More Arsenal and Skills Analysis of Available Arms

by
August 21, 2019

Last week, I tried to find any positive mid-season changes a pitcher has implemented to improve their fantasy stock for the final few weeks. I started with pitchers owned in 16% to 30% of Fantrax leagues and will now be digging even deeper after Mike Montgomery popped up on my radar as someone making positive skill changes.

Jordan Zimmermann (16%): Whoa, he’s changed his arsenal around with a mid-season introduction of a sinker (11% SwStr%, 69% GB%). It’s tough to buy too much of the change since he has a 6.29 ERA in the season’s first half and 7.31 ERA in the second half. It wasn’t until the last four starts when he started using his sinker even more (14% usage) and therefore has a 4.35 ERA, 7.4 K/9, and 0.9 BB/9.

Also, August was the first month he threw his slider (40%) more than his four-seamer (36%). He pulling out all the stops to remain relevant. Even with the changes, he’s likely a 4.25 ERA pitcher at best but in some leagues, that production level is useful.

Peter Lambert (15%): Still useless.

Jacob Waguespack (14%): While he has an acceptable second-half ERA (4.00), it’s all LOB% driven (80%). And his velocity is down almost 2 mph.

Tommy Milone (9%): An 8.1 K/9 and 1.7 BB/9 should be playable but Milone is just too homer prone (2.0 HR/9). The Bat projects the home rate to be even higher (2.1 HR/9). It’s just about impossible to be a flyball pitcher in the Happy Fun Ball era.

Patrick Sandoval (9%): I’m intrigued. He had great minor league strikeout because of a devastating change (26% SwStr%) numbers which have carried over to the majors (9.6 K/9). His recent downfall has been the walks with 5.2 BB/9 in AAA and 4.50 BB/9 so far in the majors. The combination has his ERA estimators in the 3.50 to 4.50 range but he has a high ERA (5.79) caused by a high BABIP (.333) and low LOB% (61%). Besides Zimmermann, he’s the most interesting pitcher so far.

Jorge López (7%): Everything is getting worse for him. So far in August, he has a season-low 14% K% and season-high 12% BB%.

You Aren't a FanGraphs Member
It looks like you aren't yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren't logged in). We aren't mad, just disappointed.
We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we'd like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member.
1. Ad Free viewing! We won't bug you with this ad, or any other.
2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off.
3. Dark mode and Classic mode!
4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them.
5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects.
6. Remove the photos on the home page! (Honestly, this doesn't sound so great to us, but some people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.)
7. Even more Steamer projections! We have handedness, percentile, and context neutral projections available for Members only.
8. Get FanGraphs Walk-Off, a customized year end review! Find out exactly how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don't be a victim of FOMO.
9. A weekly mailbag column, exclusively for Members.
10. Help support FanGraphs and our entire staff! Our Members provide us with critical resources to improve the site and deliver new features!
We hope you'll consider a Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize this has been an awfully long sales pitch, so we've also removed all the other ads in this article. We didn't want to overdo it.

Sam Gaviglio (7%): Another pitcher putting up decent strikeout (8.0 K/9) and walk (1.7 BB/9) rates but getting killed by home runs (1.8 HR/9). No improvements.

Glenn Sparkman (6%): No changes, still crappy.

Edwin Jackson (6%): He’s doing everything possible with the Tigers to keep his career going. So far this month (3.86 ERA), he’s thrown his slider (18% SwStr%) more than any other pitch. He may just go cutter-slider with both generating ~50% groundballs and thereby limiting the home runs allowed. I can’t pull the trigger on him just yet because he’s Edwin Jackson.

Aaron Brooks (5%): He’s gotten worse since joining the Orioles.





 

Jeff, one of the authors of the fantasy baseball guide,The Process, writes for RotoGraphs, The Hardball Times, Rotowire, Baseball America, and BaseballHQ. He has been nominated for two SABR Analytics Research Award for Contemporary Analysis and won it in 2013 in tandem with Bill Petti. He has won four FSWA Awards including on for his Mining the News series. He's won Tout Wars three times, LABR twice, and got his first NFBC Main Event win in 2021. Follow him on Twitter @jeffwzimmerman.

Comments are closed.