Pitcher SwStk% Laggards

On Monday, I looked at the pitching leaders in SwStk% to see if we can expect any strikeout rate surges in the near future. Today, I will check in on the opposite end of the ledger, those pitchers whose SwStk% are at the bottom of the totem pole. Obviously, these are not the guys you want on you fantasy team. Let’s see if any of them have higher strikeout rates than you would expect and are therefore in for some regression.

Name K% SwStr%
Henderson Alvarez 7.3% 4.0%
Kevin Correia 8.3% 4.1%
Bartolo Colon 14.6% 4.3%
Derek Lowe 6.1% 4.4%
Lucas Harrell 11.1% 5.0%
Randy Wolf 12.6% 5.4%
Tommy Hunter 13.4% 5.7%
Jason Vargas 17.0% 5.8%
Kevin Millwood 16.0% 5.9%
Carl Pavano 13.0% 6.1%
Ubaldo Jimenez 12.5% 6.1%
League Average 18.4% 8.3%

On Thursday, I highlighted Henderson Alvarez as someone to sell high on. Some commenters had an issue with this suggestion, believing that Alvarez was purposely pitching to contact and that he could improve his strikeout rate if he wanted to. This is the typical argument for pitchers whose strikeout rates are low, but ERAs are low as well, and I strongly disagree with it. Alvarez’s league low SwStk% tells us that he simply doesn’t have the stuff to make hitters swing and miss. Strikeouts are automatic outs, whereas a ball in play will typically go for a hit about 29% of the time this year. Studies have concluded that strikeouts do not increase pitch count, walks do. One would assume Alvarez’s K/9 has to improve just by luck alone, but even if it does, he may have a hard time getting it above 4.0, which still remains woefully poor.

One of the primary reasons I have ranked Bartolo Colon lower than most in my AL SP rankings is because his SwStk% last year suggested his 7.4 K/9 would be impossible to repeat. Sure enough, that rate has dropped to just 5.6 this year. His SwStk% now has an almost perfect downward trend line since 2002. He continues to be a strike throwing machine and his SIERA is right in line with his ERA. However, it will be difficult to maintain a 1.5 BB/9, so I don’t foresee his ERA dropping below 4.00 .

Jason Vargas has the highest K% on this list and his strikeout rate is at the second best mark of his career, yet his SwStk% is down two points from last year. What might provide an explanation is the highest called strike percentage of his career, a mark that has increased every year he has pitched since 2007. While I am confident that called strike percentage does require some skill, I think it is subject to more randomness than SwStk% and so I would bet that Vargas’ strikeout rate declines.

I decided to include an 11th pitcher just to remind everyone how truly bad Ubaldo Jimenez has become. We all know his velocity is down again this season, but even with a fastball that only averages 92.1 miles per hour, his stuff has to rate well above average. So it is still head scratching that he has managed such a pathetic SwStk%. What’s amazing is that his expected ERA metrics actually suggest that he has been lucky this year to have posted a 5.02 ERA! It’s crazy to think that there is still no explanation for his struggles. Hopefully nobody is still starting him in any leagues at this point, even AL-Onlies.





Mike Podhorzer is the 2015 Fantasy Sports Writers Association Baseball Writer of the Year. He produces player projections using his own forecasting system and is the author of the eBook Projecting X 2.0: How to Forecast Baseball Player Performance, which teaches you how to project players yourself. His projections helped him win the inaugural 2013 Tout Wars mixed draft league. Follow Mike on Twitter @MikePodhorzer and contact him via email.

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phoenix2042
11 years ago

i think ubaldo was never a good pitcher. He was a thrower with great stuff. Now he is a thrower with okay stuff who doesnt know how to get hitters out without overpowering them.