that, he’s missed two weeks, combined, non-consecutively, in his entire major league career. (Four days were last year, when he got a lubricating injection.)

Max Scherzer is a two-time guy. And so was Chris Sale. Remember when the consensus was that neither would stay healthy because of their mechanics. Scherzer did weird things with his plant leg and had recoil. Chris Sale does the old Inverted W. They’ve been healthy since, with the odd missed day. But the past is prologue, or at least that’s what we’ll say when they’re hurt.

Is Dallas Keuchel going to play the role of Jordan Zimmermann in 2014? Perennial good starter takes a swinging strike burst into more strikeouts and a top-20 finish, only to return to perennial good starter-dom? It looks like Keuchel is getting more of his whiffs by throwing more of his pitches outside of the zone, but is that sustainable? Will batters just start to lay off it and force Keuchel to come in the zone to get more ground-balls instead of strikeouts? If that happens, Keuchel should still be good, but maybe he won’t be great.

David Price and Madison Bumgarner! Both repeat top-ten guys with clean sheets of health! Forget about Bumgarner’s up and down again velocity early on. Forget about Price’s postseasons and the more hittable cutter that he’s gone to with increasing reliance.

Gerrit Cole and Jacob deGrom play the role of 2014’s Stephen Strasburg and Julio Teheran, maybe. These guys are excellent young pitchers at least, and if Cole gets hurt next year, you could cast him as the guy that we should have known looked more like Strasburg than we wanted to admit. Or maybe his changeup — the worst of his pitches — leads to some strange Teheran-like dive. deGrom has already had TJ, do we know for sure what his true talent health skill is?

Matt Harvey had the year off in 2014, or maybe he’d repeat. Maybe he’ll take the year off again in the future, though. Or maybe the command never was all that great. Sonny Gray’s slider looks the final piece to the puzzle. But Garrett Richards looked like he’d put it all together in 2014, too. Should we mention Chris Archer here?

It gets easier by the end of the group. John Lackey is 36 and has gotten fairly far for great command and a great slider and little else. He smells a little bit like Doug Fister in 2014. Marco Estrada’s changeup has the best in-zone whiff rate in baseball, yes, but Collin McHugh had a great curveball last year, and his magic ran out. It would actually be an upset for either guy to get into the top 20 again next year.

Cole Hamels was on the list in 2014, even as it looked like he was in a general decline phase, maybe. You could say the same of Felix Hernandez, who is still great every year, but just a little bit less great. Jon Lester, too? And what if Hamels gets it back and pushes his way back into the top 20 and someone has to vacate to make room?

Corey Kluber‘s sinker is below average by whiffs and grounders! Did you know that Tanner Roark’s sinker is also below-average by those factors? Not saying they are the same guy, but it is an interesting parallel. Or at least, it’ll seem interesting if Kluber falls off.

All these things may sound a little crazy. They may sound like darts being thrown at a dart board. But they are based in two facts that are true of any pitcher — they’re going to get hurt, and they’re going to pitch worse in the future. We don’t know the dates on those facts, but we also know that half of the guys that were aces last year won’t be aces next year. Picking the right ones is how we give ourselves Holliday gifts. (Happy Holidays, don’t let this get you down!)