Daily Pitcher Breakdown: Friday, August 21st

by Doug Thorburn (DougThorburn) Last Updated 2015-08-23 22:13:12

Welcome to the Daily Pitcher Breakdown, where we study the blueprints for each day’s matchups and dive into the details of each pitcher’s unique profile. We’ll lay all the cards on the table and let the strength of each hand determine whether we want to commit our chips. For each player, we consider opponents, splits, stuff, mechanics, and recent performance.

There will also be a contingent of the starters that you can ignore each day. They offer no discernible upside, so they aren’t worth your time. Because it is baseball and a 162-game season, there are going to be times when guys from the ignore group go off, but we’re dealing with probabilities in the daily game, so the goal is to give yourself the best odds for success, not find the needle in the proverbial haystack that finally doesn’t poke you.

LEGEND
Stats Shown in Red Are BELOW AVERAGE
Stats Shown in Yellow are AVERAGE
Stats Shown in Green Are ABOVE AVERAGE
Stats Shown in Blue Are ELITE

Daily Pitcher Chart

Pitcher	TM	OPP	IP	ERA	SIERA	WHIP	GEM%	K%	BB%	HR/9	G/F
Miller	ATL	CHC	335	3.14	4.31	1.22	21.1%	18.4%	9.0%	0.81	1.18
Hendricks	CHC	ATL	211.2	3.40	3.72	1.16		18.3%	5.2%	0.72	1.63
Nelson	MIL	WAS	219	4.03	3.83	1.29		19.8%	7.4%	0.86	1.60
Gonzalez	WAS	MIL	284.2	3.70	3.60	1.31	46.7%	22.9%	8.6%	0.47	1.63
Milone	MIN	BAL	204.1	3.96	4.51	1.35	43.8%	15.3%	7.1%	1.32	1.04
Chen	BAL	MIN	329	3.39	3.85	1.20	31.6%	18.7%	4.9%	1.29	1.03
Carrasco	CLE	NYY	285.1	3.12	2.71	1.03		26.8%	5.3%	0.66	1.80
Tanaka	NYY	CLE	245	3.12	2.96	1.04	66.7%	24.8%	4.4%	1.21	1.47
Bumgarner	SFG	PIT	380.2	2.98	2.95	1.07	47.6%	25.8%	4.6%	0.87	1.20
Locke	PIT	SFG	260.2	4.11	4.13	1.34	66.7%	17.0%	8.1%	0.93	1.84
Lewis	TEX	DET	322.2	4.85	4.18	1.36	11.8%	17.7%	5.5%	1.28	0.75
Verlander	DET	TEX	276	4.43	4.18	1.35	35.0%	18.0%	6.9%	0.91	0.89
Cueto	KCR	BOS	404.1	2.34	3.28	0.95	76.2%	24.1%	6.2%	0.76	1.25
Owens	BOS	KCR	16	6.19	3.88	1.50		23.9%	8.5%	1.69	0.61
Eickhoff	PHI	MIA
Flores	MIA	PHI
De La Rosa	ARI	CIN	251	4.41	4.04	1.38	57.1%	18.1%	7.5%	1.33	1.55
Holmberg	CIN	ARI	49.2	5.26	5.53	1.49		13.3%	12.9%	2.36	0.88
Anderson	LAD	HOU	178	3.34	3.48	1.33	20.0%	16.1%	6.9%	0.66	3.30
Fiers	HOU	LAD	206.2	3.27	3.49	1.19		24.8%	7.7%	1.00	0.89
Colon	NYM	COL	343.2	4.29	3.80	1.24	42.1%	17.7%	3.2%	1.07	1.02
Gray	COL	NYM	15	2.40	3.55	0.93		23.7%	6.8%	0.60	1.00
Price	TOR	LAA	416.2	2.92	2.97	1.08	52.4%	25.6%	4.3%	0.84	1.06
Santiago	LAA	TOR	269	3.28	4.18	1.25	16.7%	21.0%	8.5%	1.14	0.61
Smyly	TBR	OAK	173.2	3.37	3.58	1.15	50.0%	22.5%	6.7%	1.24	0.84
Bassitt	OAK	TBR	92	3.03	4.17	1.20		18.6%	7.9%	0.49	1.04
Sale	CHW	SEA	331.1	2.72	2.48	1.00	64.3%	31.5%	5.4%	0.73	1.08
Hernandez	SEA	CHW	389	2.73	2.79	1.03	81.0%	25.6%	5.8%	0.74	2.16
Lackey	STL	SDP	357.2	3.40	3.83	1.24	57.9%	18.8%	5.7%	0.96	1.27
Cashner	SDP	STL	262.2	3.43	3.84	1.25	75.0%	18.9%	6.5%	0.79	1.50

ALL-IN:

The aces that are worth pushing all of the chips into the middle of the table.

Madison Bumgarner SF (at PIT) – Speaking of shaking off a rough patch, Bumgarner has been virtually unhittable in the three games since he took a six-spot on the chin against the Rangers to finish off July. In his latest trio of turns, Bummer has thrown 25.3 innings – including consecutive complete games – with a 0.71 ERA, 15 hits allowed and 35 strikeouts against one walk. His most recent outing was the most brilliant of them all, with nine shutout innings of three-hit baseball, including the walk and 14 strikeouts; the outing brought his season ERA below 3.00 for the first time since the end of June.

Chris Sale CHW (at SEA) – Pull up a seat, because we get treated to Sale vs. the King tonight. The latter half of that equation has not been holding up his end of the bargain (more on that later), but Sale’s last start – zero runs, three baserunners, and 15 K’s – announced with authority that the lanky left-hander had shaken off his back-to-back outings of seven earnies apiece that derailed his track for the AL Cy Young Award. It’s not over yet, as Sale’s league-leading total of 208 strikeouts has already matched his total of last season (and done so in 16.7 fewer innings), putting the Condor well on his way to a career-high in the K category (the current mark is 226 strikeouts). He hasn’t posted less than a half-dozen strikeouts in any game since April, giving Sale the buffer to survive a few runs crossing the plate.

David Price TOR (at LAA) – Price completes the lefty trifecta at the top of today’s elite pitcher list, a circumstance only made possible by the recent fall from grace of King Felix Hernandez. Price seems to like his new Blue Jay colors, with a 1.61 ERA through first three starts for Toronto, including 24 strikeouts and five walks in 22.3 innings of work. The Angels will be a welcome sight after his back-to-back start with the Yankees, particularly with the big cog in the Halo machine, Mike Trout, experiencing a rare rough stretch at the plate. Albert Pujols has hit three homers in five games, but with nobody getting on-base in front of him, Pujols has been stuck with solo blasts.

RAISE:

The value plays, next-tier players that can compete with the aces on any given gameday but who probably won’t cost an arm and a glove.

Felix Hernandez SEA (vs. CHW) – The King is coming off of a nightmare start, and though his mistakes were magnified due to the opponent’s table getting set by well-placed grounders, he has been off-track from the dominant pitcher of the last couple seasons. Most of the hits off of Hernandez in his last start were softly-hit knocks on good pitches that found pasture, but his big mistakes were legitimate, with elevated pitches that were left over the middle of the plate, ready to be deposited into the seats. The lack of command only impacted a handful of pitches, but that created much greater scoring opportunities against a pitcher who rarely makes mistakes of pitch location, such that opposing lineups rarely see a game that features that many miscues from the King. He has been a bit off lately, as an elevated home run rate and increased walk rate will attest, and Felix hasn’t had a high-impact game in quite awhile; his highest output on DraftKings in the past 10 games was 27.6 pts (done twice), and he only crossed the 20-point threshold in half of those turns. Things have been particularly bad in his last four starts, three of which have involved a dozen or more baserunners and four or more runs allowed. To try and get back on track, Hernandez draws a meeting with the White Sox, whose offensive performance of the last seven days – a .283 wOBA and 638 OPS – is even worse than the season-long numbers that have produced the fewest runs scored in the American League.

Johnny Cueto KC (at BOS) – Facing the Red Sox is a daunting task for any pitcher, as the Bostonians have been scoring in bunches lately. Even if we lop off the 37 runs that they scored in a two-game span against Mariners and look only at their last five contests, the Sox have still scored 29 runs in that stretch and taken studs like Corey Kluber for a painful ride. Cueto will likely be unfazed, having zipped through the formidable offenses of the Blue Jays and Tigers (twice) among his first few starts for KC, so he might be just the right man for the job of slamming the brakes on the Boston run-scoring train.

Carlos Carrasco CLE (at NYY) – The Yankees are bludgeoning opponents this year, knocking 162 homers (tied for the second-most homers in MLB) and scoring 4.78 runs per game (second in MLB), and the top-end offense has been necessary for the Yankees to stay in playoff contention due to a leaky pitching staff. Carrasco’s peripherals far out-pace his run-prevention numbers, with 162 strikeouts and just 31 walks in 151.3 innings, yet a 3.63 ERA to show for his efforts this season. Things looked much worse a month ago, but since then he has rattled off four consecutive starts with seven or more innings pitched and no more than two runs allowed, a stretch that has lopped more than half of a run off of his ERA.

Masahiro Tanaka NYY (vs. CLE) – One thing’s for sure: Tanaka will give you innings, and he’ll do so efficiently. He has tossed 6.0 or more innings in eight straight turns, seven of which met the run-prevention requirements of a quality start, but there has been a distinct lack of dominance this season from a pitcher who reeked of it in 2014. That said, he is coming off what was arguably his best game of the year, a complete game against the mighty Jays with just one run allowed and eight punchouts on the day. It was his second solid outing in a row against Toronto, and today’s opponent will feel like a cakewalk in comparison.

John Lackey STL (at SD) – Lackey lacks the upside of the other pitchers in the Raise group, but his security is a virtue on a day like today where so many great pitchers have contextual variables that cloud their value. Lackey has now thrown 12 quality starts in a row, only two of which involved as many as three runs crossing the plate, and today he gets to face a Padres lineup that couldn’t get to the candy if they were hacking at a piñata.

Pitcher Advanced Stats and Stats Against

Pitcher	wOBA vs L	ERA vs L	wOBA vs R	ERA vs R	AVG	OPS	BABIP	FIP	AVG-A	Pit/G	Strk%
Miller	0.312	3.55	0.274	2.80	0.239	0.701	0.261	3.94	0.226	93.20	18.4%
Hendricks	0.311	2.92	0.281	3.80	0.258	0.688	0.290	3.45	0.248	88.81	18.3%
Nelson	0.361	4.84	0.278	3.38	0.248	0.711	0.301	3.88	0.253	89.24	19.8%
Gonzalez	0.285	3.76	0.309	3.68	0.220	0.644	0.318	3.04	0.247	96.33	22.9%
Milone	0.261	3.28	0.352	4.18	0.266	0.730	0.281	4.72	0.261	89.65	15.3%
Chen	0.293	2.48	0.329	3.69	0.254	0.708	0.287	4.11	0.256	96.15	18.7%
Carrasco	0.251	2.87	0.278	3.35	0.252	0.744	0.288	2.67	0.22	65.73	26.8%
Tanaka	0.279	2.85	0.299	3.40	0.251	0.713	0.273	3.48	0.228	97.59	24.8%
Bumgarner	0.251	2.14	0.291	3.19	0.256	0.705	0.295	2.97	0.233	101.91	25.8%
Locke	0.298	4.19	0.321	4.09	0.264	0.698	0.292	4.17	0.256	93.09	17.0%
Lewis	0.350	4.71	0.328	5.04	0.272	0.750	0.314	4.30	0.279	96.96	17.7%
Verlander	0.300	3.31	0.358	5.93	0.262	0.744	0.307	3.87	0.265	105.91	18.0%
Cueto	0.243	1.96	0.271	2.68	0.261	0.722	0.239	3.21	0.194	105.70	24.1%
Owens	0.338	9.82	0.365	5.11	0.269	0.711	0.333	4.54	0.277	93.00	23.9%
Eickhoff					0.248	0.659
Flores	0.412	3.38	0.223	1.80	0.249	0.673
De La Rosa	0.383	5.66	0.297	3.22	0.248	0.701	0.303	4.50	0.27	94.35	18.1%
Holmberg	0.393	4.76	0.368	5.40	0.263	0.729	0.219	7.49	0.238	78.82	13.3%
Anderson	0.307	3.96	0.311	3.08	0.240	0.723	0.311	3.62	0.27	87.55	16.1%
Fiers	0.286	3.17	0.303	3.35	0.256	0.763	0.285	3.54	0.229	90.00	24.8%
Colon	0.310	4.18	0.324	4.41	0.276	0.789	0.310	3.65	0.273	92.69	17.7%
Gray	0.205	1.17	0.252	3.68	0.238	0.678	0.225	2.91	0.182	73.67	23.7%
Price	0.287	2.64	0.281	3.01	0.232	0.673	0.300	2.84	0.236	108.48	25.6%
Santiago	0.265	1.95	0.315	3.78	0.283	0.821	0.272	4.19	0.232	86.54	21.0%
Smyly	0.216	2.45	0.337	3.75	0.245	0.678	0.273	3.94	0.234	92.03	22.5%
Bassitt	0.303	3.06	0.279	3.00	0.242	0.681	0.281	3.55	0.233	79.63	18.6%
Sale	0.234	1.58	0.271	2.95	0.259	0.706	0.298	2.49	0.212	106.92	31.5%
Hernandez	0.267	2.44	0.267	3.09	0.252	0.698	0.276	2.94	0.216	99.31	25.6%
Lackey	0.312	3.06	0.304	3.73	0.245	0.685	0.295	3.69	0.255	97.55	18.8%
Cashner	0.343	4.56	0.271	2.47	0.259	0.719	0.294	3.55	0.25	96.50	18.9%

CALL:

Long-shot plays that could hit it big but carry considerable risk of blow-up.

Gio Gonzalez WAS (vs. MIL) – Well, Gio was on a run. He had a stretch of eight starts with a 1.48 ERA but that run was book-ended by a couple of disaster outings, the latest of which being six runs allowed to the Giants before the third inning was completed. The Brewers have emptied the roster of short-term assets, trimming the fear factor from a lineup that once decimated southpaws, and Gonzalez might just need to dodge Ryan Braun in order to coast through tonight’s game.

Jimmy Nelson MIL (at WAS) – The Nats’ offense has been atrocious this season, undermining a roster that looked prime to contend (at least on paper) entering the campaign. Key players that were out with injuries are now back in the lineup, but they are mostly playing like they are still injured. Even Bryce Harper has cooled off a bit, with one homer and a modest 815 OPS over his last 19 games. Meanwhile, Nelson has taken his game up a notch, with a 1.57 ERA over his last five starts, including 31 strikeouts against nine walks in 34.7 innings.

Justin Verlander DET (vs. TEX) – Verlander has been pitching well lately, and against tough offenses to boot. He has pitched at least six frames while allowing no more than one run in four of his last five starts, shutting down the offenses of the Astros, Rays, and Red Sox (twice). Rostering Verlander takes steel cajones, but there is profit potential here if one is willing to stomach the risk of implosion.

Andrew Cashner SD (vs. STL) – He’s good, but not that good. The prices of Cardinals batters have been overly deflated against Cashner today, creating a stacking opportunity against a pitcher with a penchant for the disaster inning.

Mike Fiers HOU (vs. LAD)

Wei-Yin Chen BAL (vs. MIN)

Brett Anderson LAD (at HOU)

Drew Smyly TB (at OAK)

Hector Santiago LAA (vs. TOR)

Henry Owens BOS (vs. KC)

Tommy Milone MIN (at BAL)

Rubby de la Rosa ARI (at CIN)

Chris Bassitt OAK (vs, TB)

Kendry Flores MIA (vs. PHI)

Jon Gray COL (vs. NYM)

Jeff Locke PIT (vs. SF)