Archive for Hyun-Jin Ryu

Rawlings announced the finalists for the Gold Glove Awards on Thursday, and some teams who collectively scored well on defensive metrics were rewarded with several nominations. Conversely, several teams who scored poorly on those metrics were either shut out or left with a single nominee.

Six Cardinals have been nominated for Gold Gloves. As a team, they compiled the third-highest defensive runs above average, and their pitching staff registered the majors’ fifth-lowest BABIP (.283). The Athletics were one of five teams to have four Gold Glove nominees, and no team finished with a higher total of defensive runs above average. Correspondingly, only two pitching staffs had a lower BABIP than their .278.
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Tuesday’s decision deadline for players who received qualifying offers came and went, and Hyun-Jin Ryu was the only one of the seven recipients to accept. Ryu will get to follow up on a stellar, albeit injury-shortened, 2018 campaign by remaining with the Dodgers for another year, and he will earn $17.9 million while gearing up for another run at the free agent market.

Despite missing more than half the season with a strained groin, Ryu finished as a top-50 pitcher in Roto value (per ESPN), largely on the strength of a 1.97 ERA and 1.01 WHIP. While FIP, xFIP and SIERA all agree that he should have had an ERA in the 3.00-to-3.20 range, they don’t directly take into account Ryu’s history as an above-average strander. His 85.4 percent LOB% from 2018 is bound to regress, but his career rate of 77.5 percent is more than four percentage points above the typical major league average.
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The season numbers aren’t great but we’ve picked up some steam over the last few weeks and hopefully will finish strong. As always, if you have any suggestions or tips, please feel free to mention them in the comments section, and thank you for reading.

Here’s how we’re doing so far this season (through most of Week 21)

38-40 record
4.84 ERA
7.7 K/9
2.4 K/BB
1.42 WHIP
41 quality starts

Here are this week’s recs (with team wRC+ for this season in parentheses):

RHP Marco Estrada – 47.8% ESPN – v. BAL (100), @MIN (100)

He’s either been really good or really bad of late, but over his last nine starts has a respectable 3.98 ERA and .709 OPS against in 54.1 innings. He won’t get much offensive support, but he also feels relatively stable among pitchers who are owned under 50% — a tough lot to crack at this point of the year. If you prefer, go with one of the guys at the bottom.

LHP Eduardo Rodriguez – 34.6% ESPN – v. OAK (101), @TBR (98)

I’m just gambling on the talent here. Rodriguez has fanned more than a batter per inning this season (9.7 K/9), and his ERA (a so-so 4.33) is supported by a better FIP (4.04). His second half has not been particularly pretty (5.22 ERA), but he’s still got 53 strikeouts and just 16 walks in 50 innings, and both of these matchups are OK, though not great.

RHP Kyle Gibson – 18% ESPN – v. SD (85), v. TOR (90)

A move on the rubber has helped Gibson be absolutely terrific over the last month-and-a-half. Since then — he told me he made the change after the start in Houston on July 16 — he’s posted a 3.19 ERA, .682 OPS against and 38-11 K/BB ratio in 48 innings. Not only is he inducing grounders at a solid rate — like always — but he’s also got an 11% swinging-strike rate over that stretch. Grounders plus a swing-and-miss slider against two awful offenses? Sign me up.

Last men out: Hyun-jin Ryu (@SF, @WAS), Brandon Woodruff (v. PIT, @MIA)

Two weeks ago, I went searching for some of the league’s underthrown pitches. Which offerings by virtue of their paucity, despite excelling at inducing whiffs and weak contact, should be thrown more often? We’ve seen it so many times in the past, when a pitcher of whom we think a known quantity, suddenly leans on one pitch just a little more heavily and reinvents himself. Last week, we looked at the league’s underthrown four-seam fastballs and sinkers. This week, we turn to cutters and curves.

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We’ve started our annual Depth Chart Discussions, re-branded as Playing Time Battles for 2016. You can catch up on every team we’ve covered in the Playing Time Battles Summary post or following along using the Depth Chart Discussions tag.

For most teams, the offseason loss of a superstar pitcher like Zack Greinke would be crippling. The Dodgers are not most teams. After posting a miniscule 1.66 earned run average in 222.2 innings in LA last season, Greinke headed within the division to Arizona, with $200+ million coming his way over the next six years. Despite his departure, the Dodgers are the favorites to take down the NL West again this season, holding a six-game advantage in our projected standings.

Obviously, the Dodgers still have Clayton Kershaw. Most teams are not blessed to have even one true ace, not to mention two of them. Still, instead of standing pat, the club reloaded, adding Scott Kazmir and Kenta Maeda to bolster the rotation. After four disastrous seasons that led many to consider Kazmir’s career essentially finished, the now-32-year-old resurrected his career in a big way, delivering three consecutive solid campaigns. While he’s not the strikeout machine he was a decade ago, Kazmir provides a steady veteran presence in the rotation, averaging over 30 starts in each of the last three years.

The right-handed Maeda is an unknown quantity heading into his first season in America, which led our own Eno Sarris to search for a comp. If Eno’s analysis is sound — and I’ll go ahead and trust that it is, seeing as Eno probably knows approximately 5,386 times more about the game of baseball than I do — the 27-year-old Maeda looks to be an Aaron Nola type. There’s plenty of value to be found in a steady mid-rotation arm with upside, and that’s what he seems to be. (In an interesting twist, Maeda is the only righty expected to make the Dodgers’ Opening Day rotation.)

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In the coming weeks, we’ll be covering each team’s potential depth charts in an effort to shine a spotlight on the interesting playing time battles that will be waged this spring. Obviously none of these depth charts are set in stone — rather they should function to focus your attention in the right places to find cheap fantasy value.

Here’s all we can say that we know for certain about the Dodger rotation right now, as pitchers & catchers around baseball are reporting to camp: Clayton Kershaw is going to start on Opening Day against the Giants, and Zack Greinke is going to follow him. Read the rest of this entry »