Tipping Pitches: Velasquez & Smyly Surging Up the Board

Before you know it, we’ll be turning the page on the first month of the season even though it feels like Opening Day just happened. The baseball season seems to move at about 300x the speed of winter so I feel like the All-Star break will be smacking me in the face way too soon. You’ve probably heard it a million times – even from me – that early season analysis is hard because of the scant sample sizes. Yeah, it is hard, but if it were easy then there probably wouldn’t be jobs for twerps like me so I’d best stop complaining and get to analysis’ing (some say analyzing, but I mean, it’s obviously analysis’ing, right?).

Let’s take a quick look at two arms on the rise and see if we’re buying them the rest of the way:

Vincent Velasquez – If you were inclined to get super-excited by his 16-strikeout masterpiece about the Padres, he promptly laid a bit of an egg five days late (though only two of the five runs were earned) and brought everyone back to earth. Though I don’t think a modest start erases what many believed after the gem: he’s good, really good. In fact, the only thing holding Velasquez back this year is an innings cap that he will face this year. Additionally, if you were ready to discount the big outing because of the Padres, consider that he drew 27 swings-and-misses – a rarity even in this strikeout area. Look at what this joker tweeted out:

Pitchers w/27+ swinging strikes in a gm since '14: Kershaw 35, Kershaw, Carrasco, Stras 30; Sale 29; Max 2x, Kluber, Hamels, & VV today w/27

— Paul Sporer (@sporer) April 14, 2016

Perhaps most impressive about Velasquez is that he’s essentially a two-pitch pitcher right now with the fastball and curveball. His fastball is tremendous: it sits 94-96 MPH and he commands extraordinarily well, especially during that Padres outing. It is his strikeout pitch with a 27% K% and 12% SwStr%, both way above the league averages (16% and 7%, respectively). Velasquez showed a promising changeup in the minors and has flashed it as a major leaguer. If it comes to fruition as a reliable third pitch, he just might evolve into an ace.

But that’s down the road. For now, I buy Velasquez as a top 30-type pitcher while he’s in the rotation and top 60-type overall. He looks like he can be this year’s version of his former teammate Lance McCullers. McCullers threw 125.7 innings with a 3.22 ERA, 1.19 WHIP, and 129 strikeouts (25% rate). McCullers finished 60th on ESPN’s Player Rater, no doubt pushed down by his innings count. Meanwhile his teammate Collin McHugh finished 30th, powered by innings and wins. It’s not impossible to be a top 30 full-season arm with a limited workload, but consider that Noah Syndergaard and Jaime Garcia were the ones to do it last year in 150 and 130 IP, respectively, and they had pretty special seasons.

Drew Smyly – The skills weren’t the question coming into 2016: 3.24 ERA, 1.17 WHIP, 24% K% and 7% BB%. It’s worth noting that 87.3 of those were in the bullpen, but his starter-only innings were still great (3.47 ERA, 17% K-BB%). The question was surrounding the four DL stints, including a torn labrum just last year. I felt comfortable investing, especially if we saw him make it through Spring Training without incident. I’ve maintained that I’m more willing to bet on this kind of profile than most. When the skills are in place, I’m willing to gamble on the health coming through for me.

Obviously with his injury history, he is a bigger risk than an arm who hasn’t hit the DL, but all pitchers are risky and I think we underestimate just how risky the pitchers who have never been (or very rarely been) hurt actually are and then we get surprised when they wind up hurt. I’m not saying just roster any arm regardless of injury, but when the skills point to an upside like Smyly’s and you just need some health to get a big dividend, you take the gamble.

Smyly has been his best yet so far with a 34% K%, 15% SwStr%, and 29% K-BB% in 21.7 innings. Oh, and a 2.91 ERA and 0.65 WHIP. So naturally, he’s 0-2. Perhaps the biggest change this year is the development of his changeup, the lack of which had many seeing him as more of #4 starter in Detroit. I don’t know if he learned it from Alex Cobb like Jake Odorizzi did, but it’s been filthy. He’d never thrown a change more than 6% of the time prior to 2016 and so he’s using it at a 13% clip. Only eight plate appearances have ended on the change, but the opposition is just 1-for-8 (a Josh Donaldson homer) with two strikeouts.

He entered 2016 with a 217-point platoon split favoring righties, but early on they have struggled to find that same level of success with just a .341 OPS in 59 PA. Lefties actually have an .850, but he’s only faced 20 lefties and two of the five hits have been longballs. Speaking of homers, that’s about the only wart on the ledger right now (1.3 HR/9), and it’s something that has been in his game forever (1.0 career). He has a flyball lean, but also a good pop-up rate so I can see him cutting into the homers as he continues to evolve.

I said on SiriusXM earlier this week that I don’t quite have Smyly ahead of Archer, but he’s chasing him down and probably sits just outside the top 20 right now. I say probably because I haven’t done a rankings update yet, but I will be soon for May and I feel like that’s around where Smyly will be, meanwhile Archer will move down some from his 15th rank in March.