Roster Trending 9/9/14: Drop It Like It’s Hot

Yesterday, I discussed the four most added players in CBS leagues. Let’s look at the other side of the coin today and check in on those you’re all dropping. Are they worth picking back up?

Not surprisingly, a majority of the most cut players are injured or have major injury concerns. I am going to skip those players.

Shane Greene | SP NYY | 57% owned last week, 44% this week

Who posts a 4.61 ERA at Triple-A and then shaves his ERA by a full run when promoted to the Majors over nearly as many starts? Shane Greene does. Having only twice posted an ERA below 4.00 at a minor league stop, Greene’s success has been quite a surprise. He’s doing it by inducing lots of grounders and striking out batters at an above average clip. His curve ball has been his best swing and miss pitch relative to the average curve, but not spectacular or anything. Of course, he may not even have a curve.

It’s likely that much of his drop rate could be attributed to his outing two starts ago when he allowed six runs in just 2.2 innings. I’m guessing most of his owners were doubting his success and just itching for a reason to rid themselves of a high risk pitcher and that game sealed his fate. With just mediocre minor league numbers, it’s hard to get too excited here. I think his current ownership rate is reasonable and I wouldn’t bother picking him up.

Jeremy Hellickson | SP TB | 55%, 43%

By SIERA, Hellickson’s skills keep improving, but his ERA remains well above his low marks of 2011 and 2012. Those BABIP suppression skills he displayed in those years have apparently disappeared overnight, despite him generating as high a rate of fly balls as ever. Curiously, his IFFB% is at a career low and amazingly would rank as the lowest in baseball if he qualified. Odd.

Hellickson’s changeup remains fantastic, but his fastball is putrid. His curve ball is pretty good too, generating lots of grounders to go along with a slightly above average whiff rate. While I wouldn’t expect an ERA near 3.00 ever again without another huge heaping of good fortune, I think an ERA in the mid-to-high 3.00 range is fair. I’d rather have him than Greene above.

Chris Young | SP SEA | 68%, 58%

Who would have thought we would be writing about Young so frequently this season? He endured his worst outing two starts ago, allowed five runs, while failing to escape the first inning. And yet his ERA still sits at a tidy 3.35. While the majority of his luck metrics are a bit better than his career marks, they aren’t outlandishly so. And this is a guy who sports a career ERA a whopping 0.90 runs below his SIERA.

Unfortunately, his strikeout rate is poor and the Mariners offense ranks in the bottom half in runs scored in the American League. He’s the type of pitcher that when analyzing, I could share my confidence that his ERA should remain in the mid-3.00 range. Yet, I could never actually pick him up if he were a free agent in my league. He’s probably worth a bit above replacement level in shallow (12-team) mixed leagues, but that surely deserves a higher ownership rate than 58%.

Jimmy Nelson | SP MIL | 46%, 38%

After posting a minuscule 1.14 ERA at Triple-A this year, Nelson got his second shot with the Brew Crew and fantasy owners were certainly excited to see what he could do. The good news: his control, which has been a major problem at times in the minors, is significantly improved. He’s throwing first pitch strikes at a high rate and overall strikes at a better than league average clip. He’s also inducing ground balls with his sinker and his slider has been an excellent swing and miss pitch.

Unfortunately, he’s been essentially a two-pitch pitcher, throwing just the fastball and slider. As a result, his xFIP versus lefties is nearly a full run higher than against right-handed batters. He has struck out a lower rate of left-handers, walked more of them and struggles to induce the grounders he has so easily generated against righties. His pitch mix and skills remind me of a less extreme groundballing version of Justin Masterson. Since his ground ball rate isn’t nearly as high, I’d be more excited if he developed his changeup and it became an effective weapon to neutralize lefties. Hopefully that will be his winter homework assignment, at which point he’ll become a trendy sleeper in 2015.

For now though, his SIERA still sits below 4.00, well below his actual ERA, so he does have some mixed league appeal. But I would only consider starting him against a right-handed heavy lineup.