Two Good Starts, Two Bad Starts: John Gant and Jon Gray

When I started writing Two Good Starts, Two Bad Starts earlier this season, the idea wasn’t to point out trends in small samples so that fantasy owners could act on them right away. That is almost always a bad idea. It was to identify changes in pitcher performance that could conceivably turn into longer-term trends, which in turn could be useful guides for making roster decisions. It could have easily been called Who To Put On Your Watch List.

Now that Labor Day is behind us, there isn’t much time left for small samples to become sufficiently large samples for making decisions. Then again, if you are still in contention, roster decisions will be especially crucial going forward. If you’ve been on autopilot in starting Jon Gray every week, there’s no time like now to consider if he is potentially worth benching. Similarly, if you continue to dismiss John Gant, even as he has shaved close to a run off his ERA over the past four weeks, you may be doing so at your own risk. Or maybe not…

Two Good Starts: John Gant

Setting The Stage: Gant has been a largely steady presence in the Cardinals’ rotation since late June, and even prior to his two most recent starts, he had been effective. Over his previous 11 appearances (nine starts), Gant had compiled a 3.44 ERA and a 1.24 WHIP, though he did so in spite of a 17.4 percent K% and 11.0 percent BB%. However, after two strong outings, Gant has become the most-added starting pitcher in CBSSports.com leagues and the third most-added starting pitcher in Fantrax leagues.

What’s Different: Depending on how far back you go, not that much has changed for Gant. His two most recent starts have fallen in the game score range between 61 and 70, but so did his consecutive starts on Aug. 8 and Aug. 14. In those previous outings against the Marlins and Nationals, he walked only one batter over 11.1 innings, but he got swinging strikes on only 5.3 percent of his pitches. His last two starts have been his only back-to-back appearances with a SwStr% of at least 10 percent in the second half, but he returned to having an ample walk rate.

The latter of those starts was against the Pirates, against whom he has induced 37 swinging strikes out of 243 pitches he has thrown to them over three starts this season. Gant has a 15.2 percent swinging strike rate on his four-seam fastball in those starts (per Baseball Savant), and maybe it’s not a coincidence that the Pirates rank 27th in offensive pitch value on four-seamers. In addition to possibly being helped out by a matchup, Gant also received assistance in the form of a .161 BABIP and a 100 percent strand rate over his last two starts.

Recommendation: Given his mediocre strikeout and walk rates, as well as his recent reliance on favorable BABIP and strand rates, there is no particular reason to anticipate that Gant will have another strong outing on Wednesday at the Nationals. He does currently line up to face the Pirates for a fourth time next week, so he could be useful for strikeouts in that game. It’s worth noting, though, that Gant is 0 for 3 in quality starts against them this year, and back on Aug. 3, he allowed six runs to the Pirates in just four innings. There just isn’t much urgency to join the crowd and go after Gant on waivers.

Two Bad Starts: Jon Gray

Setting The Stage: Gray returned from his brief and controversial midseason demotion to Triple-A Albuquerque in much better form than he showed prior to getting sent down. He reeled off a string of seven starts in which he recorded six quality starts and a 2.59 ERA. While Gray was striking out fewer batters (28.9 percent K% pre-demotion, 23.1 percent K% over his next seven starts), his line drive rate normalized, so he was far more successful on balls in play. Whereas he suffered under the weight of a .386 BABIP over his first 17 starts, that mark was a trimmed-down .216 over his first seven post-promotion starts.

What’s Different: After posting a 14.1 percent swinging strike rate over his previous seven starts, Gray induced a total of seven swings-and-misses over his last two starts for a rate of 4.0 percent. It’s a particularly concerning sign that Gray was unable to get whiffs against the teams that compiled the third- and second-highest strikeout rates against right-handed pitchers in August (the Angels and Padres, respectively).

After Saturday’s start against the Padres, Gray said he was going to work on his slider. Both of the runs he allowed were on Hunter Renfroe solo homers, and both were hit off sliders. The problems with Gray’s slider go beyond that, though. On what is normally his best swing-and-miss pitch, Gray was able to generate only six swinging strikes out of 67 sliders thrown over his last three starts. His third-to-most-recent start, by the way, was also against the whiff-happy Padres.

Over those last three starts, Gray has been leaving his slider up in the heart of the strike zone more often, as you can see by comparing his before-and-after heatmaps. He has also used his slider less in his last two starts, possibly suggesting a lack of confidence in it. Given that Gray has not experienced much change in his slider velocity, movement or spin rate, location appears to be the main culprit.

Recommendation: Since Gray has not been able to get strikeouts against two of the teams that have recently struggled the most to make contact against righties, he could be in for a long night at home against the Dodgers this Friday. In any mixed league with more than 12 teams, it does seem rash to bench Gray just because of a short-term dearth of whiffs. However, it’s probably worthwhile to at least look at alternatives in shallower formats.