Rubby de la Rosa Looks Ready to Breakout
In looking through my three annual league rosters this morning, I noticed there were two players I have in each of those leagues. Those two are Marcus Semien and Rubby de la Rosa. To give some perspective, one of these leagues is a deep, 20-team industry dynasty league and the others are keeper leagues. I made a trade during the offseason for de la Rosa in the dynasty league because I love his velocity and think he has the potential to be one of those Garrett Richards type post-hype breakout pitchers.
When it comes to de la Rosa, it feels like he has been in the league forever. What is surprising is that he turned only 26-years-old in early March. The time with which he has been in and around the league has seemingly given some fatigue around adding him to their fantasy rosters, so I was able to add de la Rosa in both keeper leagues relatively early in the season.
The reason I am telling you this is that the more I look at de la Rosa’s numbers, the more confident I am in him moving forward both for this season and the future. Last week, Eno wrote about the limits of utilizing strikeouts minus walks pre-draft and one of the guys that popped up as having a high quality strikeout minus walk rate this season is de la Rosa. Eno finished the thought by saying “And this is also why K-BB is such a great small-sample in-season predictor: it ignores that data which takes the longest to become meaningful.”
So far this year, the only thing that has really kept Rubby from being owned across all leagues in all formats is his home run rate. This is somewhat to be expected pitching in Arizona, but his home run per fly ball rate is still much higher than his career average, while his strikeout and walk ratios are much better.
Rubby is currently owned in only 23% of yahoo leagues and I think those in standard formats leaving him on the waiver wire are missing a potential big win for the rest of their year. At age 26 it looks like he is finally putting it together. He has not changed his arsenal or the usage of his pitches, his velocity has not gone down, but it looks as if he is learning to be a better pitcher rather than simply a thrower.
To put some numbers behind that statement, his swinging strike rate, contact rate, and zone-contract rate are all the best he has ever had, excluding his 11 relief appearance season with the Red Sox in 2013. To put his swinging strike rate in perspective, his 12.6% mark is 11th best in the league. He has a better rate than guys such as Felix Hernandez, Madison Bumgarner, Michael Pineda, Carlos Carrasco, and Jacob deGrom. Missing bats at as high a rate as he has is a formula for success, especially since that has come with more command. His command has greatly improved and he has not had to sacrifice velocity in order to do so.
Looking at this simplistically, guys with a 4.50 ERA, 3.34 xFIP, and 3.43 SIERA are not certain to straighten their ERA out, but they are statistical oddities that deserve attention. I am confident that Rubby, despite pitching in a homer friendly park, will be an asset in almost any format. While you still have the ability to pick him up, you should, and if you can trade for him at an extremely low cost, adding a guy like Rubby who has all the signs of a breakout down the stretch can be a big boost to any team for almost no risk.
Ben has been at RotoGraphs since 2012 and focuses most of his fantasy baseball attention toward dynasty and keeper leagues.
I’ve seen him sitting there. Haven’t pulled the trigger yet. I suppose I could just stash him on the bench and stream him.
How does de la Rosa compare to Eduardo Rodriguez? I know it’s tough to judge Rodriguez based off one start on the road, but he or Jesse Chavez would be the most likely to go for me to add Rubby.
I like RDLR, had him for 4 starts, I’d stream him instead of keeping him, personally even in deep leagues.
Give me Eddie- lefty throwing 94 with that special changeup.
Would you rank Rubby higher than either J. Hahn or J. Chavez, ROS? And, would you give B. Lawrie for him, in a trade? I’m in a 17-team roto league, with 15 total waiver dips allowed for the season. Currently first in WHIP and ERA, but lagging in QS, W and K.
Thanks.
The issue with De La Rosa last season was he tired as the season went on and became a progressively worse pitcher. I’d be careful expecting a break out season. I still think he’s destined for the bullpen.
Wasnt he destined to breakout last month? Time to let it go.
Over the last 30 days he’s put up a 2-0 record, 34 IP, 28 K, 3.71 ERA, and a 1.03 WHIP. So he’s really looking different than he did over his first 30 days. Compare that to his previous stats of 2-2, 30 IP, 31 K, 5.40 ERA, and a 1.26 WHIP.
Taking it as a total doesn’t tell the whole tale. You never know which De La Rosa is going to show up each start. On May 12, he allowed 4 ER, then on May 18th he went 9IP with 2ER, then proceeded to follow that with 4ER to the 2 starts close out the month. Someone who is destined to breakout would at least be able to string together good outing consistently.
Fiers or Rubby RoS?
A lot of his improvement this year seems to have come from his slider. I’m worried about his change. It’s his worst pitch by wRC+ and its weakness is likely a big reason why he has such terrible platoon splits against lefties. He gets decent whiffs on it, but if you look at pitch f/x the movement sits right on top of his fastball. Eno Sarris just did a good piece with James Shields on how Shields figured his change’s movement was more important than the fastball/change velocity differential. I’m just supposing all this but it seems to me that the while velocity delta is good for whiffs, hitters with a good guess or good pitch recognition can more easily hammer Rubby’s change because their swing is on the same plane as they’re geared up for on his fastball.
Most pitchers out there seem to have a better movement difference on their changeup. Would be interesting to do more research on average movements and see if Rubby’s is in fact on the bad end. It could just be a command issue, but compared to someone like Joe Kelly, Rubby at least seems to be able to control his change pretty well.
A guy offered me Weaver for Rubby today. Should i do that or keep De La Rosa?
no way I’m taking Weaver for Rubby. Weaver has lost it. Weaver has a 5k/9 with a mid 4 ERA/FIP/xFip, Rubby will give you better K’s and most likely whip too, with the same or better ERA.
Rubby cannot get left handers out, im more worried about that, than the ball park.
RDLR or Jimmy Nelson ROS?
I’ve been looking at RDLR for a few weeks now and own him in my most important league.
PROS: K/9 up, BB/down, LOB% due for positive correction, HR/FB due for positive correction, FIP is lower than current ERA, higher GB%, hasn’t lost velocity, higher o-swing%, higher Swstr%
(though it can be argued his HR/FB% won’t correct itself and thus his LOB% probably won’t either… this I won’t address xFIP since it assumes a lower HR/FB).
CONS: BABIP due for negative correction, will his higher HR/FB rate decrease in that park especially considering his IFFB% is low (is he missing high in the strike zone so the ball is hit out of the park instead of popping up), his ERA is currently 4.50 and at the end of the day ERA actually scores in fantasy baseball, in his career August and September have the highest ERA so will he last (His post All Star ERA is 1.36 higher than his pre All Star ERA)
But my point here isn’t any of that. My point is that maybe we’re overthinking his underlying factors – some are great and some are terrible so how do we know what to trust? He has a 1.14 WHIP. Pitchers with a 1.14 WHIP don’t have 4.50 ERA’s. There isn’t a single SP with an ERA over 4.00 until a WHIP of 1.17 (Yordano Ventura 4.26 ERA and Bartolo Colon 4.72 ERA). Excluding RDLR, there are only 3 SP’s with a WHIP of 1.20 or less and an ERA over 4.00.
ERA and WHIP tend to go hand-in-hand. I think it’s more likely his ERA goes down than his WHIP goes up.
Even if everything stays the same, his K’s and WHIP make him a player that should be owned because he can contribute. He won’t win you your league but he’ll help you.
Everyone here completely ignore his problems vs LHBs? That’s why he is streamer and not a top 20 pitcher.
Rubby de la Rosa Looks Ready to Break Your Ratios.