Another Pitching Trinity: Salazar vs. Rodon

Redraft leagues that permit trading take you places you wouldn’t otherwise go, although the same can be said of kidnappers. In a no-trading league, wherever Clayton Kershaw or Paul Goldschmidt or any high- or mid-priced player is at the end of the draft, that’s where he’ll be at the end of the season. In a league that permits trading, though, if you’re the Kershaw owner, you will be fending off suitors like a romance-novel heroine. You might be offered, say, Danny Salazar and Carlos Rodon—to take two names that, as you’ll see, aren’t chosen at random–for Kershaw, and you’re going to have to do some spadework to figure out if the deal might be worth your while.

We ourselves, as we’ve mentioned, play in just one trading league. That would be the Bluefish Blitz league, in which trading is not just permitted but encouraged, and not just encouraged but virtually compelled. We have survived our own pluperfect stupidity in this league—we’ll tell you at the end of this installment about the dumbest thing we did—and, rising on stepping stones of our dead selves to higher things, have assembled a roster that, when you squint hard at it, appears to be marginally competitive. And now, having spent more waking hours in the past month devising, contemplating, proposing, and receiving trade offers than we have on personal hygiene, we’ve reached the conclusion that we’re one good starting pitcher away from actual contention.

Of course, just because we want a good starting pitcher doesn’t mean anyone wants to give us one. And so, after electing yet again to forego bathing in order to undertake our umpteenth comprehensive review of every roster in the league, we concluded that Danny Salazar might be our man. The Salazar owners, while not unamenable to a deal, thought that Salazar might be their man, and noted, in the nicest way possible, that Salazar has been a top-15 starting pitcher this season, and thus will command a premium if he’s going to change hands. So negotiations took a while, and as they went on, we decided to undertake diligence even more due than the absurd and decadent amount we’d already given to the subject. And we found something interesting.

Even a casual glance at Salazar’s numbers suggested that his Batting Average on Balls in Play and his Home Run/Fly Ball Ratio were on the low side, and his percentage of Hard-Hit Balls was on the high side. This seemed bad, like the guy hasn’t been as formidable as he’s looked. So we wondered: how common is this combination of stats, and what might it signify? We accordingly asked: of the ERA-qualified pitchers this season, are there any who are in the bottom quartile (i.e. the number is lowest) in BABIP, the bottom quartile in HR/FB (likewise), and the top (i.e. worst) in hard-hit balls? Only two, we found. One is Colby Lewis, who is out until at least late August with an injury, and whom we didn’t want anyway. The other is Salazar.

What does this mean? We looked at the 2015 full-season stats. No one qualified. Same for 2014 and 2013. So we don’t know what it means. But we figured that it can’t be good. Salazar, we speculated, will plummet to earth, and with him our aspirations. So cancel that trade offer.

But we also wondered: who, if anyone, might be this season’s anti-Salazar? Who’s in the top quartile in BABIP and HR/FB and the bottom quartile in HH%? Only one guy—Carlos Rodon. Rodon’s stats don’t look good. He’s got the fifth-worst WHIP in MLB among qualifiers, and is in the bottom third in ERA. His FIP is in the bottom third, and even his xFIP is midpack. Moreover, he’s now on the DL, having tripped on the dugout steps last week on his way to the usual pregame ceremonies. Baseball is a dangerous profession. Still, he’ll be back in about a week, the stats say what they say, and Rodon had a good second half last year. So we made an offer, which is pending as we write. (Which is, by the way, shortly before Salazar’s first start after a ten-day layoff on Tuesday night, so we may be back with a bulletin Wednesday morning if there’s anything to bullet about).

Does this approach actually mean anything? In the 2013 season, two pitchers fit the Rodon profile—Rick Porcello and Jeff Samardzija, both of whom improved (though not dramatically) in 2014. Likewise, in 2014, two pitchers filled the bill. One of them was Angels starter C.J. Wilson, who was having a significantly improved 2015 until he got hurt—or to be accurate, even more hurt than he already was—and had surgery. The other was Zack Greinke, whose 2014 was very good but whose 2015 was Cy Young-worthy. 2015’s version of Greinke is Chris Sale, who was excellent then and is excellent now.

And there was one other 2015 underachiever. This is the stuff we live for. It’s oft-injured Dodger starter Brett Anderson, thought by many to be out for the season after back surgery in March, but now apparently on track for a mid-August return. We suspect that he’s available in your league, as he is in more than 99% of ESPN and Yahoo leagues, and was in the Bluefish Blitz league until we grabbed him.

There are subtler ways to go about inquiring who’s getting hit harder or less hard than it appears. As always, Alex Chamberlain of Fangraphs is in the vanguard of the investigators, brooding not only about the stats we’re looking at, but also about exit velocity and trajectory of batted balls, among other things. We’re hoping to follow him there during the offseason. But for now, this is what we’ve got, and we’re going with it.

Oh, yes. That stupid thing we did. We waived Danny Valencia in order to acquire Dillon Gee. That’s right–we don’t deserve to win, or even to live. We defy you to match this move for dumbness, and if you can, we invite you to tell us about it.