Mixing Fantasy & Reality: Cole and Cuthbert

A.J. Cole Breakdown

The National’s righty made a spot start for the Nationals on August 22 and allowed four runs over seven innings of work. To start getting a profile of Cole, here are his pitching comps using his 2016 MLB.com grade. Additionally, I included his previous grades which I will discuss in a bit.

The pitcher list isn’t that exciting with most pitchers falling into the #4 to #5 starter range.

The big note I took away from the grades, was his declining fastball grade from MLB.com. It was 70 in 2014, 65 in 2015, and 55 this year. Additionally, here are the velocity speeds stated in the Baseball America Handbook for each year.

Season: Fastball Speed Description
2014: “… sits at 94-95 mph and regularly hits 97.”
2015: “… pitched comfortably at 91-93 … and bumped 96.”
2016: “… sits comfortably in the low 90s, pushing as high as 96 mph …”

In the game, he maxed out at 93 mph and was as low as 89 mph. I can see why his stock has dropped from a mid-90s fastball to around 90.

Additionally, I did a Quick Look of him in the start and saw the following.

• He had a jerky windup up. He directly attacked hitters and threw from a 3/4 arm slot. He has some deception in his windup which could lead him to be a lot better out of the windup than the stretch.
• Fastball: between 89-93 mph and had several different movements (cut/sink/rise). Pitchf/x classifies almost each pitch as a four-seam fastball (a few sinkers). I’m not sure if the differences were intentional or part of a general inconsistency he displayed with all his pitches.
• Slider: Was 81-83 mph with some glove side run
• Change: 80-83 mph with a 12-6 drop.
• Curve: threw it at 73-76 mph with 12-7 motion (from pitcher’s perspective) and could throw for K’s. For this game, it was his best pitch.
• All his pitches were lacking command. It was tough at times to determine if the pitch was a change or slider because their velocities are the same, but the pitch bounced in front of the plate.

Overall, I think the sum is greater than the parts, but he is going to need work. With his expectations declining over the past couple of seasons,
I expected worse. If he can eventually consistently control all his pitches, I could see him get in to the #2 to #3 starter range. Right now he is probably a #4 for most team.

Regression’s Coming for Cheslor Cuthbert

As he is inclined to do at times, Tom Tango got me deep diving into a subject. This quote probably didn’t mean much to Tom:

The best wOBA on short contacts is Cheslor Cuthbert, and it’s not even close, at .346.

Basically, on balls which first make contact in the infield, Cuthbert is the best hitter in the league. I think this statement would make sense if Cuthbert was fast, but he isn’t fast. He pretty much has catcher speed.

The only explanation for the high value may be that he has been extremely lucky on balls in play. I went and broke out my old xBABIP formula (full list) to see what it said about Cuthbert. Here are the hitters with BABIP higher than their xBABIP (min 200 balls in play) and Cuthbert is right near the top.

It looks like we could expect quite a bit of regression on his AVG going forward, maybe even down to the .250 level or lower. The drop may already be happening with his 10-game rolling AVG at .250.With his Royals-like walk rate of 5%, he needs his hits to fall to be productive. With a .250 AVG, he will likely see his OBP drop to sub-300 level. This low level doesn’t mean he will lose playing time for the Royals, but his fantasy production will be limited.

Besides the likely lower production, his playing time will be up in the air with Mike Moustakas coming back next season to play third base. There is some talk of him playing second, but all reports from the minors say he struggled at second base. Right now I am going to temper expectations and go with a 2017 projection of:

500 PA/.250 AVG/300 OBP/15 HR/120 R+RBI/0 SB

Notes

• Two pitchers, Robbie Ray (3.2 BB/9) and Julio Urias (3.6 BB/9), showed nice command in their last start with Ray walking one batter and Urias none. Both of these two have struggled recently with command and their fantasy value will be tied closely to it.

Ray may already be making the needed changes. In the season’s first half his BB/9 was 3.7 and it is only 2.1 in the second half. It would be nice to see Urias make the same changes. With both pitchers striking out over a batter per inning, they could be great fantasy assets with a BB/9 at or under 2.0.

• Jean Segura is back to hitting like he did in 2013 with double digit home runs and an AVG around .300. Looking over all his stats, the one item which he did in 2013 and this season is not swinging at out of the strike zone pitches.

Here are his out-of-the-zone swing rates over the past three seasons.

Season: O-Swing
2013: 33%
2014: 34%
2015: 39%
2016: 33%

Segura will likely always be a free swinger, but when he doesn’t chase the worst pitches he performs better.

• Brad Miller is having a career season hitting 25 home runs this season. His career total before this season 29. He has achieved this feat by basically swinging hard and living with the consequences. The hard swings have seen his strikeout rate increase (20% to 23%), but his HR/FB (10% to 23%) and FB&HR distance (283 ft to 301 ft) have increased. He’s another player I am keeping an eye on for the rest of the season to see how much the power projects into next season.