Archive for Carlos Carrasco

It’s time for our Depth Chart Discussions to begin. In an effort to suss out every team, we’ve divided them into four parts (infield, outfield, bullpen, and rotation) and will begin breaking them down for you over the next few weeks. You can find them gathered here.

According to WAR, FIP and xFIP, the Indians rotation was one of the three best in the league last year, which is kind of amazing considering Trevor Bauer had the second highest innings total on the staff. But it certainly didn’t hurt that they had a guy with a 4.30 ERA as a starter prior to 2014 who more than delivered on the promise indicated in his peripherals by winning the AL Cy Young award. But one pitcher does not a good rotation make. In addition to their Cy Young winner, they got sub-3.00 ERA ball from another starter for just over 90 innings, and they had five starters throw at least 90 innings with an xFIP of 3.50 or lower. Assuming everyone is healthy come Opening Day, two of those five don’t figure to crack the rotation. I dare say this rotation might be good again. Read the rest of this entry »

Our Mock Draft is complete.

Team Schwartz/rounds drafted:

C: Travis d’Arnaud/17 1B: Victor Martinez/4 2B: Arismendy Alcantara/18 3B: Josh Donaldson/3 SS: Hanley Ramirez/2 MI: Jean Segura/19 CI: Prince Fielder/6 OF: Mike Trout/1; Mookie Betts/7; Ryan Zimmerman/10; A.J. Pollock/14; Steven Souza/20; Carl Crawford/24 U: Pedro Alvarez/21

Read the rest of this entry »

Mock. Yeah. Ing. Yeah. Draft. Yeah.

You can follow our 12 team, standard 5×5 roto mock draft. Else, here is a summary of the first two rounds and our first outfield battle.

My first battle is my self-battle on Zack Greinke. After 63 picks in, I tweeted an image of my rankings, which had Zack Greinke literally all alone at #23 overall. Everyone else in the top 40 were gone by pick 63 except for Greinke and Prince Fielder whom I wound up drafting once pick 6.72 came around.

Read the rest of this entry »

This week, Eno presented Pitch Arsenal scores. There were a sundry of impactful responses which will result in a more comprehensive score in the future, such as incorporating pitch usage; a dominating pitch used more should be scored higher than a pitch with the same results that is used less.

The other clear requirement is associating weight to the outcomes in which Eno evaluated: whiff per swings and grounder to fly ratios. That is all this post will get at. It sounds like follow-up scores may incorporate pop-up% and zone% as well. Again, we are looking for undervalued pitchers, but if we want to get more descriptive (simply presenting the results from last year), we could look at HR/FB and LD/BIP on each pitch type as well.

I did something similar in the past, and there are different approaches, but here goes.

Using BP’s PITCHf/x Leaderboard (1oo-pitch qualifier) I first found each pitch type’s Whiff/Swing and GB/FB z-score. I then weighed each z-score by swinging-strike’s (.62) and GB/FB’s (.27) average correlation to ERA, SIERA and xFIP for all pitchers over 70 innings pitched (my lazy attempt to omit relievers). What is not incorporated and should be in the future, is differentiating weights for each pitch type. For example, groundball induction is a more important requirement for Sinkers; Sliders and Change-ups should induce more whiffs as we know from these Pitch Type Benchmarks.

The seven pitch types incorporated are Fourseamers, Sinkers, Cutters, Curves, Sliders, Change-ups and Splitters. For Trevor Bauer‘s Screwball and R.A. Dickey’s Knuckleball, I went to Brooks Baseball’s player cards and used their sabermetric outcome z-scores for these two pitch types and combined the weighted z-score to the rest of their repertoire score.

The list will be distinguishable from Eno’s initial list based on the weights, but the names within each cluster will look similar.

When you get Felix Hernandez and Corey Kluber in the top 5 and Kevin Correia dead last, you know we got it right:

Notes:

• Pitchers with outcomes missing threw less than 70 IP.
• Pitch types were included only if pitches were thrown 100+ times. For example, Trevor Cahill wound up at #8 on this list. He has excellent breaking and off-speed pitches (all 1+ standard deviations more than average from a whiff/swing perspective), but his Fourseam is awful, and BP’s PITCHf/x leaderboard did not present his Fourseam outcomes based on a sub-100 pitch count as a starting pitcher so it was not included in his full arsenal/repertoire score.

Results:

Think the Indians aren’t looking on the pitch-outcome level? They have 5 pitchers in the top 55 Repertoire Scores: Carlos Carrasco and Corey Kluber are numbers 3 and 4 respectively! Newcomer Gavin Floyd is #15 on the list thanks to great breaking balls. Danny Salazar is #43 and his per-pitch outcomes were even better coming into 2014. T.J. House is the real deal at #54. And not far off is Trevor Bauer at #75 overall.

I cannot not mention that the Mets have two guys in the top 21: Zack Wheeler (#9) and Jacob deGrom #21). Harvey if healthy should join them.

As it relates to Cahill, for some value-add, I highlighted (red/green) those .50 more or less standard deviations from the mean in SwStr% and GB/FB, but also the three “luck” categories: LOB%, HR/FB and of course BABIP. Cahill ranks well in both SwStr% and GB/FB and was also relatively unlucky when it came to his BABIP and LOB% (about 65 points and 9% respectively from his career average). Cahill is a deep-league…even standard-league asset with some returned control and an ERA closer to expected ERAs below 4.00. I am thinking the magical-mystery-kind age 27 season for Cahill.

Attend to the luck stats. Carlos Martinez has one of the best repertoire scores yet had a 4.03 ERA in part due to a .333 BABIP. His xFIP (3.45) and SIERA (3.54) in conjunction with the #1 overall arsenal score should ensure he is significantly better next year.

The list verifies breakouts: Carlos Carrasco, Garrett Richards, Yordano Ventura and Tyson Ross (all top15). Ross has a devastating Slider (8th best; 100-pitch qualifier) with a solid Change from a whiff/swing perspective, but he induces a ton of grounders with his Change and Sinker (both have top 11 GB/FB rates).

The list also provides hope for Justin Masterson who wound up at #7 on the list with 2.72 Sinker score and .74 Slider score. That 2.72 Sinker score out-summed 205 other full repertoire scores, but again keep in mind that his Sinker whiff/swing of 22.88% might be 3 standard deviations better than the average Sinker whiff/swing, but that rate is under the average whiff/swing rate for Curves, Sliders, Change-ups and Splitters. This is why it is important to differentiate weights for each pitch type.

If there is a pitcher’s Repertoire score that baffles you, check out the “RepScores” tab to see which pitches were omitted and the individual pitch-type z-scores and weights under the “zWh/Sw” and “wzWh/Sw” columns. Each pitch-type score and repertoire score is in the last column, titled “Wh/Sw_Gb/Fb_Scr.”

Back to the actual value of the content though – we are looking for interesting names and patterns, which I have highlighted in Red or Yellow based on the content below:

• Trevor Cahill interests me if he never uses his Fourseamer again and can induce more grounders with his Sinker. Cahill has a nice Cutter/Slider that he used toward the end of last year too. There is more swing and miss to his game.
• Dan Straily and the Sinker Pattern: Dan Straily might not have a spot in the Cubs rotation at this point, but he has a solid Slider and induces a surprising number of pop-ups. If he can keep his HR/FB ratio down (probably more of an issue in Wrigley than the Coliseum though) and have better luck in the left-on-base department, he could become effective again. His ranking in this list though is because of an elevated Sinker value (similar to Masterson). Look out for the Sinker and take the associated rankings with a handful of salt.
• James Paxton: By name and the Mariners un-willingness to move him, you know that he is good. It’s nice that our list backs him up. While his expected ERAs were 3.50+ (about 50 points higher than his 3.04 actual ERA), he should get even better; mainly his Change-ups, which should induce more whiffs. Even if we don’t see an impressive strikeout rate next year, I think he will be able to prevent hard contact with his CCC (Change-Curve-Cutter) repertoire and Fastball velocity (17th at 95.51 MPH last year; 100-pitch qualifier).
• Shane Greene: He’s no Max Scherzer, but the Tigers finagle themselves into another Yankees-Diamondbacks swap and again may have acquired the best piece. Another potent righty, Greene had the 10th best Slider Whiff/Swing rate and 5th best Cutter Whiff/Swing rate (enough velocity differential where they are distinguishable). Unlike Masterson and Straily, his Sinker does not inflate his repertoire score. Losing Rick Porcello hurts, but Shane Greene could be even better.
• Jesse Hahn and Pitch Omissions: Similar to Masterson and Straily, Hahn’s repertoire score is inflated by his Sinker although he had a great Curve (31st best Whiff/Swing rate). His Slider and Change were omitted from his arsenal in this evaluation based on pitch-counts under 100. Both would impede on his overall score. Through this approach, Hahn’s Changeup would be valued at -.15, which would drag his repertoire score from 1.59 to 1.44. The Slider would be far worse, but he used it less than 30 times, so I won’t subtract from his overall score in case he decides to swap the pitch out altogether next year.
• Wily Peralta. This is more about confirmation than highlighting a surprising name. Peralta won’t provide haughty strikeout rates, but his 18.4% rate from last year could jump a bit based on the per-pitch outcomes/more breaking-ball usage. In a future FanGraphs+ post, his release point consistency (within-game but especially game-to-game) will be highlighted, which could be a source of deception. While the Sinker does inflate his value some here (almost a standard deviation more whiff/swing than the average Sinker), it does its job inducing grounders. His Changeup and Slider are also .55+ standard deviations better than average at inducing whiffs.

Eno already emphasized Carlos Martinez and Carlos Carrasco – both have glorious peripherals within each pitch-type beyond their Fourseams. Every pitch of theirs outside the Fourseam induced 1.5 standard deviations more whiffs/swing than average!

Watch out for Danny Salazar who (by classification) introduced a devastating Changeup in September and should output value similar to or better than Carlos Carrasco based on a haughtier strikeout rate. Salazar was probably a luckier BABIP away from a 3.5 ERA last year. In fact, unsurprisingly, each Indians starter outside of Carrasco had a BABIP .5 standard deviations over the average (70IP qualifier).

Review:

• Look for sleepers/surprises based on “Rep.Score” in column two of the embedded file as presented.
• Check out the “RepScores” tab to see if any pitch-types were removed based on pitch-counts and keep pitch-type usage in mind (counts in the 5th column).
• Remember, differentiating weights for each pitch type is not incorporated. Scroll to the right within the “RepScores” tab to view individual pitch-type scores as well as the complete repertoire/arsenal score. Watch for pitchers with Sinkers as their highest score. Sinkers whiff rates aren’t as impactful. Allen Webster has a great score, but it is inflated because of its Whiff/Swing rate. As mentioned above, the same holds true for Justin Masterson and Dan Straily among others.
•  The Diamondbacks and Yankees won’t let the Tigers finagle themselves into another deal after Shane Greene enjoys success similar to the Scherzer application.
• And finally, try to own the entire Indians rotation in your fantasy leagues.

On Monday I wrote about Chris Tillman’s success the third time through the lineup this season and how that seemed at odds with his established ability to limit hard contact. It turns out there isn’t much of a relationship between those things, so it’s likely that Tillman is due for some regression when facing batters for a third time in a game going forward. It’s likely because excellent research done by Michael Lichtman shows that a pitcher’s past deviations from the typical decline in performance each time through the lineup is not predictive of future performance. He estimates a pitcher would need about eight full seasons of significantly deviating from the average decline each time through the order before that data would become reliable in a predictive sense.

With that said, let’s look at the starters who have been the best the third time through the lineup this year. Most are regression candidates, but there are a few exceptions. Read the rest of this entry »

Perhaps it’s not who will win the position battle for the last starting pitcher slot for the Cleveland Indians that matters. Rather, from a fantasy baseball perspective — who do you want to start on day five for the Cleveland Indians? Because it’s most certainly not Aaron Harang, who seems to be the poster boy for noodle-at-the-ceiling throwing when it comes to a requisite starting pitcher to nom nom nom innings. The battle, it seems, is down to Carlos Carrasco, Josh Tomlin, and Mr. Harang. Yes, yes, I know those of you clutching to your pretty shiny Trevor Bauer cry foul, but the tea leaves are suggesting a need for “refining” in beautiful Columbus.

Read the rest of this entry »

There are many ways to express how bad Cleveland’s rotation was in 2012. Their staff was 3rd worst in ERA, WAR, xFIP and SIERA. They were 29th in K% and 28th in BB%, which left them tied with the Twins for the worst K%-BB%. Their “best” pitcher was Zach McAllister who gave them 125.1 innings of 4.24 ERA ball. Ubaldo Jimenez continued to see his velocity decline, and his ERA was over 5.00 as a result. The man who is likely to pitch in their 2013 season opener, Justin Masterson, posted the worst ERA of his career (4.93). They had three other pitchers who threw more than 80 innings, Derek Lowe, Josh Tomlin and Jeanmar Gomez, and none of them had an ERA below 5.50.

Thankfully, it would be almost impossible for their staff to be much worse.

Read the rest of this entry »

Down to the wire in your leagues. Don’t hesitate to drop players, especially pitchers – by the time someone picks them up they’ll get one start at most. Push, push, push, There’s still a little bit of time! Some short-term help below.

Julio Borbon, Rangers (25% owned)
Some of you might have Nyjer Morgan on your H2H team, and his eight-game suspension just went down. You might be going the distance. You might be going for speed. Your team is all alone, all alone in this time of need. Cue the speed racer, Julio Borbon. In September, he’s cut his strikeout rate back down to the 10% level it lived during his minor league career (10.7% career), and his BABIP is rising. Considering his speed, he could definitely own a BABIP higher than the .311 he has now, ZiPs RoS BABIP (.304) to be damned. In any case, September has Borbon starting (11 of the team’s 13 games), hitting (.333/.350/.410 so far), and stealing more bases than he has in a while (two), and that’s all you want from a short-term speed boost in H2H. Michael Brantley is also hot and stealing bases more prolifically, but we bigged him up at the end of August, so even though he’s owned in fewer Yahoo leagues (10%), it might be Borbon you find on your wire if your league is full of RotoGraphs readers.

Carlos Carrasco, Indians (5% owned)
You can still get the other CC for his start today against the Royals in some leagues, and that’s recommended. He’s not showing the best strikeout rate in the majors (6.10 K/9) or minors (7.93 K/9) this year, but he has supplemented that with an improving groundball rate in the majors (66.7%) and minors (46.1%). He’s also bettered his control this year in the majors (2.61 BB/9) and minors (2.66 BB/9), so he has his uses. Perhaps the mix isn’t mixed-league worthy every start – he’s much riskier for his next start against Minnesota, his second matchup against the Twins this year – but in deeper leagues, he makes a great spot start when he’s playing teams like the Royals. His minor league story is a little strange – he’s had strikeout rates north of nine per nine and south of six and a half per nine, and his groundball rates have oscillated from about 40% to 48% – but the overall package looks like it might play, if only on the back of his strong control. Streaming is inherently risky, but made more so with Carrasco.

Here on Wednesday in the final week of the season most leagues have already passed their deadline for waivers. But for those of you in daily transaction leagues with moves still available and innings left to play with, there are no shortage of pitchers to consider. Here are the pitchers going Thursday owned in fewer than 50 percent of CBS Sports leagues. Matchups come from ESPN.com.

Kip Wells (1%) – Has a home start against Carpenter and St. Louis. After being designated for assignment earlier this year by the Nationals, Wells hooked up with the Reds. He pitched three games out of the bullpen and then moved into the rotation for his last six outings. Wells is 2-1 with a 3.79 ERA and a 1.178 WHIP in that span. He’s appeared in four games this year in Great American Ball Park, where he is 1-0 with a 3.80 ERA. Wells has made two relief appearances versus the Cardinals and has allowed 1 ER in 3.2 IP.

Nate Robertson (4%) – Has a home start against Baker and the Twins. After spending most of the season in the bullpen, Robertson has made three straight starts for the Tigers. He is 1-1 with a 6.00 ERA in that span, with 11 BB and 8 Ks in 12 IP. Robertson has a 3.70 home ERA this season and has 6 IP and 2 ER against the Twins with one win this year.

Manny Parra (28%) – Has a road start in Colorado versus Cook. After starting the season 3-8, Parra is 8-2 with a 4.95 ERA in his last 13 starts. This year he is 6-7 with a 6.87 ERA in road starts. Parra has yet to pitch this season in Coors Field.

Garrett Mock (5%) – Has a road start in Atlanta versus Hanson. Mock has dropped his last five decisions and has a 7.03 ERA and has a 1.656 WHIP in his last six games. He gave up 4 ER in 5 IP 9/26 versus the Braves and is 0-2 with a 6.31 ERA versus them this season. Overall, Mock is 2-3 with a 4.87 ERA in road games this season.

Felipe Paulino (3%) – Has a road start in Philadelphia versus Lee. Paulino has lost seven consecutive decisions and has a 7.71 ERA in his last 10 games. He is 1-6 with an 8.37 ERA in road games this year and has yet to face the Phillies this season.

Chris Waters (0%) – Has a road start in Tampa versus Garza. Waters was 9-7 in Triple-A this season before getting the call to Baltimore. He has made four relief appearances for the Orioles and this will be the 28-year old’s first start of the season after making 11 in 2008. The lefty is a fastball/slider pitcher.

Carlos Carrasco (11%) – Has a road start in Boston versus Lester. Carrasco was part of the package received from Philadelphia in the Lee trade. He was 5-1 in Triple-A for Columbus after the deal with a 3.19 ERA. Carrasco has made four starts for Cleveland and has given up four or more earned runs in each of them. On the plus side, Carrasco has a 2.19 GB/FB mark. However, when batters get the ball in the air, they hit it out of the park 37.5 percent of the time.

Paul Maholm (43%) – Has a road start in Chicago versus Samardzija. In his last seven starts, Maholm is 2-2 with a 2.89 ERA and he has allowed just 2 HR in 46.2 IP. Maholm is 4-6 with a 5.54 ERA in road games this season. In his only game against the Cubs, he allowed 7 ER in 4 IP but came away with a no-decision.

Jeff Samardzija (6%) – Has a home start against Maholm and the Pirates. A candidate for the rotation in Spring Training, Samardzija made his second start of the season in his last outing, in which he gave up 3 ER (on 2 HR) in 5 IP and took the loss. The gopher ball has been a problem for Samardzija this season but it has been more pronounced on the road. He has allowed 2 HR in 15.2 IP at Wrigley but 5 HR in 19 IP on the road.

Doug Fister (10%) – Has a home start against Anderson and the A’s. After a strong showing at the start of his major league career, Fister is 0-3 with an 8.80 ERA in his last three starts. He is 2-2 with a 4.31 ERA in home starts this season. Fister has faced Oakland once this season and allowed 1 ER in 5 IP and got a no-decision.

Here is the latest update to Week 22 two-start pitchers. Again this list is subject to change going forward.

Pitchers not listed on last update

BOS – Lester
COL – de la Rosa
CIN – Cueto
MIN – Blackburn
CLV – C. Carrasco

Pitchers from Friday no longer scheduled for two starts

BOS – Wakefield
OAK – Cahill
TEX – Nippert
TOR – Tallet
CIN – Lehr
CLV – Huff
COL – Fogg
MIN – Gabino

Lester has just one decision in his last six outings but has put up a 2.97 ERA with 41 strikeouts in 39.1 innings in that span. Overall, Lester has been pitching better this year than a season ago both by FIP (3.10 – 3.64) and tRA (3.46 – 4.52) but has neither the wins nor the ERA from last year.

de la Rosa has experienced feast or famine recently. He has five Quality Starts in his last eight games and missed another by 1/3 of an inning in an outing where he allowed 0 ER and struck out nine. But in the other two games he permitted 13 ER in 11 IP. Overall de la Rosa remains a good start with 12 W already and a 9.20 K/9 mark.

Cueto is slated to be activated from the disabled list in time to start in Game Two of the Reds’ double header versus the Pirates. Cueto had been sidelined with a sore shoulder. He started the season on fire, going 8-4 with a 2.69 ERA but was 0-6 with a 10.64 ERA in his final eight games before hitting the DL.

Blackburn had an 8-4 record on July 10. Since then he has lost five consecutive decisions and has an 8.22 ERA over eight starts. Just further proof how hard it is to succeed in the majors with a low strikeout rate. Blackburn has a K/9 of 3.79, which is the second-worst mark in the majors.

Carrasco, one of the players acquired from the Phillies in the Cliff Lee trade, is slated to make his major league debut after going 5-1 at Triple-A Columbus following the deal. Carrasco has a good fastball and a plus pitch with his changeup. He pitched into the seventh inning in five of his six starts for Columbus and had 7 BB and 36 Ks in 42.1 IP.