Archive for NL Starting Pitchers

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.

We all know how valuable a pitcher in Petco Park can be, even if they aren’t on the high end of the talent spectrum. Thankfully for us in 2015, the Padres staff will have some of that upper-end talent paired with a far more capable offense to support it. It is incredible how much one addition can make a difference for a club as the rotation looks so much more formidable now with their latest signing. Here is how the top four stack up:

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Homer Bailey was really coming into his own as we began 2014. He had gotten incrementally better in each of his first seven seasons, bettering his K:BB ratio each season and stringing together five years of ERA improvements from 2008-2013. But then he came out and dropped an ERA north of 5.00 for the first two months of the season. He rebounded in the summer, but then a strained flexor tendon ended his season in early-August. He had surgery a month later (September 5th) and is slated to be ready for Spring Training. In fact, a December 5th report suggested he was actually ahead of schedule.

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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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In the two drafts the Rotographs staff has done so far this winter, James McDonald hasn’t exactly been a hot commodity. In the snake draft, he was skipped entirely and he hardly fared better in the auction, where he went for just a dollar. Mike Minor, on the other hand, came off the board in the 15th round in the snake and was one of the intriguing $9 pitchers from the auction. Simply put, were a majority of drafts to happen in this week, Minor would be rostered in pretty much every applicable league while McDonald would probably enter the season as a waiver wire option.

Looking solely at the duo’s final numbers, that wide of a split seems odd. Minor looks the better of the two in this light, but the difference looks like it should be measured in rounds or dollars not drafted or not. Take a look: Read the rest of this entry »

With the trade deadline fast approaching, owners playing in league-specific formats are going to be in for a hard time. When players change leagues, some owners are going to get hosed and some owners are going to get lucky. With all of that in mind, here’s some advice on how to handle a handful of starters who could get dealt.

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Madison Bumgarner | Giants
Despite some poor looking fantasy numbers, Bumgarner has been damn good lately in both fantasy and reality. His roto numbers over the past thirty days are skewed by his disastrous outing against the Twins in which he faced ten batters and gave up nine hits (his one out was via the strikeout). But even in that outing, Bumgarner threw twenty-two of his twenty-five pitches for strikes and refused to yield a homer. Bumgarner also had a poor fantasy outing against the Padres before the All-Star break, but once again, he did not allow a dinger.

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Ever wonder how the starting pitchers representing the NL in the All-Star game ranked in terms of fantasy value? Wonder no more!

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During draft season this year, Brandon Beachy was a late-round flier in mixed leagues due to his spring training battle with Mike Minor. After Beachy beat out Minor, owners were still skeptical thanks to underwhelming scouting reports and fear of somewhat of an unsecure role in the Braves rotation. Next season, Beachy certainly won’t be considered a flier if he keeps up his torrid start to the 2011 season.

If I used the word “stud” to describe Beachy, odds are most owners would be surprised and argumentative. A stud they may have never heard of? Ridiculous. If you don’t want to believe that Beachy has been ever so studly, you should look at where he ranks amongst NL starters in key pitching categories. Better yet, let me look at those numbers for you, the busy reader, and break them down in an easily digestible fashion.

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Ever since he became a full-time member of Red Sox the starting rotation in 2002, Derek Lowe has been one of the best in the game at eating innings and simply inducing ground balls. Lowe has made at least 32 starts every year since 2002, and has contributed at least 2.5 WAR each year.

During his early run as a starter, Lowe’s GB% bordered on the obscene. Prior to signing with the Braves in 2009, Lowe’s ground-ball rate never dipped below 60%, and it rose to 65% on four occasions. Frankly, if we compare Lowe’s current rates to what he did in the past, his recent performance has been unspectacular. How often can we say that about a pitcher who’s still getting grounders over 58% of the time?

From a fantasy angle, Lowe has always been a bit under appreciated. Since leaving the Red Sox, Lowe has never won a ton of games, and his ERA and WHIP were rarely elite enough to make up for pedestrian strikeout totals. However, the complete package that is Derek Lowe has usually been worthy of a roster spot as long as the rest of your rotation could provide the strikeouts, at least until the advanced aging started in Atlanta.

Not convinced that Lowe could still be worth a pickup at 38 years of age? I understand your concern, but I would like to present you with one more piece of evidence: Lowe’s pitch f/x heat maps. Below are images showing Lowe’s sinker and slider locations this year, and you can click on them if you wish to enlarge them for your viewing convenience.

As you can see, Lowe refuses to throw his fastball in the upper third of the strike zone, instead knowing how his bread is buttered and pounding the bottom of the zone. Also, as you can see, he is going to completely stay away from lefties, hopefully forcing them to reach out and pound a ball into the ground. If you look at his graphs from the past few seasons, they will look very similar to what Lowe is doing in 2011.

Lowe knows his strengths, and his uses them to his advantage, even if he’s getting older and losing some effectiveness. He should be able to stave off some aging just thanks to his pitch selection and control, and is certainly worth having around in NL-only leagues.

Today’s look at NL Starting Pitchers is nutrient dense.

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