Advanced Stats - Pitching: Tuesday, May 3rd

by Matt Trollo (MTro86) Last Updated 2016-05-04 03:30:06

I wish I could tell you it was a lot better today after the two top priced pitchers failed miserably. There’s Arrieta at least. And Harvey looked batter in his last start. Then maybe a lefty or two with some upside. It’s still pretty rough though and I know that’s really been the theme so far this year, over-valued pitching, but you have to play with the pitchers and pricing you’re dealt. Tuesday’s a near full slate. Skipping the odd 6pm ET start that most DFS sites are omitting anyway leaves us with 14 to cover, so we’ll try to be less wordy where we don’t have to be today.

I wanted to mention again that league averages (for starting pitchers) in some of the headers were updated yesterday and there are a couple of interesting notes through April of 2016 compared to last season. First, HR/FB is up a full point from last year to 11.8% this month. Strikeout rates continue to climb, up from 19.5% in 2015 to 20.6% the first month of this season, though SwStr has only climbed from 9.3% to 9.4%. League average Z-Contact for starting pitchers has dropped from 87.7% to 86.6%. This is because batters are swinging overall much less (46.6% to 44.9%).

Changes for 2016 were outlined on Opening Day, which you can find here.

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.

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 2015 season. Opp team offensive stats are wRC+.

Aaron Nola has a 3.55 ERA, but has simply been blowing away expectations in Philadelphia outside one bad start. In four of his five starts, he’s pitched seven innings with at least seven strikeouts and now has an 18.0 K-BB% in his short career. He’s getting a lot of weak contact this year as well (-2.4 Hard-Soft%). The one warning I would give is that he’s done this against several poor offenses vs RHP (WAS 2x, MIL, SDP, CIN). The Cardinals are an incredibly tough offense vs RHP (15.2 HR/FB, 14.0 Hard-Soft%) and have been torching baseballs in a park that’s supposed to be one of the toughest on power (13.4 HR/FB at home), so I wouldn’t expect him to dominate this lineup as well as he has some weaker ones, but that doesn’t mean he won’t pitch well.

Chris Young has had a 9.7 SwStr% or better in all five starts this year and has struck out 16 of his last 44 batters. The end results haven’t been exactly what he’s been looking for because he’s allowed six HRs, but he’s throwing over a mph harder and has started just two games at home. He’s doing the opposite of what he usually does and while it’s been real life baseball worse so far, it might end up being better for his daily fantasy production. Eno talked to him recently about throwing his slider more frequently this year. Additionally, the Nationals have been terrible against RHP and just plain terrible overall offensively over the last week.

Hisashi Iwakuma struck out a season high seven Astros in his last start, but he still had a below average SwStr% against a team that swings and misses a lot. It’s now the fourth time in five games he has done so. He’s also allowed four HRs over his last three starts now. While I’m no longer confident his current skillset consisting of a below average K% with too many HRs allows him to be a consistent quality daily fantasy asset, there are still times when we can pick our spots with him and this one is interesting due to the park and opponent. Oakland is a below average offense with about average power in a tough park with a lot of foul ground. Iwakuma has been allowing more contact in the air, which is even worse for his HR issues, but he already has seven popups (just eight all of last year). Popups are free outs and just as good as strikeouts in real baseball, but a little less so in daily fantasy.

Jake Arrieta is our savior today. He’s allowed four total runs on the season and three of them in one start, going at least seven innings four times. He’s walked eight of his last 50 while striking out 12 and has out exactly six in four of his five starts. Wait a minute. He’s pitching well, but not really as well as last season and has a 4.63 SIERA over his last two starts. He’s still today’s top opponent independent pitcher, but is he worth much more than his asking price against a quality offense? If he’s having control issues, the Pirates will only exacerbate them (10.5 BB%).

Jeff Samardzija has continued to be very mediocre, striking out five to seven batters four times and going at least 5.1 innings in all five starts with varying overall results. His K and BB rates are both just a bit less than the league average and all of this is really a lot better than last season. In fact, his 1.62 GB/FB matches his previous two seasons after being fly ball heavier (0.98 GB/FB) last year with much weaker contact this year too (5.6 decrease in Hard%). The Reds really roughed up an old friend last night, but are still one of the worst offenses in baseball. This matchup may not be the Padres or Braves level of great, but its right up there in the next tier in favor of the pitcher.

Jose Quintana has handled recent difficult spots very well, shutting out Toronto for six innings last time out with 10 strikeouts. It’s difficult to say he takes a back seat to anybody on that staff right now. He is allowing a bit more hard contact in the air though (1.07 GB/FB, 34.6 Hard%) and that’s really the most troubling thing as far as tonight is concerned. The Red Sox are a very good offense that has struggled against LHP so far with a strikeout rate (25.4%) that nearly matches Quintana’s on the season and just a 3.7 HR/FB, but I don’t know that we can expect them to continue on this poorly with some good right handed hitters up top. In fact, they’ve been the hottest offense overall in baseball over the last week and it would be difficult to call them any better than a neutral matchup even given their great struggles against LHP.

Matt Harvey looked like his old self for the first time in his last start. His velocity was back up to 95 mph and his pitches were crisp and well located as he struck out seven of 26 Reds. It wasn’t a quality opponent and he still hasn’t gone past six innings yet, but he shut down the Braves for five innings without quality stuff two weeks back. The Braves have a 2.0 HR/FB on the road and 2.2 HR/FB vs RHP with a 3.9 Hard-Soft%. Harvey has always pitched better at home and has one of the lowest exit velocities in the league this year (84.46 mph). This is the top matchup on the board in one of the lowest run environments in baseball.

Matt Moore has been dominant in his last two home starts (with one mediocre start in NY(AL) thrown in), striking out 19 of 51 batters. Just as importantly, he’s cut his walk rate (5.4%) in half this season without more than two in any start. Remember that this was once a prospect who rated alongside Mike Trout and Bryce Harper. Unfortunately, the only time I was heavily on him was his lone road start, which was just okay, but he’s pitched into the seventh inning in each of his last four starts and faces the coldest offense in the majors in a park that favors him. The one concern would be a 34.1 Hard% and 13.8 HR/FB so far. Those are both higher than his career rates, but so is his K% and it could all be tied to the fact that he’s throwing more strikes. The Dodgers should be good, but they’re not. They have just a 4.3 HR/FB and 4.4 Hard-Soft% over the last week.

NOT AS GOOD AS THEY LOOK

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 (.297 BABIP – 72.5 LOB% – 11.8 HR/FB)

Nicholas Tropeano (.349 BABIP – 88.6 LOB% – 3.6 HR/FB) is someone I thought I’d have more interest in solely based on his enormous SwStr% and K potential against an offense that whiffs 25.4% of the time vs RHP, but a couple of things appear during closer examination. First are those ridiculous numbers you see and since that BABIP isn’t coming from a high lined drive rate, it must be coming from a 21.8 Hard-Soft% with 53.2% of batted balls in the air. That’s the 2nd highest fly ball rate in the majors and since they’re not leaving the park, they must be finding grass. He’s also walking 10.6% of his batters, but stranding 88.6%? Lastly, the Brewers haven’t been that bad and don’t even really rate as a favorable matchup once you take a very hitter and power friendly park into consideration. The 21.3 K% with potential for even more in his SwStr% is great, but this is a scary spot for all of the other tendencies he’s shown.

Steven Wright (.254 BABIP – 82.3 LOB% – 4.0 HR/FB) looked great with an above average K% against the Braves at a low cost last time out. His cost has now increased (significantly on FanDuel) and he’s in a more neutral matchup against a hot offense. While I’m willing to buy the low BABIP with a knuckleballer, not the other stuff (LOB%, HR/FB) and he’s walking 9.9% of batters.

Marco Estrada (.319 BABIP – 79.1 LOB% – 3.1 HR/FB) has a career 10.9 HR/FB. Last year he used a BABIP 100 points lower to perform magic tricks. This year it’s HRs. His SwStr% is down for the fourth consecutive year and actually below league average for the first time in his career, yet his K% is 2.6 points higher than his career rate.

Tanner Roark (.277 BABIP – 79.2 LOB% – 4.8 HR/FB) is another pitcher priced much higher on FanDuel. DraftKings would seem to have it right here. The one thing that did surprise me is that he has at least an 8.0 SwStr% in four of five starts, but I still have to call BS on his current K% with half of his strikeouts coming in one start. He faces an offense with a 19.1 K% vs RHP and that’s considered much higher than expected.

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

Collin McHugh had me babbling for a long paragraph last time out because I just couldn’t figure out why he was doing as poorly as he was. The BABIP still has a long way to regress from .420 and he’s getting a ton of weak contact, but he missed just two bats in his last start and has only had a SwStr% above 8.8 once. He’s also only gone more than 5.1 innings once and still has an $8K price tag for some reason.

Scott Kazmir finally pitched well in his last start. It’s been speculated that he’d been dealing with a lingering thumb injury and the velocity has ticked back up to his previous levels over his last few starts, while he’s also had a SwStr above 9% in his last two starts. His 84.0 mph aEV is the lowest on the slate and 7h lowest in the league (30 batted min.). In fact, if his cost hadn’t remained so high throughout this, I’d probably be willing to consider him at something close to an average price. He’s a bit higher than that and the Rays have been one of the tougher offenses against LHP over the last two years. They strike out less and hit for more power against lefties.

Michael Wacha struck out zero Padres and then nine Diamondbacks. Which guy is he? His 7.7 SwStr% is by far a career low, though he’s retained his nearly career average K%. That’s not impossible with a great framer and he might be able to continue to suppress HRs at home because it’s a great park. I just don’t know what type of performance we’re going to get from him from start to start and can’t say its likely to be worth more than $9K from a skill set standpoint. His peripherals and contact authority are just about league average. He is in a good spot, but you’re really just paying for the park and hoping for strikeouts. Two-thirds of his Ks have come in just two of his five starts. I’m not saying he won’t pitch well, but there’s a decent chance he underwhelms.

Chris Tillman actually seems to show up sometimes, but you just never seem to know when. He pitched a season high 6.2 innings in his last start, striking out nine Rays with just four base runners. He allowed eight runs, striking out five in the previous two combined. The Yankees look bad right now, but they’ve still got a few guys who can take an inconsistent fly ball pitcher deep in Baltimore (14.5 HR/FB vs RHP). Circumstances make it seem like he might be close to an average break even proposition on DraftKings for over $1K less than on FanDuel.

Sonny Gray has been very mediocre and his defense stinks. He’s missing even fewer bats than last year, a below average rate, and yet his K% has slightly increased? Seattle has been one of the better offenses in the league.

Alex Meyer has walked four and struck out four of the 24 major league batters he’s faced, allowing two HRs between this and last year. He’s been dominant in his only two minor league starts this year, striking out 15 of 48 batters. He’s had control issues and was written up in the fangraphs pre-season prospect rankings (8th in the organization) with the thought that he was a potential future closer after being moved to the bullpen last year. It appears they’ve changed their minds? He throws gas, but doesn’t appear to have a third pitch behind that and a knuckle-curve. The Astros have regressed as an entire team and are back to striking out a ton this year, but they can still hit straight fastballs a long way, especially when they know they are coming. It wouldn’t take much for him to exceed his cost and the Houston bats have been cold, so I don’t want to talk you’ve seen more, but I really don’t have anything positive on him aside from two minor league starts last month. This is admittedly a spot where my information is limited though.

Eddie Butler struck out four of the nine batters he faced in a relief outing last week, but wasn’t generating any strikeouts in his minor league starts leading up to it, very similar to his major league and minor league performances in recent years. He has an 11.2 career K% and a BB% to almost match in 97.2 major league innings now. The Padres are so bad that he could luck into a quality start, but that’s likely to be done almost entirely through ground balls hit right at Arenado.

Andrew Cashner has only gone even six innings twice and hasn’t struck out more than five in a start. His SwStr hasn’t exceed 4% in three straight starts. His walk rate is a career high 9.4%. Something’s different here, but I don’t have the time to go into changes in his pitches or arsenal as it probably wouldn’t change his short term prognosis for today anyway.

Jon Niese

Luis Severino has, by far, the toughest matchup on the board in Baltimore.

Patrick Corbin has been much less than I thought he could be with a plummeting strikeout rate and the Marlins have been tough on LHP, though some of the information conflicts (21.7 Hard-Soft%, 0.0 Hard-Soft%).

Martin Perez

Matt Wisler

Justin Nicolino shut out the Dodgers for seven innings, striking out two of 25 batters on four swinging strikes in his only major league start this year. He now has a career 0.9 K-BB% in just over 80 innings.

Junior Guerra is a 31 year old minor league journeyman who has four major league innings to resume, all last June in relief.

Jon Moscot

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 (2015 LG AVG – 20.6 K% – 9.4 SwStr% – 2.19 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.

Jose Quintana has increased his SwStr% slightly, but still sits at league average. Really, aside from his last start, the other were pretty much in line. In fact, he generated 10 strikeouts with just seven swinging strikes last time out. His K% has been right around league average the last three years and that’s probably what we should expect again.

Matt Harvey has encouragingly had a double digit SwStr% in each of his last two starts and if this trend continues, his K% should skyrocket into the mid-20s.

ERA Estimators Chart (2015 LG AVG – 4.10 ERA – 4.05 SIERA – 4.00 xFIP – 4.00 FIP)

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

Aaron Nola has a strange situation with both a low BABIP and strand rate (64.5%). He’s inducing a lot of weak contact and missing bats in the zone at an elite rate so far, but I want to see what happens when he starts facing tougher offenses, starting tonight.

Chris Young has a .300 BABIP this year, 91 points higher than last season and 52 points higher than his career rate. His 16.7 HR/FB is more than double his career 8.2 mark, while his 69.9 LOB% is 5.6 points below his career level. This is what happens when you start throwing your slider more often than your fastball maybe (51.8%/47.2%)? He’s got nothing for lefties (.410 wOBA this year), but the Nationals only have two of those to really worry about.

Jake Arrieta has a .269 BABIP, but his .188 mark is 58 points below his mark even last year. He’s stranding 95.2% of his runners. His ERA estimators are a half a run higher than they were last year. This is still an All-Star quality pitcher, but we may have to take a step back on our expectations here and obviously, anyone who reads an article on advanced stats realizes how immaculately you’d have to be pitching to be expected to sustain a 1.00 ERA and it’s not a 17.1 K-BB%.

Jose Quintana has had a BABIP well above .300 each of the last two years, though his 82.4 LOB% is a little higher this season so far. He has also shown some HR suppression skills with an 8.2 HR/FB for his career that we should probably take seriously after 774 innings, but he has yet to allow one yet this year. This is a quality pitcher, but again, not a one and a half ERA talent obviously.

BABIP Chart (2016 LG AVG – .297 BABIP – 21.0 LD% – 9.2 IFFB% – 86.6 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.

Hisashi Iwakuma – His issue has always been HRs, not BABIP (.274 career). Allowing more contact in the air, but not necessarily harder contact and a high popup rate would seem like it would either decrease or hold his BABIP steady, but that doesn’t seem to be the case so far. Of course more balls in play means more hits, but not always a higher rate. He seems ripe for regression, but the one issue I can see here is a very high zone contact rate, well above his career norm (89.1%).

Matt Harvey is generating a ton of weak contact by exit velocity and a -3.2 Hard-Soft%. He does have a high LD rate, but many of those aren’t hard liners. His defense also needs to turn some batted balls into outs. Their starting infield has a combined -18 Defensive Runs Saved at this point with Duda’s -2 the top mark. It’s getting a little old hearing the team announcers singing the praises of “(player-popup)Asdrubal Cabrera”:/players/asdrubal-cabrera-10483’s “great” defense. He can still catch the ball, but your infield has NO RANGE!

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 changed 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.

I can’t say I’m entirely confident in the group I’ve kept below here or the group I’ve abandoned above. In fact, with price decreases about $500 to $1K there and increases of that amount here, it might look like a much different list. If you never pay attention to this part of the article, good for you, and you probably shouldn’t today. It’s the least accurate part. If you normally like reading this section, be extra cautious of my guesses today and put more weight on the facts above in forming your own opinions. Lineups, weather, and umpires might mean even more today outside the top few cases.

Value Tier One

Matt Harvey (1) is starting to look like himself and has a great matchup at a cost much less than a pitcher of his caliber meeting expectations would normally cost. That said, value has been incredibly difficult to find this season on the whole so far and he would have probably been a tier lower last year because it was just one start and he still does carry some risk.

Value Tier Two

Matt Moore (3) has shown as much upside this year as any pitcher on the board tonight and he what should be a quality opponent, but they’ve been struggling beyond comprehension. While none of these pitchers inspire complete confidence at current prices, I unexpectedly have more confidence in him now than most.

Aaron Nola (4) has been dominant against lesser teams and faces his first real test today. I wouldn’t expect him to do the same, but he there’s still a good chance of him pitching well at a cost just below the upper echelons. I’ll at least say that he’s shown much more than some other pretenders in his price range tonight.

Value Tier Three

Hisashi Iwakuma – We’re likely seeing a rather quick and steep decline phase here, but he’s not entirely useless yet. He’s in a great park at a decreased price and should be able to get in six or seven innings without too much damage due to his still above average control, although that seems to be declining as well.

Jose Quintana (5) is a talented pitcher that is pitching at the level of a superstar right now, though he’s not that good. The Red Sox are under-performing against LHP, but red hot overall. This is a difficult situation to evaluate, but he doesn’t cost too much and needs to be considered on another difficult night.

Value Tier Four – These guys seem basically in line with their price tag. They are either 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.

Jake Arrieta (2) costs $12.1K on both major sites. He sits in Tier Four because it’s incredibly difficult to be worth more than that. That’s an expectation of at least 25 DK points and he’s facing a patient and talented offense. The way he’s pitched this year and especially recently does not indicate he’s worth much more than that and that’s not a slight on him as he’s probably the top overall pitcher in a neutral matchup. The point is, that’s a large chunk of your available salary for a guy with ERA estimators around three.

Chris Young – His new sliders over 50% of the time is not really working from a run prevention standpoint because it’s resulted in six HRs (he allowed 16 all of last year), but he’s going out with his slider because he wants to be a strikeout pitcher before he dies. The good news is he’s low cost in a big park against a team full of RHBs that can’t seem to hit RHP. He can probably be worth a $5-6K cost, although who knows what kind of upside his new approach has after that? This is my low cost, low projected ownership, upside play today. Yup, I told you to be cautious.

Jeff Samardzija has been about average this year for his new team, which is actually a sigh of relief from his new employers considering what he did last year. He’s priced a bit high for that, but adequately when considering his opponent.

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

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