Three Name-Brand Starting Pitchers to Consider Selling

Never before have we seen so many talented young pitchers. And, although I don’t have concrete evidence to support it, it feels like we have never seen so many name-brand starting pitchers struggle.

Everyone slumps. David Price, for example, is slumping. But with an atrocious strand rate (LOB%) and elevated batting average on balls in play (BABIP), it’s the type of slow start that savvy fantasy owners should target as a buy-low opportunity.

Other starters enduring equally slow starts can’t be defended quite as easily. Inversely, still more starters are masking their ugly peripherals with typical production, as expected. You may want to consider selling the names below. All three make me sad because, while not especially old, each of them has stared down his mortality at one point or another this season, as we normal folk do every day when we look in the mirror. All our demises are imminent, a truth made painfully true by the beautiful yet cruel sport we love so.

Adam Wainwright, STL (4.64 xFIP)

Wainwright’s current xFIP, if extrapolated through September, would represent his worst mark since his first season as a full-time starter — a whole decade ago. A 4-to-5-WAR pitcher for the better part of that decade, Waino, at this point, might be happy to produce a meager 2 WAR — which, actually is plenty good enough to be a mid-rotation arm for some clubs but represents a steep fall from grace for the former ace.

The ERA is obviously anomalous. No pitcher in the last 10 years has finished the season with a sub-60% strand rate, so that’s the least of our concerns here, dude. No, the bigger issue is hittability. Batters have made more contact on pitches in the zone and swung less often and pitches outside it.

Wainwright is not spotting his cutter. He has thrown it in the zone only 42.9% of the time this season, down from 50.1% for his career. That might explain the marginal, albeit manageable, increase in walks from years’ past. But the curveball may be a larger concern: once Wainwright’s patented offering, the pitch’s swinging strike rate (SwStr%) since prior to Wainwright tearing his Achilles tendon has fallen by roughly a third. A pitch that allowed a miniscule 23 wRC+ for the duration of Wainwright’s career has allowed a 63 wRC+ in 2016 on a suppressed BABIP.

Those are small numbers with big impacts. Hitters simply haven’t offered at the pitch, its chase rate (O-Swing%) having dropped roughly 10 percentage points since 2014 and more than 7 percentage points from his career mark. And hitters are making more contact on those pitches, too. Not highlighted above: Wainwright is throwing his curve in the zone more often, too, further confounding the issue.

The pitch is just not fooling anyone right now. While its composition appears largely unchanged — similar velocity, similar movement — his fastball continues to decline in velocity, and that differential may be impacting his curve’s effectiveness.

You probably invested a non-negligible sum in Wainwright on draft day, and his unsightly ERA and peripherals will make it incredibly hard to move him at a decent price. Yet you may want to consider doing so — Waino just doesn’t look right and, at almost 35 years old, we may be witnessing his unfortunate decline.

Felix Hernandez, SEA (4.32 xFIP)

Much has been made of the King’s struggles so far. Jeff Sullivan and Mike Podhorzer both observed that Hernandez is not throwing hard nor throwing strikes. It’s all well-documented.

For a long time, Felix countered his declining velocity with better off-speed stuff. His chase rate has steadily increased since his debut, up until a dramatic drop-off this year:

Alas, fewer pitches in the zone (plus fewer first-pitch strikes) plus fewer swings on pitches outside the zone equals trouble. The most incredible part (to me, at least) is the fact that all of his pitches — the fastball, the change-up, the curve, the sinker — they’re all inducing fewer swings outside the zone. There’s no single culprit here. The fastball is hurting most, but Felix has also been wise to steer away from it over time as he acknowledges its declining effectiveness.

But he also isn’t throwing the curve for strikes, and with fewer hitters offering at it, it’s swinging strike rate (SwStr%) has tumbled. You live and die by the sword when you thrive at the periphery of the zone. I don’t know if it’s only velocity. Maybe it’s sequencing, too. But slower pitches means more time to react, and hitters have not been fooled in 2016.

You probably spent more on Hernandez than you did Wainwright. Thus, the same advice applies. But Felix’s ceiling, at only 30, is arguably higher. He has been making adjustments for the few years, defying expectations as analysts anticipated an early demise. Perhaps that demise is here, but it’s worth holding out a little longer. The good news is Hernandez has been much luckier than Wainwright. If you’re not one to wait for good news, you may be better off flipping him before his stock tanks for good. At a .236 BABIP, it’s likely the batted ball fortunes won’t play in his favor much longer.

Cole Hamels, TEX (3.88 xFIP)

Hamels is an unlikely name to be seen here. His inclusion is more speculative than anything else. Like Felix, good fortune and his most recent, very excellent start have masked an otherwise woeful walk rate (BB%). It’s not enough to scare the defense-independent metrics too much — his 3.88 xFIP would represent the worst mark of his career, but his career-best mark is 3.02, so he has been floating in the mid-3s for a decade now. But Hamels also has never really had control issues.

Hamels’ issue seems more correctable than Wainwright’s or Hernandez’s. The latter two are struggling to make hitters flail. Hamels is succeeding; his chase rate is not far different from previous years. But hitters are swinging far less than usual, and he’s benefitting from a supressed zone contact rate (Z-Contact%). When the latter regresses, he’s going to lose a few strikeouts, and the FIPs may creep north of 4.00.

The primary concern is Hamels strike-throwing abilities. Per PITCHf/x, his zone rate (Zone%) has fallen to 39.8%, a whopping 7.3 percentage points lower than last year, which was already his career-worst. Weirdly, he’s missing down and away on lefties, down and in on righties. Granted, there’s where he thrives:

But the rate at which Hamels has spotted pitches down, glove side, has almost doubled in 2016:

It doesn’t seem like an issue of release points. So what is it? A concerted effort to live on the black? It just seems like he’s living there a bit too often. That’s why it seems correctable — Hamels simply needs to alter his philosophy a bit.

That’s the optimist in me speaking. I think the underlying metrics warrant optimism. But there’s a chance he never does straighten it out. And then the BABIP creeps up. And maybe the ground ball rate (GB%) slips a little bit. Now we’re talking a mid-4s FIP with an ERA to match once his strand rate regresses to something more normal. That’s a mid-rotation starter, not an ace. That’s a 2-WAR, not 4-WAR, starter.

I try to offer up enough evidence for you to make a decision for yourself, one way or another. I’ll be honest: I wouldn’t have written about Hamels if I didn’t own him and wasn’t concerned. But I do, and I am. I’m a little more comforted now — I probably won’t sell him — but I will absolutely keep tabs on his walk rate, and so should you. Besides, it may all boil down to one bad game against the Angels, where Hamels seemed a little off. If that’s truly a blip on the radar, then we’re all good here. There’s just always a chance that these issues persist. Hamels has already hit four batters this year, too. Food for thought.