Archive for chris archer

A little more than a year ago, Alex Chamberlain and I looked into what type of impact a slew of Statcast measures had on a pitcher’s overall BABIP rate. Hard-hit rate and exit velocity on ground balls (EV GB) had the strongest correlations, but it seemed unlikely that the latter would have much to say about which pitchers would be best at limiting hits on flyballs in play. In general, it seems that BABIP could be influenced by different factors depending on the type of batted ball.

So let’s test that out. This column is the first in a series of four where I will be looking at the impact of various measures on flyball BABIP and ground ball Avg, both for pitchers and hitters. I’m kicking this off with an analysis of flyball BABIP for pitchers.
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I got a suggestion to write a column on my favorite starting pitchers to target (thanks @cwsoxfan!), but in truth, that column is sort of scattered all over the place. For example, my last post for RotoGraphs included some analysis on why I will be targeting Joe Musgrove. I’ve written about several pitchers I’m ranking above ADP and the industry consensus, such as Matthew Boyd, Carlos Rodon, Anibal Sanchez, Mike Minor and Jaime Barria, in other pieces.

Still, there are a number of starters whom I do like better than other fantasy owners do, including those in the industry, but I have yet to write about them to explain why. For this piece, I will focus on five starters who will likely be frequent targets for me, based on my rankings as compared to ADPs. These aren’t exactly sleepers, though. Rather than going deep in the motherlode for bargains, I’ll be taking a look at widely-owned players who could provide a generous return if you are able to draft them at or near their ADPs
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Just shy of a month ago, on the day the Rays dealt Chris Archer to the Pirates, Thomas Bassinger of the Tampa Bay Times looked into why the hometown team’s presumed ace had put together a less-than-ace-quality season. The explanation was clear and compelling. Archer was leaving his slider out in the middle of the strike zone too often when he was facing lefties. That went a long way towards shedding light on why Archer had yielded a respectable .312 wOBA against right-handed batters but a bloated .347 wOBA against lefties in his final go-around with the Rays.
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If you read my recent piece on Lucas Giolito and Kyle Freeland, then you know I have a growing fascination with pitchers who excel at getting both chases and freezes. (And if you haven’t read it, you’ll find out why I’m fixated with them by going here.) Jakob Junis is this very sort of pitcher, yet it’s been hard to write glowing words about a starter with an ERA above 5.00 and an HR/9 north of 2.0.
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When I decided to write this post, I already knew I would investigate which pitchers experience the largest platoon splits. I know this kind of information is helpful for daily fantasy sports (DFS), and I had yet to see someone undertake this task, although perhaps I wasn’t looking hard enough. I would take a relatively simply metric, sure to ruffle the feathers of the nitpicky, and compare its magnitude against lefties to its magnitude against righties for all pitchers. The largest differences between the two rates would warrant my attention. So, too, would the smallest. (Indeed, the absolute smallest would.)

However, I got distracted, as I am wont to do. I walk into a grocery store needing bread and milk and leave with paneer, sprouted tortillas, maple bacon Kettle chips and a 32-ounce bottle of sriracha. Really, I get distracted every time I sit down to write, and I rarely write the piece I originally intended to. My point: I get distracted by things.

Things like Chris Archer, who seems to be the Major League Baseball equivalent of the The Most Interesting Man on Earth.

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In my piece on Jordan Zimmermann, I referenced Harry Pavlidis’ wonderful research into changeups. One of the primary findings of his research was that a bigger gap between fastball and changeup velocity generally leads to more whiffs, and you can trade whiffs for a few more grounders if you reduce the gap in velocity. Pavlidis specifically mentioned Chris Archer when detailing his findings, noting that Archer has the big fastball/change velocity gap (11 mph), but he doesn’t have the the big whiff/swing rate that other guys with a big velocity gap have. The explanation was that Archer wasn’t using his change in swinging counts very often, using it early in the count instead.

Pavlidis’ findings were published back in May, so I wanted to see if Archer changed his approach at any point in the 2013 season. Unfortunately, as the chart below will show, Archer continued to use his changeup more early in the count. The chart only shows his usage against left-handers because Archer almost never throws the change to right-handers. Read the rest of this entry »

Coming into the season, right-hander Chris Archer was widely considered the Tampa Bay Rays’ best pitching prospect. Our own Marc Hulet ranked him the Rays’ second-best prospect overall. So when the Rays announced he was getting promoted and would start against the Cleveland Indians on Saturday, many fantasy owners jumped on the waiver wire and submitted claims for Archer.

The excitement makes sense. The 24-year-old features a dynamite fastball-slider combination on the mound and has struck out at least a batter per inning in the last two seasons. In fact, Archer appeared in six big-league games a year ago and compiled an 11.05 K/9 strikeout rate in 29.1 innings, so he’s already shown that he’s capable of missing bats in the majors.

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