Two Good Starts, Two Bad Starts: Mike Minor and Joe Musgrove

Over the last few seasons, I have become a more aggressive pitch-and-ditcher. While I have not reached the point of taking action — either adding or dropping — on the basis of a single start, I have come to realize that a new direction taken by a pitcher in back-to-back starts often goads me into considering a move.

Two starts don’t quite represent a trend, but if you wait for a pitcher to show clear signs of trending in a new direction, you usually lose an opportunity to add pitchers who are moving in a positive direction. You may also be unnecessarily saddling yourself with bad starts from a slumping pitcher in the name of patience.

With that in mind, I’m unveiling a new feature in which I dig into the recent stats of one pitcher who has made surprisingly good consecutive starts and another pitcher who has been disappointing in back-to-back outings. As much as this column aims to offer useful analysis of the pitchers in question, it also is an effort to develop a process for making a type of roster decision that we fantasy owners face on  a regular basis. Mike Minor and Joe Musgrove get the distinction of being the first two subjects of this experiment.

Two Good Starts: Mike Minor

The Results: 6/16 vs. COL, 7 IP, 5 H, 2 R, 2 BB, 6 K; 6/22 at MIN: 6 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 2 BB, 3 K.

What’s Different: Minor has actually made three straight quality starts, but his two most recent ones were particularly productive. Despite his recent success, Minor has dragged his swinging strike rate under 10 percent over his last two starts, getting just 15 whiffs in 195 pitches. He has also followed his season-long trend of being flyball prone. However, Minor has varied his mix of pitches, throwing fewer curveballs and changeups and relying more on his fastball and slider. He has also been throwing his fastball with an average velocity right around 93 mph in both starts after having averaged 92.1 mph over his first 12 starts.

In terms of results, the most noticeable difference is that Minor has not allowed a home run in either start after having allowed at least one in each of his seven previous starts. Homers were a major contributor to Minor’s 6.57 ERA over that stretch, as he allowed 10 of them over 38.1 innings. Whereas he induced soft contact at a 16.1 percent rate though his first 12 starts, in his last two, that mark has increased to 27.8 percent, though the vast majority of those softly-hit balls came on Friday against the Twins.

Recommendation: Maybe there’s something to Minor’s increased fastball velocity helping him to induce softer contact, or maybe he’s only enjoying a brief respite from allowing homers. It might seem like a good idea to take a flier on him for Wednesday’s start against the Padres at Globe Life Park. However, the Padres rank last in Iso on the road, so this won’t be much of a test of Minor’s newfound affinity for soft contact. In mixed leagues with at least 15 teams, he is worth a speculative pickup if you have room to stash a pitcher. Just don’t count on using Minor right away. Stash him for both this coming start, as well as for his much tougher test next week against the Astros. If he aces both of those starts, Minor will be worth using.

Two Bad Starts: Joe Musgrove

The Results: 5/17 vs. CIN, 4.1 IP, 8 H, 6 R, 1 BB, 6 K; 6/23 vs. ARI, 4 IP, 7 H, 5 R, 3 BB, 2 K.

What’s Different: In the second half of 2017, Musgrove was a effective reliever for the Astros due to enhanced ground ball and swinging strike rates. For the most part, those trends carried over into his work as a starter for the Pirates through his first four starts this season, but the grounders and whiffs have dried up during his last two turns in the rotation. Only 30.o percent of Musgrove’s batted balls have been grounders in his last two starts, and just 8.5 percent of his pitches resulted in swinging strikes.

After Saturday’s loss to the Diamondbacks, Musgrove cited poor fastball command as a culprit for his results, telling reporters, “Everything I threw was up in the zone, above the belt…I wasn’t able to stay on the edges very well.” He also avoided his cutter in that start, throwing it only once, even though it has been a pitch Musgrove has thrown for strikes and with a 36.7 percent chase rate. (David Laurila just wrote about Musgrove’s adoption of the cutter in 2016 here.)

For Musgrove, not being able to stay on the outside edge in particular is a potential problem. He allows contact most frequently on the inside half of the plate, as the heatmaps below show. According to Bill Petti’s Edge% tool, Musgrove works in the heart of the strike zone at a rate above the major league median (min. 400 pitches), and only David Price has located on the inside edge at a higher rate.

While Musgrove bemoaned the fact that he left too many pitches in the middle of the zone on Saturday, three of the most damaging hits he allowed were on the outer half of the plate, as shown in the graph for left-handed hitters just below.

Recommendation: Musgrove will find his greatest success on the outside edge of the plate, but he has located there on only 4.0 percent of his pitches this year. Given that there is already a reason to be concerned about Musgrove’s command, it is feasible to drop him if he flounders against the Padres at PETCO Park on Friday. In mixed leagues with 15 or more teams, Musgrove deserve a little more patience, but a bad outing in San Diego should still put owners in those formats on high alert.