Welcoming Back Marcus Stroman

Heading into the 2015 season, Marcus Stroman was a very popular sleeper/breakout pick. You know, one of those players everyone hypes so much as sleeper material that he no longer actually goes for sleeper prices. In fact, a Google search for “marcus stroman sleeper” yields many articles, some of which include the following quotes:

Stroman is on the verge of breaking out into one of the American League’s best starting pitchers…Stroman’s combination of nasty stuff, good command, and superb FIP has me pinpointing 2015 as a breakout for him.

When the dust settles, the diminutive Stroman could be a top-20 starter in 2015.

There is a real chance that we start associating the word “ace” with Stroman this year.

Given his quality repertoire, excellent control and strong ground ball rate, it was no surprise that Stroman became a preseason favorite target for many fantasy owners. But then he tore the ACL in his left knee in early/mid March and was deemed out for the season. It was an unfortunate injury given the inflated expectations many had for him, and the then 23-year-old would miss an entire year of development.

But wait! The season still has several weeks left and who is currently scheduled to start for the Blue Jays this Saturday? This same Marcus Stroman who we all thought would be out all year.

Since predicting how players will perform after returning from injury is not my expertise, I won’t say a whole lot about his chances of success this year after his recovery. But I will just reiterate how important the legs, and every bone and muscle that is part of said legs, are to a pitcher’s effectiveness. It’s fairly obvious why. Reportedly, Stroman’s fastball velocity is down a bit so far. That’s understandable given the long layoff he has had and how he probably still needs to rebuild the strength back in that knee. But it obviously presents a risk to fantasy owners hoping to catch lightning in a bottle and running him out there for his first start.

Okay, that’s it for the injury recovery talk. Let’s talk about his skills, or what they could be if 100% healthy. Stroman’s fastball last year had good velocity and peaked at 96.5 mph. That’s certainly not elite, but plenty good. The pitch didn’t generate a whole lot of swings and misses, but he threw it for a strike frequently and induced ground balls. His cutter was his second most used pitch, according to PITCHf/x, and it was excellent. Though it fell just short of league average in generating swinging strikes, it was close, and it was made up for by inducing tons of ground balls.

He complemented his fastball and cutter with the kitchen sink. He threw a curve, slider and changeup! All of them generated a SwStk% above the benchmark. What’s perplexing then is that given what appears to be fantastic stuff, his overall SwStk% was actually below the league average. We can’t even really blame it on inflated fastball usage though, as he threw the pitch just a bit less often than the average starting pitcher in 2014. But if you add the cutter in there, a pitch that also generated a SwStk% below 10%, that accounts for about 70% of his pitches thrown. Now we’re starting to find an explanation.

Though we can never be sure if a pitch will remain as effective if thrown more often, it sure seems like if he threw his slider more often, his SwStk%, and resulting strikeout rate, would rise. And he wouldn’t even have to give up ground balls, since the slider induced grounders 61% of the time last year!

Perhaps consolidating his repertoire is the answer here. Does he really need to throw five pitches? Oddly, his curve ball was his favorite non-fastball/cutter pitch, yet it induced the lowest ground ball rate and SwStk%. I’m not sure he would be happy to just turf the curve, but is it really necessary? Throw that slider to righties, the change to lefties, and mix in the fastball and cutter. His strikeout rate would likely benefit, his ground ball rate may even increase, and that breakout everyone predicted would occur this year may be in the cards for next year.

Non-owners should root for Stroman’s velocity to eventually return to normal, but his performance to be lackluster. Anything to keep his cost down next year would be a positive and result in a better chance of his new owners turning a profit.