Archive for Tyler Chatwood

Thursday night’s schedule consisted of only eight games, and even for a small slate, there weren’t many high leverage situations to speak of. It was a big night, however, for some long relievers, so let’s check in on them and what they might have to offer us in fantasy.

Luis Cessa was one of only three relievers to notch a save on Thursday night, but his required him to pitch the final three innings of the Yankees’ 12-6 win over the Blue Jays. The 27-year-old righty has had issues with the long ball, and the one run he allowed was a Reese McGuire solo home run — the 11th homer he has allowed over 58.1 innings. He also tallied five strikeouts, giving him 61 on the season, which is as many as Ken Giles has and more than either Kenley Jansen or Sean Doolittle has. It was Cessa’s first save of the season, so he is nowhere close to Giles, Jansen or Doolittle in value, but in deeper formats,  you may not be able to find a reliever who can help more with strikeouts.
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Over the last several weeks, I’ve scoured Baseball Prospectus’ PitchF/x leaderboards for the league’s underthrown pitches. We’ve covered two different pitch types each week starting with four-seam fastballs and sinkers in the first installment, cutters and curves in the second, and sliders and changeups last week. This week, we put it all together. Now that we’ve identified the most underthrown pitches, who should consider overhauling his entire pitch mix to make the most of his electric stuff?

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Welcome back to the third and penultimate installment of Underthrown Pitches and the Pitchers Who Underthrow Them. Over the last several weeks, we’ve identified high performing four-seamers, sinkers, cutters, and curves and the pitchers who should consider throwing them more often. We’ve defined “high performing” based on a Pitch Score that factors an offering’s proclivity towards inducing whiffs, ground balls, and pop-ups. We’ve also defined the degree that a pitch is “underthrown” using a simple measure of pitch score to frequency.

For a more detailed recap of the results and methodology to-date, check out the previous installments linked below.

Vol 1: Four-seamers and Sinkers

Vol 2: Cutters and Curves  Read the rest of this entry »

Identifying pitching breakouts as they happen can be hard. Anticipating them, even harder. Savvy readers of sites such as this rely on plate discipline metrics, batted ball data, and other indicators designed to tease out luck from results in order to uncover which performances have staying power and which are fleeting. And while we’ve arrived at the point in the season when most pitching rates have stabilized, a simple change in pitch mix can render those indicators obsolete. Think Matt Shoemaker and his splitter, Jake Arrieta and his cutter, Max Scherzer and his curveball, or Sonny Gray and his slider.

If you can spot a pitcher pulling unexpected arrows from his quiver as he does it, then cheers to you. But it’s difficult to do that at scale. While trying to anticipate a change in pitch mix before it happens may seem futile at times, doing so is a bet on potential. And what we talk about when we talk about “stuff,” is really potential. One of the components upon which that potential relies, aside from command and health, is an optimal pitch mix.

To identify which pitchers could benefit by throwing their more effective offerings a little more frequently, we have a number of tools at our disposal. Today, we’ll use some of those tools to identify the league’s underthrown four-seam fast balls and sinkers and the pitchers who underthrow them.
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If you look at anything other than ERA, it’s obvious that Tyler Chatwood wasn’t very good last year. Sure, his 3.15 ERA was the 24th best ERA among the 128 starters with 110 or more innings (Chatwood had 111.1 IP), but it’s just about the only thing on his player page that looks good from last year. His xFIP and SIERA were both 4.00 or higher, his WHIP was an ugly 1.43 and both his strikeout rate (13.9%) and walk rate (8.6%) were well below average.

But there was a point last summer where Chatwood looked pretty good. After his first eight starts of the year he had a 2.22 ERA and his strikeout rate was league average. As Chris Cwik noted around that time, Chatwood converted to pitcher his senior year of high school then got drafted and immediately went to rookie ball. He also cracked Baseball America’s top 100 in 2011, so it’s obvious that people thought his arm had potential. With that string of eight solid starts, it seemed like maybe Chatwood was starting to put it all together. But from that point on his strikeout rate was a paltry 10.5%, and he only had five more strikeouts than he did walks.

Within that bad stretch he struck out just 31 batters in 12 starts. What’s insane is that he had an 11 strikeout game in that stretch. Along with the ten strikeout game mentioned earlier, those were the only two instances in which he topped five strikeouts in his 20 starts. It’s somewhat interesting to note that those two big strikeout games were the two games where Chatwood used his slider most. In the 10 K game he threw the slider 24 times and in the 11 K game he threw it 16 times. That’s a little misleading  because there were several games when he threw his slider 13-15 times and struck out five or fewer batters, but it fell in line with Cwik’s observation after Chatwood’s hot start that the slider was driving his success.

Though Chatwood didn’t always have the same success when he used the pitch frequently, it’s obviously his best pitch. Check out these two charts below comparing his slider to his other offerings. Read the rest of this entry »

In the preseason I wrote a piece in which I took a look at the pitchers who throw a particular pitch a lot but not particularly. I also looked at the hitters that are the very best against certain pitches. Because this is around the 20th daily fantasy piece I’ve written this year, I’m quite frankly running out of ideas. So I’m going to update the piece from the preseason.

The process is fairly simple. I started by taking all qualified starting pitchers since the beginning of 2011 (min. 300 IP) and pulling their pitch mix data for that time period. I then took each pitcher who threw a specific pitch at a rate more than one standard deviation above the mean and pulled their pitch values to see if that was a positive pitch for them. Below you’ll see all the pitchers from 2011 to present who threw a specific pitch at a rate much higher than normal and who had a negative pitch value. The idea is that you can choose hitters in daily contests that fair very well against that pitch type when facing these pitchers. I’m only looking at fastballs, sliders, curves and changes to prevent this from being too long. Read the rest of this entry »

• Asdrubal Cabrera has been placed on the Indians bereavement list, so make sure to adjust your daily lineups accordingly.

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As we sit and wait for all the big-named free agents to find themselves new homes, it’s time to start thinking about strategy for next year.  There are numerous of ways to go about drafting your team and you’re going to hear plenty of do’s and don’ts from a variety of people.  So allow me to chime in here first and tell you why punting saves should not be in your plans when developing a proper draft strategy.  Some people see no harm in it and tell you to just bulk up elsewhere.  I disagree.  It’s an automatic concession of points to your competition and immediately puts you at a disadvantage.

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Here is the latest update to Week 10 two-start pitchers. Again this list is subject to change going forward.

Pitchers not listed on last update: F. Hernandez, Pineda, Garza, Liriano, Volquez, Chatwood and R. de la Rosa.

Pitchers no longer scheduled for two starts: Pineiro, Garland, Swarzak, O’Sullivan, Lopez and Reineke.

Let’s take a look at Tyler Chatwood. A second-round pick of the Angels in the 2008 Draft, Chatwood played at three different levels in 2010 and he posted a combined 2.84 ERA in 155.1 innings pitched. Chatwood started 2011 in Triple-A but was called up after just one appearance with Salt Lake.

The 21-year old held his own in his first five starts in the majors, winning two of his three decisions albeit with a 4.90 ERA. But in his last six games, Chatwood has turned it up, as he’s posted a 2.68 ERA over his last 37 IP. While he allowed 17 BB in that span, he’s done a good job of keeping the ball in the park, as he’s allowed just 1 HR over his last six starts.

Chatwood’s main issue is that he’s not striking many batters out. With a 4.06 K/9, Chatwood ranks 114th out of 117 qualified pitchers. With an average fastball velocity of 93.1, one would expect Chatwood to strike out more batters but he does not have a pitch to put batters away. His SwStr% is just 4.3 percent and neither his curve ball nor change is a strikeout pitch. In the minors his curve was thought to be a potential weapon but in the majors so far it has been a below-average pitch.

It’s theoretically possible to thrive with a strikeout rate that low, but you’ve got to really cut down on walks and Chatwood has a 4.76 BB/9. He has a below-average BABIP and an elevated LOB%, which explains his 4.72 FIP and 5.00 xFIP compared to his 3.64 ERA.

While his immediate fantasy prospects are not overwhelming, Chatwood is still an intriguing arm. He gets ground balls (44%), throws hard enough and keeps the ball in the park – a nice package from a pitcher this young.

Last week we looked at Jordan Lyles. The rookie had a strong debut as he allowed just two runs in seven innings against the Cubs. But Sunday he was knocked around by the Padres, as he allowed 4 ER in 4 IP and took the loss.