The Change: Addison Russell, Masahiro Tanaka, Homer Bailey, & First Impressions

So often, the first take takes. In other words, whatever prognostication came first, it’ll stick long after the data has taken a new turn. In most respects, when it comes to the games on the field, Addison Russell, Masahiro Tanaka, and Homer Bailey all started on the wrong foot this year. The trick is finding out — quickly — if there’s a chance that first look is obscuring the true value of these guys.

When it comes to Masahiro Tanaka, we’ve had a big clue — in the form of a strong game against the Rays — that maybe our first look at him this season was just a big exercise in confirmation bias. We all thought it was a bad idea for him to pitch through a partially torn ligament, even as we conveniently forgot Adam Wainwright doing so for a few years, and as we ignored respected doctors saying that for some pitchers, this was normal.

“Partial tear” is a nebulous term that can describe anything from light fraying to a state just short of snapping. “Some partial tears need surgery no matter what,” says Glenn Fleisig, research director at the American Sports Medicine Institute. “Some partial tears it would be ridiculous to have surgery — they could easily get better from rehab. But then there’s a lot in the middle, which is, the doctor and the athlete and the trainers make a decision to give [rehab] a try.” — Ben Lindbergh, Grantland

Fleisig goes on to say that throwing at lower effort would produce less stress on the arm, so Tanaka’s lower velocity could be an effort on his part to last through the season. And we may have made a little more of that lower velocity in the early going than we should have — He averaged 92.04 mph on the four-seamer in his last outing according to Brooks Baseball, and he averaged 92.74 mph on the four-seamer last year. At 26 years old, Tanaka was expected to lose about a quarter of a mph anyway.

So maybe Tanaka is reduced, but a reduced star can still be a useful one. Take the name off this chart and you’d want to pick him up. His whiff rate on the splitter is up from last year, when it was second in the bigs. 12% whiffs is fine for a second non-fastball.

Oh but the fastball. 2% whiffs on the four-seamer? 18% grounders on the sinker? We’ve returned to the scene of the crime, it seems. Can we find some hope here? Look at the horizontal movement on his fastballs in his last start out:

That was the start in which he held the Rays to two hits and no walks in seven innings, with eight strikeouts. In that game, he also threw 43% fastballs (41% last year). He only got one whiff on the fastball that game, but his career whiff % on the fastball is only 4.8% according to Brooks.

Tanaka clearly isn’t who he used to be, but it also seems clear that he’ll be useful until the arm goes. Considering that his first two bad starts came against Boston and Toronto, maybe the early panic was a bit premature.

Homer Bailey started against the Cardinals in his first game back, not quite the same caliber an offense as they show in Boston and Toronto. He also didn’t strike out a single batter. His ownership in ESPN is down 5% (to 87.6%) accordingly. His upside might not be as dominant as Tanaka’s, but 2013 was pretty lights out. How much has changed in Bailey since then?

Was the fastball velocity there? It usually takes three outings to stabilize, but the first outing tells us something, and Bailey was once 92, and then was tantalizingly at 94 for a couple years. In his first start, he was down to 92. Not good. But the book is not completely writ — he had similar velocity outings early in both 2013 and 2014. He’ll need a bit of a rebound, but it’s possible.

The pitching mix looks relatively normal, except for one notable exception. He only threw one curveball. He did that one time last year. He did it twice in 2013. Which is to say, he’s done this before, but rarely. The curve might be the worst of his many pitches, but the fact that he left it in his back pocket after having elbow surgery and a bulging disc in his neck last year is at least a little worrisome.

Here’s a more worrisome image.

That’s the vertical movement on his pitches. They were all flat. The one curve he threw was terrible, but the rest of his pitches were also flat. Since 2013 started, he’s only had one game with as little drop as he showed on his slider in his first outing.

So that’s two breaking balls, two reasons to worry. We know that rehabbing pitchers put the slider away when coming back from Tommy John, and that there’s some link between disabled list chances and slider usage. So this is a problem.

If you were worried about Tanaka, you should be more worried about Bailey. His velocity drop was more pronounced, and his pitch mix even more impacted by his injury. His upside sill remains, enough to keep him around for another start, but if the velocity is still down, and his breaking balls still absent or flat… the prognosis is more negative here.

We finally get to the bat that I so salaciously squeezed into the headline. Maybe it’s not a natural fit — Addison Russell not an injured pitcher — but it will be interesting to see how people react to his debut. The hype machine is relentless, but in the face of an oh-fer with three strikeouts, what will it do? It probably won’t remember the sharp groundout, at least.

But if you were a little bit less enthusiastic about Russell’s fantasy fate before the debut, you might not change much. He’s 21, has barely cleared 300 plate appearances above Double-A, and has struggled with contact from time to time. He might not tear the head off of baseball and eat it. (Actually he’s much to mild-mannered to do that, so never mind.)

Long term, I think he’ll figure out how to be patient and make contact, and I think he’ll also make his way back to shortstop. We discussed both of those things in 2013, and his answers, and his general makeup, convinced me that he’d iron out the flaws. Eventually. But even then, he may not have plus plus power, he doesn’t have plus stolen base speed, and his batting average may be more ‘good’ than ‘great.’ It might end up being a little too much Jhonny Peralta than some want in fantasy. Jhonny Peralta debuted when he was 21, and hit .227 with four homers in 270 PA.

The job of a manager in the dugout is often to mellow the swings — don’t get too high or too low. It seems the job of a fantasy analyst is very similar. Don’t get too low on Tanaka, and keep your eyes open on Russell. They’re both good players, and may be useful in fantasy, but the bar is set high and there aren’t many 21 year olds (or half-torn UCLs) that clear it.