Archive for Adam Wainwright

Adam Wainwright’s last start was a match up with an historically bad offense and it was such a no brainer that he was my starting pitcher pick in “The Game” here on Fangraphs. Seven runs and 11 hits over five innings pitched versus the Pittsburgh Pirates later, I felt rather duped. And yet, I’m still bullish on Adam Wainwright.

Here’s what I know. Between 2007 and 2008, Adam Wainwright was a very good starting pitcher. Between 2009 and 2010, he was great. You wanted Adam Wainwright on your fantasy team, and you wanted him badly. I just know it.

And then we know about elbow surgery.

But despite it being a particularly damning diagnosis in the short term, Tommy John surgery isn’t quite as terrifying as it used to be since we’ve seen so many pitchers return to have successful post-surgery careers. Often times, we see pitchers simply scraping off the rust after spending the better part of a year recovering and rehabbing and not throwing baseballs. But their skills often return.

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When the FanGraphs meet-up took place in San Francisco on Tuesday night and the group was sitting around the TV hanging on each and every pitch thrown by Stephen Strasburg, inspiration hit for today’s Would You Rather column.  Proven talent versus monumental upside.  Seasoned veteran versus young upstart.  Future Hall of Famer versus….future Hall of Famer?  There are a lot of pros on each side and very few cons.  So if it were up to you…

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Here is the latest update to Week Eight 2-start pitchers. Again this list is subject to change going forward.

Pitchers not listed on last update

SFG – Tim Lincecum
STL – Adam Wainwright
LAD – Clayton Kershaw
CHC – Ryan Dempster

Pitchers from Friday no longer scheduled for two starts

STL – Jaime Garcia
CHC – Tom Gorzelanny
SFG – Todd Wellemeyer
LAD – Ramon Ortiz

Lincecum’s velocity is down nearly three miles per hour from 2008 but he has career highs in K/9 (11.01), GB% (48.3), O-Swing% (31.2) and SwStr% (13.4). Not surprisingly, Lincecum also has a career-best 2.35 ERA. Both his FIP and xFIP are slightly higher, but his FIP (2.50) ranks second in the majors while his xFIP (2.72) is the lowest. However, in his last outing Lincecum allowed 5 ER and 5 BB in a no-decision on the road against the Diamondbacks.

In his past four seasons, Wainwright has posted HR/FB rates in single digits. But this year’s mark of 3.6 percent has led to an xFIP a full run above his 2.49 ERA. Regardless, Wainwright is one of the elite pitchers in the game. He uses both a curve and slider effectively and combines a high strikeout rate with a high ground ball rate. Add it all up and Wainwright has thrown a Quality Start in eight of his nine appearances this season.

After getting roughed up in a start against the Brewers, Kershaw has been on fire. In three starts covering 22.1 IP, he has allowed 12 H, 2 ER, 7 BB and has 23 Ks. For the season, Kershaw has a 10.02 K/9 but has really struggled with his walks. His 5.26 BB/9 is the second-worst mark in the league. Kershaw also has a very low 5.6 HR/FB rate, which has led to an xFIP almost a full run above his 3.23 ERA.

Always a good strikeout pitcher, Dempster’s 8.33 K/9 is the highest mark he has ever posted as a starting pitcher. But even with that strikeout rate, a solid GB rate and a .252 BABIP, Dempster is just 2-4 on the season. Last time out he snapped a stretch of four straight losses with a no-decision. Dempster’s HR/FB rate is 11.9% but he has served up 7 HR in his last five games.

Over the offseason we’ll take a look at each position on the diamond and see how the past season affected the positional rankings and where there might be some potential bounceback value picks going into next year’s drafts. (See shortstops, catchers, second basemen, first basemen, third basemen, right fielders, left fielders and center fielders.)

Of course, when it comes to pitchers, the format suffers. We’re certainly not about to do tiered rankings for the top 75+ pitchers that get drafted every year in mixed leagues – that would be one long post. Instead, I’m going to cover the pitchers by their location on your team. The first group consists of pitchers that could or should be selected to be fantasy aces in 2010. Let’s take a look.

This is where I drop some caveats. Everyone has their preferences, so order this tier as you will. The first tier is meant to be the no-doubt-about-it group. All of these guys won’t give you the strikeouts of Tim Lincecum and Zack Greinke, but they’ll come within a strikeout or two per nine innings. They won’t all have the miniscule WHIPs of Dan Haren or Roy Halladay, but none of them should break 1.2 in that category. They won’t all be the horse that CC Sabathia is, but they’ve all (so far) shown the ability to put close to 200 innings together. There are no guarantees when it comes to elbows and shoulders, but these guys look like bonafide studs.

The next group ain’t too shabby themselves. The first three only have question marks because they’re young and haven’t been doing this for ages. Despite my worries about Jon Lester’s walk rate in the minors, he hasn’t shown any problems since he made his cancer recovery. Felix Hernandez broke out last year, and just needs to show it again. Justin Verlander seems to have fixed his delivery, but will what broke before break again? The next two guys have question marks are about age and health. Chris Carpenter is a walking question mark, and his ongoing health issues make him overvalued after strong years and undervalued after injured years. In other words, I owned him often last year and may not own him once next year. Instead, I may own Johan Santana often this year, who should be next year’s Carpenter, despite his worrisome declining velocity and strikeout rates. Cliff Lee never had great strikeout rates to begin with and is going to the tougher league, but he may get some support for a higher ranking.

Originally, there was a tier between Lee and Adam Wainwright, but that tier was born more of intuition than anything in the numbers. Wainwright made just as big of a leap forward as King Felix in some ways, why should he be in another tier? Perhaps this imaginary tier has a combination of questions. Wainwright broke out – and has durability questions. Josh Johnson can probably repeat his performance, given his history, but he has definite durability questions. He’s put together just 364 innings total from 2007-2009. Josh Beckett is a favorite of mine, but for some reason he keeps putting up ERAs that are much higher than his FIPs, and maybe that’s just how he rolls. Ubaldo Jimenez induces mad ground balls and strikes out plenty, but his stats are still borderline. Aw, heck, put that tier back in.

The “just off” tier gives you a preview of some nice SP2 values that you could pair with a late SP1 for your best strategic approach. Consider that the number one pitcher on this list is projected by Bill James to put up an 2.80 ERA and 1.12 WHIP with 261 strikeouts, while the tenth guy may “only” contribute 3.08 ERA, 1.09 WHIP and 224 strikeouts. That, my friends, is why you wait to draft your starting pitchers.

Recently, reader Pat left a comment on an article, asking:

“Can’t alot of pitchers HR/FB rates be expected to increase in the second half just due to the weather? … [T]herefore it would seem like a good strategy in a points league to stack pitching in the first half (and then look to make moves around the allstar break to acquire hitters).”

The reasoning here is that since bats tend to heat up as the weather gets warmer, hoard pitching early and then pick up hitters when the season is in full swing and 80 and 90 degree days are the norm.

Seems like a reasonable strategy, but would it work?

Since we would hoard pitchers early, let’s look at the top 20 starting pitchers, as determined by the final dollar values from the RotoTimes Player Rater, and check out their monthly HR and HR/FB data.

If HR prevention is the goal of this strategy, 16 of our 20 top pitchers had a HR/FB rate less than 11 percent in the final month of the season. Even August, the month last year where more HR by far were hit than any other, saw eight of our 20 pitchers have a HR/FB rate beneath 11 percent.

And this does not even take into account that the pitchers who were ranked top 20 at the beginning of the year often are nowhere to be found near the top of the leaderboard at the conclusion of the year. Using my friend Troy Patterson’s 2009 Starting Pitcher Rankings, here are the ones that did not make the top 20 at the end of the year:

Johan Santana (1), Brandon Webb (4), Jake Peavy (5), Cole Hamels (8), James Shields (10), Roy Oswalt (11), Ervin Santana (13), John Lackey (14), AJ Burnett (15), Edinson Volquez (16), Scott Kazmir (17), Carlos Zambrano (18), Chad Billingsley (19) and Daisuke Matsuzaka (20).

If you went into your draft convinced to load up on pitching, you could have wound up with a staff of Santana, Webb, Peavy, Hamels, Oswalt, Lackey and Burnett and at the All-Star break found other owners willing to offer you very little hitting in return.

Now, let us look at how pitchers as a whole fared in 2009. Here are the first and second half splits for all of the pitchers in MLB in 2009:

1st half – 4.32 ERA, 1.389 WHIP
2nd half – 4.33 ERA, 1.391 WHIP

It does not always work out this close, but this is yet another example of how easy this strategy could go awry.

Finally, you also have to consider how your league will handle trading with you when you have such an obvious need for hitters. Will your league-mates be willing to help you out and offer fair or even somewhat reasonable trades given how needy you are for offense? In friendly leagues that might not be a problem but it would likely be a bigger issue the more competitive your league is.

The best pitchers can dominate (or like Rodriguez in June – get lit up) at any point in the season. Stacking up on pitching only to turn around and deal it for hitting at the All-Star break seems like the fantasy baseball equivalent of market timing and not the best way to ensure long-term success.

As the season draws to a close, keeper decisions come to the forefront. After a terrible July (6.88 ERA, 1.56 WHIP) and a mediocre August (4.58 ERA, 1.31 WHIP), owners are probably wondering which way Jered Weaver’s career is going. Is he still on his way up? Is there un-tapped potential here, or is he what he is – a pretty good pitcher with established flaws?

Unfortunately for Weaver, the numbers seem to say that we’ve already seen his best. Though he’s only turning 27 this year, the statistics have been remarkably steady. With over a hundred major league starts under his belt, we’ve also gathered enough information to render a decently-informed decision, too.

Weaver did strike out close to ten per nine in many of his minor league stops, but he’s settled in at around 7.7 K/9 in the major leagues. In fact, in three of his four years, he’s been within .05 K/9 of that number, so consistency actually seems to be a part of the package, too. That strikeout rate is decent and surprisingly puts him at 26th in the major leagues in that category. It’s not a flashy strikeout-leader kind of rate, but it can work for him like it’s worked for Adam Wainwright, who is a good comp in terms of walks and strikeouts (albeit in the weaker league).

Weaver’s low walk rate makes his above-average strikeout rate play better. His first two years, he had a 2.5 BB/9 that would rank in the top 30 of qualified starters. Unfortunately, his control has slid a little and is inching up on three walks per nine over the last two seasons. That has to qualify as a slight concern, because as the strikeouts and walk rates start converging, his effectiveness will decline.

The established flaw in his game may not sound so terrible at first. Weaver is a fly-ball pitcher and is could become more of one as he ages (it’s also the main reason that he doesn’t comp well with Wainwright overall). He debuted with a fly-ball rate over 50%, then improved that number for two years, and is back over 50% again this year. Of course all fly balls are not created equally. Weaver is fourth in the league in infield fly balls, and steadily coaxes between 11 and 14% of his batted balls into the air on the infield.

Those infield fly balls help his home run per fly ball rate (around 8% year-in and year-out) stay under the major league average (10%), and they help mitigate the fact that batters like to put his pitches in the air. Being a fly-ball pitcher is fundamentally weaker than being a ground-ball pitcher, if only because less than 1% of all ground balls end up being home runs. Weaver’s home run rate (1.10 this year) is creeping up, and that stat will only get worse as he ages.

The whole package is obviously effective (he’s been worth over $50 million to the Angels in his four seasons), but the fly ball rate, home run rate, and medium-paced fastball (89 MPH) all stand on the wrong side of the ledger. The four positive pitches (by linear weights), good strikeout and walk rates stand on the positive side and give reason for consistently rosy projections and hope for better work in the future.

However, Weaver seems to have found his particular balance between his strengths and faults. This is who he is, and though he may have an outlier season in him, this is who will be until age gets to him. Age, of course, is always a finger on the negative side of the scale.