The Change: Mailbag Time!

Listeners of the podcast should be well familiar with this format. Paul Sporer and I try to come up with a few salient points about each player to help you make your decisions. So This week I thought I’d help as many of you as I possibly could with one article. So let’s take three (okay six) hitters and three pitchers from the twitter mailbag and have us some fun.

Pitchers
Chad Green came over to the Yankees in the Justin Wilson trade and added a strikeout per inning to an already pristine strikeout minus walk rate in the minor leagues. But dude is 25 years old and was traded for a reliever, so it’s important to remember some of that real-life context before getting super excited. And then there are the pitches. He’s only thrown 18 (split?) changeups so far, and though he’s gotten some whiffs, it’s obvious that it doesn’t have plus movement or velocity gap and also that he doesn’t trust it. A high-velocity rising fastball, an okay sinker, a plus slider, and now a cutter to combat lefties that he’s added in the major leagues… does this sound familiar yet? I’m not calling him Shane Greene despite the similarity in names, but Greene’s change had more promise than Green’s… I’m not starting Green against Baltimore (his next two probable starts) and I’m not getting too excited till I see more changeups. Splits this early are terrible but when a fastball/slider righty has given up six home runs against 78 lefties (and a .600 slugging), I take notice.

David Phelps looks like he’s doing the Carlos Carrasco thing:

Brooksbaseball-Chart-55

Yeah you can tell where he started getting stretched out, but he’s still throwing his fastball 93 these days instead of his customary 91 or so when he was starting before. He’s brought the changeup and curve back since he joined the rotation, and the small sample results and movement look fine. The fact that his four-seam whiffs are up big makes sense, and added confidence in that pitch has led to more fastballs, which has probably helped the whiff rate on all of his other pitches get better. He’s somehow turned the trick of having more movement on his change and curve with the added velocity, which makes everything else better. It’s weird but at this velocity, I believe in him. He’s more than the bad fastball, good curve and cutter guy that he used to be. With San Diego and Mets coming up, you gotta go get him. I’m going to try and alternate him and Joe Musgrove (check the front of the site for a piece on him today) for their favorable starts coming up.

Jeff Hoffman’s debut didn’t go well at all, but of course he pitched in a tough place for anyone. There’s some chance that Coors affected him in a way that it won’t going forward, though. Or, rather, that he’ll figure out Coors to an extent. For example, Jon Gray throws a curve that is much better away from home, and it’s known that Coors kills curveballs. By spin rate, Hoffman has a top-20 curveball (no minimums) and most of the curves around him have more depth. So let’s say his curve will be bigger going forward. The change had a bit too much spin to have good drop but it got the most whiffs of any of his pitches and could at least function as a sinker for the sinker-less Hoffman. The best news is that he threw all four of his pitches, even in a short outing, so he trusts his stuff. You can’t start him anywhere until we get more data, but you could snap him up in a deep dynasty before his next away outing in case you buy yourself half a cheap pitcher.

Hitters
Travis Jankowski vs Keon Broxton is a question people have been asking. People in really deep leagues, I hope. Broxton has been more patient and is making more contact, but the first was never really his problem and the second is still a problem, even after improvement. Then again, he doesn’t reach much and his zone contact rate is now on the second page of the laggardboard, so maybe he can strike out as much as Mike Napoli does. The key might be making contact on pitches outside the zone, then, because Broxton is doing that about *half* as well as the league. The thing that is keeping Broxton afloat right now is pure muscle — he’s spent seven weeks averaging better than 95 mph on batted balls, and that’s the magic number that turns almost any positive angle into a hit. There’s a few too many ground balls in his profile to believe that BABIP though. I can’t see him hitting much more than .230 with a .310 BABIP. Jankowski is a more traditional slappy speedster that should make more contact going forward. He swings and reaches less than the league, and makes contact more than the league. I think the 20-30 points of batting average will make up for the lack of power, and I’ll take the Padre speedster.

Sandy Leon vs Mike Zunino in the battle of hot catchers, I’m not talking about looks. But age matters here, and Leon’s two years older, which means he’s more of a surprise than a 25-year-old Zunino, who has recovered some of what he was “supposed” to have in him this year. There’s very little to point to in Leon’s profile to make him believable, too. He’s swinging less, yes, but that’s all coming from zone swings because he’s reaching more. That’s how you turn a good contact rate into a boring strikeout rate. And for his nutty batted ball luck all we have to show is this graph, which is not good, not good at all.

chart-5

On the other side, we have Zunino’s obvious improvement in selectivity on breaking balls.

Brooksbaseball-Chart-56

That pairs well with fewer swings over all, fewer reaches, and a better swinging strike rate. There’s also some evidence he’s figured out how to cover the outside part of the plate better. I think the power is way over his head, but take the under on his projected strikeout rates if this change is real. That would mean something as nice as a .240+ batting average with a .200 ISO — and that’s nice for the position.

Jake Lamb vs Brad Miller wasn’t a question a couple months ago, but Lamb has gone mild and Bad Miller has put that nickname behind him. The key to Lamb is not in the exit velocity, he’s always hit the ball hard, and still is. This is the key to his problems right now:

LambGBFB

The pessimist would point to that insane pop-up rate and the increasing ground-ball rate and say there’s something wrong here. But most GB/FB charts look like this, and if he’s hitting fewer fly balls, that infield fly ball number is going to go up — IFFB% is infield flies divided by fly balls. Lamb’s become a little bit more aggressive, probably because he’s seeing the most fastballs of the year. What’s happened is that Lamb’s not getting pitches on the inside part of the plate, and he’s stretched to start swinging at pitches low and away more often. Because he hits the ball hard, and isn’t a major strikeout risk, I think he can continue hitting .260 with .200+ ISO type power, so another 6-7 homers, but he’ll need to show he can go oppo a little more to cover that outside part of the plate.

Miller? He’s whooping the ball in every quadrant, but especially down. Pitchers have started throwing the ball up in the zone more recently, but since Miller has more eligibilities, strikes out less, I could see the temptation. But Miller is swinging at those pitches up even though he doesn’t do as much with them, and I think a correction could be coming. He doesn’t have the exit velocity to fall back on, either. I’ll stick with the D-back playing in that nice park with the great exit velo.





With a phone full of pictures of pitchers' fingers, strange beers, and his two toddler sons, Eno Sarris can be found at the ballpark or a brewery most days. Read him here, writing about the A's or Giants at The Athletic, or about beer at October. Follow him on Twitter @enosarris if you can handle the sandwiches and inanity.

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dtpollittmember
7 years ago

Lamb has been just horrible the 2nd half. I’m about to drop him before the fantasy playoffs start.

Jackie T.
7 years ago
Reply to  dtpollitt

I just did, for Phelps. I have Miller, Bregman and Sano to fill in at 3rd. Lamb would have been a last-round keeper so that’s my only concern, but I don’t think I’ll be regretting the move this season.

Mentholmember
7 years ago
Reply to  Jackie T.

I’ve got both Lamb and Sano and refuse to drop either. I figure one of them (surely the one I leave on the bench) *has* to get hot at some point.