Archive for jake arrieta

Despite the small sample, the pitching trend continues (as of 4/11):

Strikeouts are up. Offense is down. The MLB ERA as it stands is 3.39! You can read why in the The Hardball Time’s Baseball Annual 2015: Jeff Sullivan looks at whether or not sabermetrics have tipped the balance of power toward pitching and defense — it has. PITCHf/x evaluation is one major reason.

More and more, pitchers know what works within their own repertoires, and we can then tell some “reperstories” based on their pitch characteristics (movement and velocity) and outcomes (swinging-strike and groundball induction).

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Life isn’t all about rainbows and butterflies. With that in mind, my bold predictions include some positive outlooks for a pair of post-hype sleepers, some young hurlers, a sophomore everyone is in love with and a veteran second baseman. However, they also feature some less than rosy prognostications for a speedy second baseman, a late-blooming multi-position eligible Pirate and a pitcher trading homer-friendly Great American Ballpark for the homer-suppressing Marlins Park. 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.

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Last second I changed the title from “Having a Presence” to “Commanding Attention”. If I were to talk about the team as a whole, I would have had to go with “Having a Presence,” but I’m focusing on their rotation, and well…they command our attention…

It’s rough to be a Mets fan living in Minnesota. It’s rough being a Mets fan anywhere, but watching the Twins and their approach to 100 losses doesn’t help. Despite being only 6.5 games back from the 2nd Wild Card to date, I don’t think the Mets will have enough offense to sustain next year, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be fun to watch. There will be quite the trio that commands attention – or even a quartet with the assumption that Noah Syndergaard makes an impact. And with a quartet…who knows?!

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Chris Capuano | Los Angeles Dodgers | Home to San Diego on Tuesday

One man’s folly is another man’s fortune, right? Well the bizarre and unfortunate injury to Zack Greinke after the altercation with Carlos Quentin and the Padres gives Capuano the fifth spot in the Dodgers rotation. Had I been making decisions in LA, he might have had that spot this season to begin with.

Capuano is coming off two straight seasons in which he topped 180 innings and had an xFIP under 4.00. He displayed some serious skill in 2011 with an above average strikeout rate (21%), an above average walk rate (6.6%), and a solid xFIP of 3.60. Unfortunately he was a little unlucky with balls in play (.311 BABIP), and he let a few too many fly out of the park (1.31 HR/9) which led to a 4.55 ERA. But the next year he was basically luck-neutral (.284 BABIP, 1.13 HR/9), and his ERA fell to 3.72. His strikeout skills weren’t the same but were still slightly above average (19.8%), and his walk rate was equally good.

Capuano can obviously pitch, and I am glad to see him get the chance to start again, even if I wish it had come via less unfortunate circumstances. He’s got a good matchup at home against the Padres on Tuesday. He’s currently owned in just 2% of ESPN leagues. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re looking for a starter to stream or if you’re trying to find some value in some sort of salary cap daily format, here are three guys I like to begin with and like even more given their matchups in the opening week.

A.J. Griffin, Oakland Athletics – 4/4 home to Seattle

Griffin was solid in an 82.1 inning debut last season. He posted a 3.06 ERA and 1.13 WHIP with a strikeout rate around league average (19.1%) and above average control (5.7%). He might have a bit of upside in the strikeout rate as his swinging strike rate was above average. But because Griffin doesn’t have a huge fastball, I’d expect any improvement to be fairly small. But a league average strikeout rate can go along with an above average pitcher when the pitcher has some other skills as Griffin does. Read the rest of this entry »

1. 70% of opening day closers won’t still have their jobs by the end of the year…

You don’t need me to tell you that closers are easily replaced, and so saying that we’ll see changes in the ninth inning isn’t really that bold. So if we’re going to make this exciting, let’s say that more than a full two-thirds of closers won’t last the season, either through injury or ineffectiveness. That may sound like a high number, but then again, remember who teams were counting on to finish games for them last April — guys like Alfredo Aceves, Javy Guerra, Jordan Walden, Brett Myers, Heath Bell, & Matt Capps. Even top-tier closers like Mariano Rivera & Brian Wilson weren’t immune, though of course for other reasons. By my count, only 10 closers made it wire-to-wire, and a few more (Carlos Marmol, Huston Street, etc) had to deal with changes at some point in the season. This really drives the point home that you can almost always find saves somewhere. The bell tolls for thee, Sergio Romo & Jim Johnson.
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You’d think that after a shocking run to the playoffs despite having a dozen different pitchers make at least two starts — and only one make more than 20 — that the Baltimore Orioles would have done something to shore up their rotation this winter. They haven’t, so far, and while their decision is more than defensible, it doesn’t make projecting the 2013 collection any easier.

Here’s what we do know about this year’s Orioles rotation, however. We know that Joe Saunders (seven starts), Dana Eveland (two starts), and Randy Wolf (two starts) aren’t going to be part of it. We know that the top four is likely to be made up of Wei-Yin Chen, Jason Hammel, Miguel Gonzalez, & Chris Tillman, and we know with near absolute certainty that when the season ends, at least one of those four men (but likely more) will no longer be in the rotation. Read the rest of this entry »

Although it feels like every other week we lose another established arm to testy ligaments (or well trained ligament surgeons), it has the alternative effect of making you dig a little deeper for starters who are not only worthy of a roster spot, but ones that ought to be actual contributors. It’s the proverbial silver lining – you may experience a catastrophe, but you might discover a hidden gem in the process.

Lose a Cory Luebke? A Neftali Feliz? There are solutions.

Justin Masterson was bombed by the Seattle Mariners in his third start of the year and he almost immediately started hitting waiver wires across the contiguous fantasy landscape. Being blasted by a team that has set historic marks for offensive ineptitude is just difficult to stomach after all.

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Last week, we examined the difficulty the since-demoted Chris Tillman had in retiring big league hitters. But he’s not the only highly-acclaimed Orioles pitching prospect whose transition to the majors has been bumpy. Nine starts into his rookie season, Jake Arrieta has walked far more batters than he has fanned. Just yesterday, the TCU product failed to strike out a single Minnesota Twins batter while issuing four free passes. Why is Arrieta pitching so poorly? Let’s try to find out.

A 6-5, 220 pound right-hander who fell to the fifth round of the 2007 draft due to bonus demands (the O’s anted up with a $1.1 million offer), Arrieta began his pro career in the High-A Carolina League in 2008. He used his 92-94 MPH fastball, mid-80’s slider, high-70’s curveball and mid-80’s change to strike out 9.6 batters per nine innings, but his control was so-so, with 4.1 BB/9. Arrieta’s park-and-league-adjusted FIP, according to Minor League Splits, was 3.42 in 113 innings pitched. Last year, he split the season between the Double-A Eastern League and Triple-A International League. Arrieta had a combined 8.8 K/9, 3.3 BB/9 and a 3.91 adjusted FIP in 150.2 innings.

Arrieta was named the 99th-best prospect in the game by Baseball America prior to the 2010 season, with BA saying his “pure stuff compares with any of the Orioles’ elite young pitchers, but his command puts him a notch behind them.” ESPN’s Keith Law ranked Arrieta 90th on his top 100, calling him “a four-pitch guy with no plus pitch but nothing below-average.” Prior to his early-June promotion, Arrieta had 7.9 K/9, 4.2 BB/9 and a 4.11 adjusted FIP in 73 IP. The good-not-great K rate and inflated walk rate portended some turbulent times in the majors — Arrieta’s major league equivalent line called for 6.3 K/9 and 5.35 BB/9 in the show.

To this point, the 24-year-old’s control of the zone has been even worse. He’s got 3.91 K/9 and 5.21 BB/9 in 48.1 IP, with an xFIP (6.10) that’s more depressing than his 5.40 ERA. As pointed out in the Tillman article, it’s important not to draw any definitive conclusions from a small sample of pitching. But right now, he’s not missing bats and he’s not locating his pitches.

Arrieta’s swinging strike rate is 5.5%, a figure which puts him in the same company as Livan Hernandez and Ryan Rowland-Smith. For comparison, the MLB average is 8.4%. He’s getting batters to expand their zones fairly often, with a 32.1 outside swing percentage (28.9% MLB average), but they’re making a ton of contact on those out-of-zone pitches. Arrieta’s outside contact rate is 80.5% (66.5% MLB average). With hitters also squaring up plenty of in-zone offerings (his 90.6% Z-Contact rate is above the 88.2% big league average), his overall contact rate is 86.4%. That’s well above the 80.9% MLB average.

According to Pitch F/X data from TexasLeaguers.com, Arrieta’s fastball is getting whiffs 4.6% of the time that he throws it (5-6% MLB average). His changeup (14.7%) has gotten more whiffs than average (12.6%), but his slider (11.1%) falls short of the 13.6% MLB average. Arrieta’s curve has been a bat magnet — it has a one percent whiff rate (11.6% MLB average).

As R.J. Anderson pointed out, Arrieta isn’t putting away hitters when he gets in 0-and-2 counts. Baseball-Reference shows that he has gotten in 0-2 counts 22% of the time, close to the 23% MLB average. In those situations, Arrieta has been bashful about breaking out his breaking stuff — he’s using his fastball 61% of the time in 0-2 counts, compared to the 49% MLB average. He has yet to record a K in an 0-2 count.

On a related note, he’s also struggling to throw strikes. Arrieta’s first pitch strike percentage is 54.3%, compared to the 58.8% MLB average. Just 43.4% of his pitches have caught part of the plate (47% MLB average). His fastball is getting strikes 63.6% (62-64% MLB average). Everything else, though, is missing often. The slider has been thrown for a strike 53.8% (63.4% MLB average), the curve 51% (58%) and the change 55.9% (60.7%).

Arrieta’s throwing his fastball for strikes, but he hasn’t gotten a feel for his slider, curve or change. That has led to lots of hitter’s counts. And, when Arrieta has backed the hitter into a corner, he’s not sealing the deal — in plate appearances reaching a two-strike count, he has gotten a K 23.9% (36.5% AL average) and he has walked the hitter 18.2% (8.3% AL average). That tends to happen when a pitcher can’t get a called strike or a swing-and-a-miss with his breaking and off-speed stuff.

Again, all of these numbers come in less than 50 innings. It’s not unusual for a pitcher to stumble during his first taste of big league action. Arrieta doesn’t look like a future front-of-the-rotation type — as Law said, none of his pitches are awe-inspiring, and BA noted that his control isn’t great — but he’s still someone to monitor in keeper leagues. As for the present moment, you might want to let Arrieta work out the kinks on somebody else’s roster.