The Change: Eno’s Pitchers

Prepping, traveling, interviewing, transcribing, and then writing up those interviews with ballplayers (not to mention editing FG+, which you should check out) is taking too much of my time, which is why you won’t see my name on the rankings. But this column isn’t going away, and so I still have my bully pulpit.

So, here I am, staking claim to pitchers I like. With the entirely unmethodological methodology of scanning the rankings based on steamer projections, looking at the projections, and then telling you why I like the dude more than his projections. We’ll start with mixed leaguers today, and do the deep leaguers later on.

David Price
Steamer 9, RG Consensus 7
I like that David Price threw the most changeups of his life last year. It also got one of the best whiff rates of his career, which is an impressive double feature — usually the more often you throw a pitch, the harder it is to keep impressive peripherals. Batters get a good luck at your pitch, and we aren’t all King Felix. Price is on a team that should net him plenty of wins, and the defense behind him should improve this year with Jose Iglesias returning to health, Miguel Cabrera fixing his nether regions with surgery, and Nick Castellanos still young enough (22) to improve there. Price is 29 and already losing velocity, but his secondary stuff and team situation say to me that he should at least tread water, if not see some improvement due to team defense. I’d probably take Price over injury risk Yu Darvish, and even over Zack Greinke. That puts me in line with the Consensus, though.

Cole Hamels
Steamer 20, RG Consensus 13
Since Hamels added the cutter in 2010, he’s only once been as bad as Steamer projects him to be this coming year. Even a cautious approach to his roto value — perhaps due to apprehension of a trade to the American League — probably lines up better with the fans (3.00 ERA / 1.12 WHIP) in my mind. Increased sinker usage should help keep the home runs down, and he’ll be facing some bad offenses in the National League should he stay put. I line up much closer with the consensus on Hamels here.

Jacob deGrom
Steamer 60, RG Consensus 31
There are so many reasons that we missed on deGrom coming in — he was old at every level due to college and then Tommy John surgery, he was a college closer learning new pitches at every level, and he didn’t really put his entire arsenal together until last spring training — that it’s understandable that a projection system looking solely at his results last year and in the minors would repeat the mistake. Last year looks like the outlier. But look at his arsenal as it is now, and there’s not a single weakness, really. The four-seam has above-average velocity, rise, and gets double the whiffs of an average four-seamer. The two-seamer averages about the same velocity but gets double the run, three more inches of drop, and 56% ground balls. The change goes ten mph slower than his fastball, has above-average run and drop, and got 20% whiffs last year (13% is average). The slider got harder as the year went on and got better as it got harder. The curve isn’t a 12-to-6er with big hump, that probably serves it well, as it got 18% whiffs (11% is average). deGrom is deBomb. I’m more in line with the consensus but I’d even move him above guys like Sonny Gray, Phil Hughes, Jake Arrieta, Gio Gonzalez, Jeff Samardzija, and maybe even Adam Wainwright.

Garrett Richards
Steamer 43, RG Consensus 44
To me, Richards is Jake Arrieta with a better health history and more velocity. Both pitchers broke out when they decided to use their slider around a third of the time, which makes them injury risks due to breaker usage. But while both seem young, Arrieta is 28 to Richards’ 26, Richards injury history is limited basically to his knee while Arrieta spent time on the DL last year with shoulder problems, missed time in camp due to those shoulder problems, has had elbow surgery, and missed time due to sore elbow, all in the last four years. Richards is throwing now, and any time he misses is offset by Arrieta’s increased injury risk. In any case, 22 spots of difference between the two in the Consensus ranks (six in steamer) screams opportunity to me.

Drew Hutchison
Steamer 52, RG Consensus 58
Everyone loves Marcus Stroman at this point, so it’s hard to push him much higher than we have him (25), but his teammate should get some love from us, too. Hutchinson’s minor league numbers and new catcher suggest that he could actually improve his good walk rate from last year. He had the 14th-best swinging strike rate among qualified starters, and his strikeout minus walk rate was top 25 stuff. It’s all about the homers with him, and unfortunately, the changeup was the one that suffered the most in that stat. I say unfortunately because the pitcher found a new slider near the end of the year, and it would be nice if that fixed things. But a new slider is a different wrinkle, and it can make a whole arsenal hum better. Once the slider started going slower, the changeup didn’t get battered as much. I’d take Hutchison and his stirkeout upside over guys like Dallas Keuchel, Michael Pineda, and probably even John Lackey. It’s a question of inches, not yards, but I like this Blue Jay.

Jesse Hahn
Steamer 143, RG Consensus 92
Right there, on the line between deep and mixed league sleeper, stands Jesse Hahn. There are all sorts of reasons to call him a deep leaguer — his injury history (Tommy John surgery in college), his limited repertoire (he threw 90+% fastballs and curveballs last year), and the suddenly crowded back end of the Athletics rotation (he’s up against Kendall Graveman and Jesse Chavez for two spots before A.J. Griffin and Jarrod Parker return) — and yet I’ll put him on my mixed league benches. For one, Graveman has options and Chavez has iffy command that leaves him prone to long balls. Hahn’s had a clean bill of health for a while now, and could manage as many as 150 innings this year without it being a huge deal. And the arsenal? Only 22 pitchers got more swinging strikes on their curves, and all but one of them threw more curves than Hahn. His sinker outperformed the average sinker when it came to velocity (91.6), whiffs (8.6%), and grounders (63%). So the change? It didn’t have the velocity gap you wanted (7 mph), but it had more fade and drop than your average curve. He threw 88 of them and got strikes on 10%, with 13% being average. All of those facets were better than Sonny Gray’s changeup.

Mostly I came away from our consensus rankings impressed. Where I might separate myself most is at the bottom of the list, where I try to find pitchers that have really changed their arsenal, or just haven’t put together multiple pieces of the puzzle. That post is coming soon.