Daily Pitcher Breakdown: Friday, July 31st

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

Editor’s Note: Clayton Kershaw has been scratched from his start tonight. Zack Greinke will start in his place.

Pitcher TM OPP IP ERA SIERA WHIP GEM% K% BB% HR/9 G/F
Farmer DET BAL 23 10.17 3.85 1.87 20.7% 8.1% 2.35 0.97
Chen BAL DET 307.1 3.28 3.85 1.19 31.6% 18.3% 4.8% 1.23 1.03
Perez ATL PHI 50 2.88 4.38 1.36 17.8% 10.8% 0.72 1.83
Buchanan PHI ATL 153.2 4.51 4.51 1.41 20.0% 13.4% 7.5% 0.82 1.58
Cueto KCR TOR 374.1 2.38 3.22 0.95 76.2% 24.5% 6.4% 0.79 1.27
Hutchison TOR KCR 292.2 4.83 3.69 1.35 31.6% 22.3% 7.4% 1.11 0.92
Locke PIT CIN 239.2 4.02 4.07 1.34 66.7% 16.9% 8.0% 0.86 1.87
Lorenzen CIN PIT 78.2 4.58 5.17 1.58 15.2% 12.6% 1.60 1.29
Gonzalez WAS NYM 264.1 3.68 3.54 1.29 46.7% 23.0% 8.6% 0.51 1.67
Harvey NYM WAS 125.1 3.16 3.45 1.09 23.0% 6.1% 1.15 1.14
Ramirez TBR BOS 166.2 4.43 4.15 1.29 27.3% 18.8% 8.5% 1.13 1.12
Rodriguez BOS TBR 61.1 4.26 3.94 1.19 20.6% 7.9% 1.17 1.11
Kennedy SDP MIA 297.1 3.93 3.55 1.30 47.6% 23.6% 7.8% 1.15 1.04
Phelps MIA SDP 213.1 4.13 4.24 1.35 42.9% 17.3% 8.0% 0.89 1.22
Bumgarner SFG TEX 348.1 3.05 3.05 1.09 47.6% 24.9% 4.9% 0.90 1.17
Martinez TEX SFG 246.1 4.35 5.02 1.45 27.3% 13.0% 8.7% 1.13 0.90
De La Rosa ARI HOU 227 4.48 3.89 1.37 57.1% 18.6% 7.3% 1.35 1.60
Feldman HOU ARI 253.2 3.97 4.29 1.31 47.1% 13.8% 6.3% 0.89 1.64
Walker SEA MIN 150.2 4.42 3.64 1.30 22.4% 7.5% 1.25 1.07
Milone MIN SEA 193.1 3.96 4.49 1.33 43.8% 15.4% 7.2% 1.35 1.00
Hammel CHC MIL 288.2 3.37 3.37 1.08 47.4% 23.1% 5.7% 1.09 1.00
Jungmann MIL CHC 59 2.14 3.84 1.05 19.8% 8.2% 0.31 1.75
Eovaldi NYY CHW 311.1 4.34 3.91 1.38 50.0% 16.6% 5.5% 0.64 1.55
Rodon CHW NYY 77 4.09 4.02 1.58 24.1% 12.8% 0.58 1.78
Kendrick COL STL 311.1 5.23 4.64 1.42 30.0% 13.2% 6.7% 1.45 1.19
Wacha STL COL 225.1 3.24 3.68 1.15 53.3% 20.7% 6.6% 0.64 1.34
Salazar CLE OAK 221.1 3.98 3.11 1.26 12.5% 27.0% 7.2% 1.14 1.01
Graveman OAK CLE 94 4.12 4.31 1.44 14.9% 7.8% 1.15 1.83
Santiago LAA LAD 245.2 3.11 4.13 1.26 16.7% 21.2% 8.8% 1.06 0.61
Kershaw LAD LAA 338.1 2.07 2.07 0.89 66.7% 32.7% 4.5% 0.53 1.89

ALL-IN:

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

Editor’s Note: Clayton Kershaw has been scratched from his start tonight. Zack Greinke will start in his place.

Clayton Kershaw LAD (vs. LAA) – Remember that 4.32 ERA that Kersh had back in May? Yeah, neither does he. Kershaw’s back to being the best pitcher on the planet, proving it with a near-maximum 26.0 innings of shutout baseball with an astounding 38 strikeouts against zero walks over his last three starts. He hasn’t struck out fewer than seven batters in any one of his last 13 turns, and eight of the 13 have featured double digits in his strikeout totals. Purchasing Kershaw will dent the salary cap by several thousand shekels, but there is no more trustworthy source of points tonight on either side of the ball.

Madison Bumgarner SF (at TEX) – The Ranger lineup takes a hit against southpaws, as the offense that has put up a .310 wOBA on the season slips down to a .293 when a lefty takes the hill, including a 669 OPS and a K rate of 23.1 percent. Bumgarner’s recent performance has been dotted with low K-counts and the occasional misstep (see his game at Washington on Independence Day), but he carries the upside of double-digit strikeouts and typically keeps runs off the board, including an ERA of 2.04 over his last three starts. He started the month with some short outings, failing to finish the sixth inning in his first three starts of July, but he got back on track in his last turn with 7.0 frames against the cross-bay A’s and could be in position to start a run for the stretch drive.

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.

Danny Salazar CLE (at OAK) – The A’s have been in an offensive funk for the past week, with just a .293 wOBA and 611 OPS as a team over the last seven days. Oakland keeps the strikeouts down with a 17-percent mark no matter how you slice it, but such elements hardly matter against a pitcher whose own 28.8-percent K rate is impervious to opponents. Salazar has struck out exactly eight batters in each of his last three starts, with a 2.11 ERA that includes his masterpiece against these A’s on July 10th, in which he fell one out shy of a complete game while surrendering just one run (unearned) and six baserunners. Oakland has a boom-or-bust offense, but recent trends suggest that they are more likely to bust than bust out tonight against Salazar.

Johnny Cueto KC (at TOR) – Today Cueto takes the mound for a club other than the Reds for the first time in his career, following 213 starts for Cincinnati and a remarkable ERA+ of 125 to show for his work. He has posted a sub-3.00 ERA in each of the past five seasons, and though stamina was once a perceived problem, Cueto’s 274.3 innings pitched since the start of 2014 have silenced that section of critics. The right-hander had a tumultuous run to end his Cincy tenure, following a shutout of the Nats with back-to-back disappointing outings, before he blanked the Rox for eight innings at altitude in his final start. One can understand if Cueto was a bit distracted by the swirling trade winds, and now he can focus on facing the most daunting offense in the game. He’s a high-risk play today due to the opponent, but that will also make him a low-own candidate who makes for an interesting contrarian target in GPP tournaments.

Matt Harvey NYM (vs. WAS) – The dominance that put Harvey on the map in 2013 and inspired so much optimism for the first two months of the season has disappeared. Harvey has a 4.08 ERA over his last 11 starts, covering 70.7 innings with just 60 strikeouts and 23 walks; it’s a decent line but nowhere near the ace-level of performance what his owners were expecting after he started the year with a sub-2.00 ERA and 56 Ks in his first 54.7 innings of the season. The velocity is still there – his average four-seamer by month has registered at 96.7-97.0-97.0-97.0 mph over the first four months of 2015 – but his pitch command has deserted him. Consider that in his last four turns Harvey has a combined 14 walks in 26.0 innings, yet he had totaled just 17 free passes in his first 99.3 innings of the campaign.

Michael Wacha STL (vs. COL) – Wacha had a very slow start to the season in the strikeout department, with just 19 K in his first 38.7 innings of work, and it seems those contact-heavy ways of April have been dragging down the perceptions surrounding the rest of his season. He has exactly a K-per-inning over his past 80 frames against 21 walks, easing any worries over his bat-missing skills, but the concern has shifted to his 3.84 ERA over that same span. The last three turns have been especially brutal, with Wacha surrendering 13 runs over 17.0 innings, and his owners are left wishing they could trade his handful of extra K’s for the run prevention that marked his first half-dozen starts of the season. He gets a Tulo-less Rockie club on the road, a combination that should theoretically limit the run-scoring in tonight’s contest.

Gio Gonzalez WAS (at NYM) – Gio has been a mess most of the season, but like two trains passing in the night his performance trend is headed in the opposite direction of the aforementioned Wacha. Gonzalez has a 1.45 ERA over his last five starts, and though the strikeouts are a bit modest with 24 whiffs over his last 31 frames (topping out at six in a ballgame), the string has also lopped a full run off of his ERA for the season. He limited the Mets to two runs over six innings in their last meeting (on July 20th), but New York has since made some trade modifications to the roster for the stretch run and the current lineup has added Kelly Johnson and Juan Uribe, while catcher Travis d’Arnaud has just been activated from the disabled list and could be in the lineup today.

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%
Farmer 0.501 12.00 0.409 8.18 0.252 0.734 0.400 6.05 0.343 63.86 20.7%
Chen 0.295 2.51 0.323 3.53 0.274 0.770 0.284 4.04 0.254 96.10 18.3%
Perez 0.346 5.06 0.283 1.26 0.245 0.661 0.289 4.33 0.245 73.09 17.8%
Buchanan 0.304 3.01 0.363 5.72 0.258 0.691 0.300 4.30 0.272 89.81 13.4%
Cueto 0.248 2.01 0.267 2.71 0.254 0.754 0.237 3.24 0.192 105.42 24.5%
Hutchison 0.340 5.72 0.318 3.77 0.274 0.744 0.315 3.90 0.26 94.19 22.3%
Locke 0.273 3.52 0.328 4.16 0.249 0.724 0.295 4.04 0.258 93.73 16.9%
Lorenzen 0.454 6.04 0.307 3.75 0.257 0.703 0.282 5.82 0.266 85.50 15.2%
Gonzalez 0.282 3.58 0.309 3.71 0.214 0.632 0.313 3.08 0.244 96.40 23.0%
Harvey 0.331 4.47 0.247 2.01 0.254 0.722 0.265 3.69 0.225 97.79 23.0%
Ramirez 0.302 3.92 0.344 5.12 0.262 0.722 0.279 4.49 0.244 67.97 18.8%
Rodriguez 0.329 4.97 0.292 4.07 0.253 0.740 0.265 4.14 0.23 90.27 20.6%
Kennedy 0.323 3.79 0.335 4.07 0.247 0.661 0.307 3.87 0.251 99.71 23.6%
Phelps 0.310 3.92 0.328 4.35 0.236 0.662 0.295 4.08 0.257 68.06 17.3%
Bumgarner 0.250 2.30 0.298 3.24 0.233 0.669 0.295 3.10 0.236 101.47 24.9%
Martinez 0.336 3.94 0.361 4.81 0.277 0.756 0.289 4.93 0.27 88.83 13.0%
De La Rosa 0.382 5.81 0.298 3.23 0.244 0.739 0.305 4.45 0.27 94.03 18.6%
Feldman 0.314 3.14 0.331 4.87 0.261 0.723 0.294 4.15 0.268 100.93 13.8%
Walker 0.315 3.84 0.335 5.25 0.251 0.705 0.303 4.14 0.253 86.61 22.4%
Milone 0.267 3.04 0.349 4.25 0.253 0.685 0.278 4.76 0.258 90.09 15.4%
Hammel 0.301 2.77 0.285 3.83 0.260 0.712 0.270 3.62 0.227 92.57 23.1%
Jungmann 0.300 1.98 0.246 2.27 0.233 0.678 0.258 3.22 0.208 100.44 19.8%
Eovaldi 0.348 4.40 0.297 4.27 0.249 0.679 0.332 3.39 0.285 95.64 16.6%
Rodon 0.267 4.07 0.363 4.10 0.245 0.742 0.349 3.62 0.263 90.13 24.1%
Kendrick 0.382 5.63 0.338 4.93 0.265 0.732 0.293 5.09 0.279 93.31 13.2%
Wacha 0.265 3.20 0.297 3.27 0.277 0.793 0.278 3.24 0.229 93.50 20.7%
Salazar 0.308 3.82 0.319 4.11 0.259 0.711 0.319 3.50 0.247 97.63 27.0%
Graveman 0.321 3.63 0.350 4.56 0.242 0.695 0.303 4.58 0.276 72.67 14.9%
Santiago 0.266 1.90 0.314 3.61 0.257 0.737 0.274 4.07 0.232 85.96 21.2%
Kershaw 0.238 1.87 0.240 2.13 0.248 0.712 0.285 1.93 0.198 101.68 32.7%

CALL:

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

Jason Hammel CHC (at MIL) – Hamel’s second-half fade last season is well-known, and that collapse has to be in the back of the minds of the Cubbie faithful after Hammel gave up six runs without finishing the fourth inning against the meager offense of the Phillies in his last start. The strikeouts have been off-base for the past month; consider that Hammel struck out six or more batters in 11 of his first 15 starts of the year, but that he has yet to clear that threshold since the flip of the calendar and has recorded just 13 total punchouts in July. Perhaps it’s just a blip on the radar and Cubs pitching coach Chris Bosio will be able to help Hammel to rediscover the performance of the first half, and tonight Hammel will take his turn against a Brewer offense that is sans Carlos Gomez.

Taijuan Walker SEA (at MIN) – Walker has been the one of most volatile pitchers in baseball this year, and his journey has followed zig-zag patterns of strength and weaknesses throughout the season. He was blown up in his first couple of turns, righted the ship for a pair, was summarily lit for nearly a month, and then went on a seven-start streak through June that included a 1.68 ERA in 48.3 innings. Now Walker is back on the downside of the zig, with an 8.02 ERA over his last four starts despite a K-to-walk count of 20-to-four, as six homers and three HBPs have undermined any semblance of command. Breaking down pitchers has been my job for ten years, but predicting the next zag in Walker’s performance might be better left to Miss Cleo.

Carlos Rodon CHW (vs. NYY) – If you want true outcomes, then this is the matchup for you. Rodon has registered a strikeout, walk, or home run allowed against 38.4 percent of the batters that he has faced this year. The homer rate is actually below average while the walks and strikeouts dominate his line, but tonight’s matchup with the Yankees could fuel a rise in all three ratios. The Yanks are second in baseball with a 3.5-percent homer rate and their 8.4-percent walk rate is third in the American League this season. Rodon’s southpaw advantage is also lost despite a New York ballclub that is stacked with lefty bats, as New York has managed an OPS that’s 14 points higher versus lefties as opposed to right-handed batters. The Yanks get their first look at Rodon, and though he is coming off a 20-out start with a line full of zeroes against Cleveland, the young southpaw is also one start removed from a seven-run disaster.

Hector Santiago LAA (at LAD) – When Santiago surrendered four runs against the Rangers in his last start, it was the most opponents to cross the plate in a single contest against the southpaw since June 3rd. The outing appeared to be more of a speed bump than a pothole of performance, and his last nine games (eight starts) are reflective of a man on fire: 51.3 innings of a 2.10 ERA and 52 strikeouts against 12 walks, and that includes his less than-than-stellar performance in his last turn. He’ll carry the platoon advantage tonight against the most dangerous Dodger bats, including Adrian Gonzalez and Joc Pederson, as Santiago helps the Angels to stake their claim as the team to beat in southern California.

Editor’s Note: Ian Kennedy was originally set to start but was then declared out. However, that has changed and Kennedy is back in as tonight’s starter.

Nathan Eovaldi NYY (at CHW)
Taylor Jungmann MIL (vs. CHC)
Drew Hutchison TOR (vs. KC)
Ian Kennedy SD (at MIA)
Eduardo Rodriguez BOS (vs. TB)
David Phelps MIA (vs. SD)
Kendall Graveman OAK (vs. CLE)
Erasmo Ramirez TB (at BOS)
Rubby De La Rosa ARI (at HOU)
Michael Lorenzen CIN (vs. PIT)
Williams Perez ATL (at PHI)
Scott Feldman HOU (vs. ARI)
Tommy Milone MIN (vs. SEA)
Wei-Yin Chen BAL (vs. DET)
Jeff Locke PIT (at CIN)

FOLD:

Run away. Do Not Pass Go. Do Not Collect $200. Consider stacking with opposing lineups.

Nick Martinez TEX (vs. SF)
David Buchanan PHI (vs. ATL)
Kyle Kendrick COL (at STL)
Buck Farmer DET (at BAL)

Starting Pitcher Salaries

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About the Author

DougThorburn
Doug Thorburn (DougThorburn)

Doug Thorburn’s work can be found elsewhere at Baseball Prospectus and Rotowire, and he is also the co-host of the Baseballholics Anonymous podcast. Thorburn’s expertise lies on the mound, where he tackles the world of pitching with an emphasis on mechanical evaluation. He spent five years at the National Pitching Association working under pitching coach Tom House, where Thorburn ran the hi-speed motion analysis program in addition to serving as an instructor. Thorburn and House wrote the 2009 book, “Arm Action, Arm Path, and the Perfect Pitch: Building a Million Dollar Arm,” using data from hi-speed motion analysis to tackle conventional wisdom in baseball.