Advanced Stats - Pitching: Friday, April 7th

by Matt Trollo (MTro86) Last Updated 2017-04-08 01:49:10

Only pitchers on the night slate will be covered in the notes tonight, though we’re listing the afternoon guys too. Included are two who make their major league debut and one who hasn’t thrown a pitch in a major league game that counts since 2014 with another who’s only thrown 4.2 innings since then. This is what the bottom of the rotation looks like. The good news is that we start at the top again tomorrow and get to start using brand new 2017 stats real soon.

Check out Tuesday’s article for an explanation on some newly included stats this year, including DRA and some Statcast stuff. Remember that FanDuel has changed their pitcher pricing to de-emphasize the Win in favor of the Quality Start. A welcome, if not overdue change.

As always, don’t forget to check lineups, umpire assignments, line movement, and Kevin’s weather report as they are released later in the day, all of which may change the equation and help you decide between two pitchers of otherwise equal value in a pinch. And all of which are now available right here on the site.
Most stats are pulled directly from the Fangraphs.com database. If a stat is used that you are not familiar with and want to learn more about, their glossary does a terrific job of explaining all of the advanced stats used here.

Starting Pitching Main Chart

We’re using Seamheads.com three year park factors. Home team is in bold. Team Def = UZR/150. L2Yrs is a rolling calendar. Hm/Rd xFIP is since the start of the 2016 season. Opp team offensive stats are wRC+.

One important note here is that with the season just under way, we’re still using some 2016 stats to start the season this week (even if it says 2017). Stats for the last seven, 14 or 30 days are also from the end of last season and should probably be largely ignored. They’re essentially filling in blank spaces right now. Also, we’re still using last year’s park factors as I’ve yet to find an updated site with multi-year factors. Feel free to leave a message if you know of one.

Francisco Liriano turned his season around after being reunited with his old catcher (Russell Martin). He increased his strikeout rate (22.2% to 25%) and cut his walk rate nearly in half (13.2% to 7.7%). That was really the only major difference, as his 19.6 HR/FB barely dropped to 17.1%. You wouldn’t expect a move from Pittsburgh to Toronto to help his HR rate, but that number was bound to regress wherever. As far as pitch mix, he was throwing a few more sliders and both his fastball and changeup gained a whole mph in velocity. Batters were finally chasing his slider again too, going from a 27.8 O-Swing% to 35.5% in Toronto. Makes some sense, considering he was getting ahead more often as well (54.5 F-Strike% to 58.2%). Doesn’t mean he’s not a risk to slip back into hold habits, but it’s encouraging to see the ability is still there. The Rays are usually a platoon advantage offense, who hits LHP well, but also strike out a lot (25.4% last year).

Matt Andriese had some quality peripherals last year, but a strand rate slightly below 70%. His 15.9 K-BB% is solidly above average. He’s not really a guy with tremendous stuff, rather solid command of it. Without much of a platoon split, he faces a predominantly RH lineup, who excel against RHP, but at least gets to face them at home, in Tampa Bay.

Mike Fiers allows too much hard contact in the air, which lead to 26 HRs in 168 innings last year, though his 42.2 GB% was a career high. He has the ability to miss bats at a near average rate and had solid control last year, but the main reason to consider him tonight is because he is facing the Royals. He’s shown reverse splits through his first nearly 600 major league innings and the Royals don’t really have anyone who makes you sweat from that side of the plate.

Mike Leake faces his old team in St Louis. He’s somewhat of a HR prone RHP and while moving from Cincinnati to St Louis did not help that situation last year, his 13.5 HR/FB, which is right on his career mark, was actually league average. He stayed the same, but the league changed. While his 16.5 K% was at his career rate as well, his 7.2 SwStr% was actually his highest since 2011. He did show a tendency to throw his slider more often to RHBs with swing and miss tendencies and his 65.6 LOB% last season was nearly eight points below his career average. Expectations should be a bit more optimistic this year and he starts off in a nice spot at home.

Shelby Miller is the most interesting arm on the night slate. Don’t try to fix your computer screen. You read that right. While the trade was already thought to be lopsided when he was considered to be a decent pitcher, he went out and pitched like a 40 year old dad in a Sunday softball league last year. His mechanics were a mess. His hand was hitting the ground after pitches.

Turn to this spring. Before March even started, it was noted that his “velocity was up 2.5 mph”: http://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/mixing-fantasy-reality-bellinger-fastball-velocities/, a number (95.5 mph) he averaged in just one game last season. A month later, he’s struck out 37% of batters he faced this spring and his velocity is up even further. All of a sudden, his fastball is Syndergaardian. Well, we didn’t know about those new tricky velocity readings yet, so maybe not, but it’s still certainly a positive development.

Unfortunately, he was still getting hit fairly hard because the rest of his arsenal is still pretty mediocre, but 95+ can make everything else look a bit better. Also, facing Cleveland in Arizona does not look like a favorable proposition, but they will have to sit either Santana or Encarnacion.

Amir Garrett is a highly regarded pitching prospect who ranked second on the Reds list and 65th in the top 100 for Fangraphs this season. The stuff isn’t amazing, but he has several pitchers projected anywhere from at least useful to above average. His strikeout rates were above average until being merely average at AAA last season. He does have occasional issues with control, sitting with a walk rate above 9% at just about every stop of the minors. This likely means we’re looking at a K-BB% a bit below average in the majors at this point. The Cardinals, for some unknown reason, have struggled against LHP the last few seasons despite leaning heavily right-handed. The early April conditions in St Louis generally favor pitchers as well.

NOT AS GOOD AS THEY LOOK (OR THE FADE LIST)

This list is reserved for pitchers who may look attractive because their ERAs are much lower than their estimators. The reason for this is almost always extreme BABIP, LOB, and/or HR/FB deviation from the norm, so we’ll just quote those stats and be done with them.

League AVG (.298 BABIP – 72.3 LOB% – 13.3 HR/FB)

Nobody qualifies.

NO THANK YOU (In order from least to most offensive)

Wei-Yin Chen moved to a bigger park in a more pitcher friendly division and proceeded to post a career high 14.9 HR/FB with a career high 35.1 Hard%. His 91 mph aEV and 9.1% Barrels/BBE (6.2% Barrels/PA) are some of the highest marks on the board. He generated just 10 popups, when he’d never had fewer than 20 in a season in Baltimore. He also dropped a full mph off his fastball and suffered an elbow injury over the summer. It appears to have been more of a sprain than something he’d need to see Dr Tommy John for (why did they name the surgery for the pitcher instead of the doctor who saved his career?), so we can hope for a return to health and better results this year. The Mets struck out 22.3% of the time last year against LHP, but also had a 14.8 HR/FB. Although they do lean left-handed, they do have a lefty masher named Flores, a total masher named Cespedes, and Walker was a revelation from the right side last year. Maybe a healthier pitcher is a better pitcher in his second season in Miami, but he is the second most expensive pitcher on either site.

Luis Severino started 11 games last season and also made 11 relief appearances. While the 64 LOB% should improve, I’m not so sure about the 16.4 HR/FB. He needs a third pitch and he needs to throw more strikes, but not necessarily against this lineup, who hammers RHP (16.8 HR/FB vs RHP last year). He’s actually been worse against RHBs (.342 wOBA, 13 HRs) than LHBs (.319, 7) in his short career, but with a fastball/slider combo, that’s likely to even out. His stuff is above average, so a quality changeup could turn him into a good pitcher.

Jesse Chavez made all 62 appearances last year out of the bullpen, where he was actually a bit worse than he was as a starter the previous two seasons, in which he was a perfectly average starter. He is in a nice park at the minimum price on FanDuel, but is it ever necessary to use a minimum priced pitcher on FanDuel.

Brett Anderson followed up a career high 180 innings in 2015 (66.3 GB%) with just 11 last year. When he’s able to pitch, you’re going to see lots of ground balls. The Brewers might have an impressive lineup against LHP this year, at least in terms of power potential, but they are still projected to strike out a ton. The cost is almost low enough that I’d be tempted if he was in a more pitcher friendly environment.

Jimmy Nelson

Ubaldo Jimenez makes me wonder why only batters and relievers get walk up (walk in?) music. Ubaldo has a near perfect song to play him in. It’s just that in your head, you have to change the words to Kiss’s “War Machine”:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlnmNkMivHc&ab_channel=rockerdude108 to Walk Machine.

Phil Hughes had an abbreviated season last year. He was the lesser known thoracic outlet surgery patient last year. Maybe that’s been an issue for longer than we’ve known because he’s had a strikeout rate below 15% over his last 200 innings. He’s not in a terrible spot as an extreme fly ball pitcher at home against the White Sox, but his strikeout rate leaves little expectation concerning his potential upside.

Josh Tomlin allowed 36 HRs last year, 22 of them to RHBs. The Diamondbacks lean RH and the park shift is terrible for him.

Zack Wheeler makes his return from TJS. He missed two full years. He hasn’t thrown a major league pitch in two full years and DraftKings has him priced at $8K. Was he even an $8K pitcher when healthy? He has a 10.2% major league walk rate. He’s looked okay occasionally this spring, but often looked like a pitcher who’s previously struggled with control returning from TJS.

Yovani Gallardo struck out 16.2% of batters last year. The Angels struck out 16.4% of the time against RHPs. Gallardo would be expected to have a 16.3% strikeout rate tonight? Wrong. You see, they both performed those numbers against a league with strikeout rates much higher, so we should project a mark even lower and there’s also the matter that this is a different season and the Angels have new obscure batters at the bottom of their lineup to replace the old obscure ones and these guys might strike out more. It’s a whole mess of math and stuff, but the point is that this is all pretty useless from a DFS perspective. He wasn’t even generating ground balls last year.

Raul Alacantara – It’s a small sample, but look at those Statcast batted ball rates.

A.J. Griffin

Jason Vargas

Derek Holland – Twins stack!!!

K/BB Chart

Pitcher and Opponent K% & BB% for titled splits, similar to the Main Chart.

K/BB Chart – Opponent

Batted Ball Chart

Pitcher and Opponent Batted Ball stats.

Batted Ball Charts – Opponent

K/SwStr Chart (2016 LG AVG – 20.2 K% – 9.5 SwStr% – 2.13 K/SwStr)

Getting called strikeouts can be a skill, but it’s usually not a sustainable one at a large deviation from the league rate (catcher framing and other factors may make some difference here). K% correlates heavily with SwStr% though. Look for a large difference and you might find a potential adjustment before anyone else.

There are no outliers outside of guys who threw fewer than 15 innings last season.

ERA Estimators Chart (2016 LG AVG – 4.34 ERA – 4.30 SIERA – 4.24 xFIP – 4.30 FIP)

How a pitcher’s ERA matches up against his defense independent estimators.

Of the night slate pitchers, most of the outliers were guys who over-shot already pretty awful estimators. In fact, there’s not a single guy (with more than a few innings) who beat his estimators last season.

BABIP & Statcast Chart (2016 LG AVG – .298 BABIP – 44.3 GB% – 20.9 LD% – 9.5 IFFB% – 87.2 Z-Contact%)

A few years back, both Dan Rosencheck and Steve Staude separately found that high Infield Fly Ball (IFFB) rates and low Zone Contact (Z-Contact) rates correlated well with lower BABIP for pitchers. I won’t pretend to know how much of the variation in BABIP can be explained by these factors, but since they seem to have some effect, here they are. See if you can use it to your advantage.

It’s presented as the difference between team and pitcher BABIP allowed because team defense can explain a lot of the variance from league average on its own. A pitcher with a much lower BABIP than his team allows is a red flag absent further supporting evidence, while a pitcher with a much higher BABIP than his team allows may have something to offer in the future, especially with the right indicators.

Again, among night slaters, the largest BABIP gap here is Luis Severino at 32 points. There’s really not much to see here other than the Statcast stuff.

Pitcher Notes & Summary

Here we rank pitchers by value tiers with their overall rank in parenthesis next to the name for the top five to ten. These are not hard and rigid rankings. Everything is fluid and can change depending on ever evolving situations throughout the day. This is the more opinionated part. If there are questions, it’ll help show you where my imaginary boundaries are drawn.

Value Tier One

There is no Tier One today. You’re all Tier One readers for playing today, for suffering through this article. Anyone who tortured themselves writing about this wretched pitching slate deserves a Tier One spot. The highlight is three freaking paragraphs about Shelby knuckle dragging (literally, he dragged his knuckles on pitches last year) Miller. Oh, there will be even worse days, but they’re generally going to be shorter slates.

Value Tier Two

Francisco Liriano (1) is surprisingly the most expensive pitcher on either site and he’s only $8K on FanDuel. No matter what you do, you’re going to be able to afford bats tonight. The upside is certainly there and he faces a team that strikes out a lot. There was definite improvement after his reunion with Martin last year.

Value Tier Three

Shelby Miller merited three paragraphs above. Okay, I’m not really sure he merited it, but he got because today is otherwise so uninteresting. It’s a tough matchup, even with a top half of the order bat benched, but I’m perfectly willing to give interesting a shot today and see what happens.

Mike Fiers is like green eggs and ham. I don’t want him, but then I look at the alternatives and realize there’s not much better available and he only costs $7.5K in a nice matchup.

Value Tier Four – These guys seem basically in line with their price tag. They are either barely usable and shouldn’t hurt you too much, but might not help you much either or have such a wide range of outcomes that you can’t see much benefit beyond the risk.

Matt Andriese has some upside at a low price, but a dangerous matchup.

Mike Leake is not a particularly bad pitcher, but his low strikeout rate usually makes him unusable for DFS purposes. The odds are in his favor for at least a quality start tonight, if not much else, at home in a nice spot at a low cost.

Amir Garrett can be used at a very low cost in a reasonable spot. He’s a fairly well thought of prospect, who might not yet be a finished product, but gets the benefit of not having been seen by the other team today. That’s often a thing that works in a debuting pitcher’s favor. That said, I don’t see much reason to need a pitcher priced this low today. Your likely able to afford any two pitchers you want on DraftKings.

You can find me on twitter @FreelanceBBall for any questions, comments, or insults.

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