Archive for Max Scherzer

Steamer, a reputed projection system, offers predictions of the reliability for each player’s projected stat line. (These can’t be found in FanGraphs’ database, but they are available in the raw download from Steamer’s website.) James Shields‘ Streamer projection scored the highest reliability probability for the 2015 season. Shields was basically a 4-WAR starting pitcher for the eight years following his 2006 debut; when the San Diego Padres acquired him, they expected to acquire consistency. Alas, Shields’ MLB-highest 80.8% reliability was, and still is, understandable.

Except Shields cashed in a most unusual age-33 performance, and that’s why more, not fewer, numbers make the sport more special: you can marvel at and appreciate the game through any of an infinite number of lenses, and it never gets old. Neil Weinberg astutely detailed this anomaly, so I will politely not rip open San Diego’s wound as it heals.

I will, instead, turn my focus to Max Scherzer who, similarly to Shields, disrupted an 11th-best 79.3% reliability score on his projection. Unlike Shields, however, Scherzer made even better on his promise.

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A future ace is often tough to identify. Sometimes it’s a #1 overall pick who makes his MLB debut a year after being drafted and turns in his first gem of a season in year three like David Price. But it is often a more circuitous route that maybe only involved a hint of potential ace-dom at the beginning, as with Max Scherzer.

The 11^th overall pick from 2006 blitzed his way through the minors and debuted in 2008 with time split in between the rotation and bullpen. Most saw him eventually landing in the bullpen, but as a high impact closer-type. He ranked in the 2008 top 100 lists for Baseball America (#66) and Baseball Prospectus (#90), but he wasn’t even the top prospect on his team. That distinction belonged to Jarrod Parker.

Scherzer hasn’t seen the bullpen since that 2008 season – save a couple of postseason appearances, including an amazing one for the Tigers in 2013 – and has evolved from a promising, but flawed mid-rotation arm to dominant frontline stud. Now, armed with the contract to back his ace status, Scherzer moves from one loaded pitching staff to another, but this time he will be the focal point. Many believe the move back to the National League will increase his value substantially, but how much can he improve upon his last seasons: one a Cy Young effort and the other a near-match when you look at his FIP and component numbers?

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I spent an hour trying to find something relevant to say about the last two weeks of the season but was unsuccessful. Or at least there was no topic worth spending several hundred words on. If you’re looking for a two start streamer in what is likely the last week of your H2H playoffs, look at Blue Jays Marcus Stroman and Drew Hutchison. They’re the most talented pitchers owned in less than 50% of ESPN.com leagues in terms of K-BB% and OPS allowed on balls in play (aka limiting hard contact). Instead, let’s spend a few hundred words quickly running through a way too early top 10 SP list for next year. Read the rest of this entry »

If you look at the individual player pages for each of the projected Detroit starters, you’ll see that the most recent article in which three of them were tagged was written by me. I’ll summarize the guys I’ve already written about this offseason and then cover the other two.

The only Tiger starter that Steamer projects to have a higher WAR than they did last year is Rick Porcello. I’m with Steamer in thinking Porcello can improve, but unlike Steamer, I think the improvement could be more than slight. Porcello improved in a lot of areas last year. Most notably, he went away from using his sinker as much and moved those extra pitches over to his breaking and off speed stuff. That helped him raise his strikeout rate to league average, and it didn’t hurt his above average ground ball rate. In fact, his ground ball percentage was higher than ever last year. He also improved significantly in a couple of areas in which he had really struggled. He didn’t give up hard contact as much as he had in the past as his ISO allowed was one of the 30 lowest in the league. And after the first month of the year, he almost never gave up anything hard to right-handers. He also got much better out of the stretch. His strikeout minus walk rate out of the stretch was about 3.5% before last year but jumped up to 7.3% last year.

It will be up to Porcello to continue to improve in those areas or at least maintain the gains he made last year. But there’s a factor outside his control that could help him improve this year. In fact, it’s something that will work in favor of all Tiger starters. That’s the presumably improved infield defense. Although the pitcher most likely to benefit from that improved infield is Porcello because he’s easily the most ground ball heavy pitcher in the rotation. Below is a chart showing the runs above or below average (DEF) for the Tigers who played the most at each infield spot last year and the Oliver projected DEF for the Tigers most likely to play the most innings at each infield spot this year. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a little painful to look back and see that pre-season, Max Scherzer was ranked just barely within the top 20 of all starting pitchers. His price tag wasn’t appreciably different from R.A. Dickey, C.C. Sabathia, and Jered Weaver and his ADP was several rounds after all of them. Of course, hindsight is 20-20 but then again, I’m not sure that that his 2013 wasn’t telegraphed pretty clearly.

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I love the commenters on this site. I write elsewhere, and the audience is more interactive here than anywhere else I’ve seen. And it’s not just that they’re involved; it’s that their they’re smart. I’ve gotten several ideas for posts from commenters, and they frequently point out things that I miss. But I think they may have one thing wrong. Or at least there may be something upon which they’re placing too much weight.

When picking pitchers, the first thing I look at is the quality of the pitcher’s opponent against pitchers of the same handedness. Well, I take that back. The first thing I look at is whether the pitcher is any good or not. But I don’t usually have to look that up. After those initial hurdles are cleared, I look at conditions. I’m looking for cooler temperatures and winds blowing in (with a few exceptions). All of these factors generally go toward run prevention.

But commenters often point out a pitcher’s strikeout ability and/or the strikeout percentage of the opposing team. They note the importance of strikeouts on Draftstreet. I myself used to look at the opposing team’s K% as one of the more important factors, but I seemed to have more success when I placed most of my attention on run prevention. But was I right to favor run prevention over strikeout potential? Or are the commenters right? Is strikeout percentage the most important factor? Read the rest of this entry »

Last week I looked at early season velocity gainers and losers. It was noted that the average fastball velocity so far is down league wide from where it was in 2012 but fairly consistent with the average fastball velocity in April 2012. But some commenters suggested that it might be useful to look at the April 2012 velocities of the guys who have seen the biggest gains and losses in velocity this year. The idea is to see if the discrepancy between 2012 velocities and April 2013 velocities is an indication of a change or just evidence that a guy tends to see his velocity dip or rise at the beginning of the year.

To gather a sample, I created a list of guys who threw 150+ innings last year and who had at least 20 innings this April. That yielded me a list of 70 pitchers. To find the significant changes in velocity, I calculated the differences in average fastball velocity between all of 2012 and April 2013. I then calculated the average difference and standard deviation to see who had made the biggest changes. Below are the guys who saw the biggest gains in velocity in April. Read the rest of this entry »

Starting pitching is an area of strength for the Detroit Tigers as they enter the 2013 season, and from a fantasy perspective, Detroit is one of the rare teams that has value one through five. Four slots in this rotation are sewn up, and it’s debatable whether there’s an actual battle for the fifth slot in the rotation. But whoever loses that battle obviously takes a hit to their short-term value. The Tigers didn’t really bring in anyone else to push for a spot in the rotation during Spring, so the picture is pretty clear.

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The American League “Fantasy Turtle” has provided a good deal of fodder over the past couple of weeks.  Recall that the “fantasy turtle” is considered the best buy-low player in the AL for fantasy purposes. For more background on the fantasy awards, please see this post.

There was hardly consensus when the staff voted for this award. Alex Rios, Doug Fister, Brandon Moss (see Cwik’s Turtle argument), Torii Hunter (whom David Weirs made a case for), Carlos Santana, Derek Jeter, and Yoenis Cespedes all received at least one vote. Ben Zobrist and Max Scherzer each received three votes, so I’m going to key in on them.

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Even with all that we know about ERA and how questionable it can be in evaluating the value of a pitcher, a 4.98 mark is still pretty ugly, especially in the lowered offensive environment we’re seeing this year. In fact, it’s so ugly that it ranks among the bottom 10% or so of all qualified major league pitchers, mostly above struggling youngsters like Jake Arrieta, Luke Hochevar, Hector Noesi, & Mike Minor, along with whatever it is that’s ruining Tim Lincecum’s career. It’s not a great group to be in, but for Detroit starter Max Scherzer, that 4.98 stands out as a phenomenal reason to target him as the trade deadline nears.

If you look at that list of poor ERA starters, two things immediately stand out about Scherzer. First, his FIP is a much more reasonable 3.76, one of the highest ERA-FIP differentials in the game; second, his K/9 rate is an outstanding 11.36. Other than Stephen Strasburg’s 11.81, no other starting pitcher in baseball has a higher mark, and I’m guessing you could win a lot of bar bets by knowing that the highest K rate in the American League belongs to Scherzer, not Felix Hernandez or Yu Darvish or Justin Verlander.

Of course, you don’t get to such a high ERA by accident, and in Scherzer’s case, there’s some pretty obvious reasons behind that. You can point to his 1.39/9 homer rate, high even for a pitcher who doesn’t have the built-in advantage of Comerica Park, and his .359 BABIP, far above his career mark of .318. The BABIP gap may be a little tough to fully overcome, given the atrocious defense the Tigers roll out behind him on a nightly basis, but everything else is trending in the right direction. Read the rest of this entry »