Reviewing 2017 Pod’s Picks & Pans — Starting Pitcher

Alas, we reach the final position to dive into for this year’s recap of Pod’s Picks & Pans. We finish with the starting pitchers, a group that always garners varying opinions. Let’s see how the players I was most bullish and bearish on versus the RotoGraphs consensus actually performed.

First, we’ll start with the pitchers I was more bullish on:

Well, this was embarrassing.

I’m actually pretty amazed that even with a disappointing 4.42 ERA and just nine wins, Jeff Samardzija was still good enough in WHIP and strikeouts to rank 34th. His SIERA was a much more respectable 3.62, as he really just need to push that LOB% back up. He’ll be undervalued in 2018.

The Pod injury curse strikes again! This time to Michael Pineda, who amazingly still ranked inside the top 100 pitching just half a season. And he didn’t even post good results! His ERA was over 4.00 again, his WHIP was a weak 1.29, and he struck out fewer than 100 batters. Who knows what we’ll get when he returns from TJ surgery.

LOL Drew Hutchison. He literally didn’t even throw a pitch at the Major League level this year and the Pirates opted to give starts to a plethora of mediocre pitchers over Hutchison. He wasn’t even impressive at Triple-A, striking out just 18.3% of batters. A move to the NL provided hope, but I’ve lost interest.

Aaaaaaand Nate Karns is Pod injury curse victim number two on this list. He had been posting some intriguing skills before going down.

So naturally Jaime Garcia posts the worst skills of his career. What happened to his control?!

Let’s see if I could redeem myself any with the pans:

It’s a clean sweep! As I mentioned in the comments of my outfielders recap, I definitely find it easier projecting busts than breakouts. So at least in these last two positions, I have performed far better with the Pans than Picks.

I think his name kept Gerrit Cole’s perceived value high, despite the fact he was facing health questions and skills degradation. He ended up staying healthy, and his strikeout rate rebounded, but his SIERA just barely dripped below 4.00, and he suddenly endured massive home run issues. Given that he had held HR/FB rates well below league average every season prior, were we just witnessing simple regression to the mean where he never truly possesses some HR/FB rate suppression skill? He’ll obviously come cheaper than ever, but I’m still not sure it’ll be cheap enough to be a great profit opportunity.

It’s time to toot my horn — I was totally right on Danny Salazar. I was worried about his health and noted his sudden walk rate spike. Sure enough, he spent time on the DL for both a shoulder and elbow issue. And, his control remained suspect. He did pitch much better in his six starts after returning from his shoulder injury and before heading back to the DL due to the elbow. He’ll enter 2018 with the same high risk/high reward label as 2017.

Aaron Sanchez only got eight starts in (the Pod injury curse at work again!) before succumbing to injury, but he was terrible while on the mound. His control deserted him, but he also lost his stuff, striking out just 14.4% of the batters he faced. There’s definitely seeds here and he should come cheaply next year.

Sorry Michael Fulmer, you were Pod injury cursed too. Fulmer was super lucky during his rookie campaign, which unsurprisingly led to overvaluation. His ERA did rise significantly this year, but it still fell far below his SIERA. What’s he doing to suppress BABIP and HR/FB rate, or has he just enjoyed a fortunate two seasons? He’s got a batted ball profile suggesting a higher than league average BABIP given the ground ball rate, so beats me. He won’t ever appear on my team.