Daily Pitcher Breakdown: Monday, September 14th

by Doug Thorburn (DougThorburn) Last Updated 2015-09-15 17:21:08

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
Rodriguez	BOS	BAL	104.1	4.05	4.22	1.27		18.0%	7.0%	1.04	1.32
Gausman	BAL	BOS	200.2	3.95	3.98	1.29	37.5%	19.2%	7.0%	0.99	1.14
Zimmermann	WAS	PHI	378.1	2.97	3.48	1.13	52.6%	21.2%	4.1%	0.76	1.14
Nola	PHI	WAS	60.2	3.56	3.83	1.14		20.6%	6.1%	1.19	1.25
Volquez	KCR	CLE	368	3.25	4.28	1.25	50.0%	17.5%	8.5%	0.71	1.49
Carrasco	CLE	KCR	294.2	3.18	2.74	1.04		27.2%	5.5%	0.70	1.76
Nicolino	MIA	NYM	48.1	3.72	5.45	1.34		8.0%	7.0%	0.74	1.40
Verrett	NYM	MIA	32.1	3.06	3.69	0.96		20.5%	7.1%	1.11	1.24
Sabathia	NYY	TBR	189	5.19	3.79	1.46	25.0%	19.9%	6.0%	1.71	1.42
Ramirez	TBR	NYY	211.2	4.42	4.19	1.29	27.3%	18.5%	7.9%	1.19	1.20
Kazmir	HOU	TEX	354.2	3.12	3.76	1.15	63.2%	21.3%	7.0%	0.76	1.19
Hamels	TEX	HOU	382	3.06	3.37	1.18	58.8%	24.2%	7.2%	0.73	1.50
Gray	OAK	CHW	412.2	2.70	3.61	1.10	60.0%	20.4%	7.4%	0.63	1.96
Danks	CHW	OAK	348.1	4.68	4.60	1.41	50.0%	15.6%	7.8%	1.16	1.05
Lobstein	DET	MIN	97	4.92	4.71	1.41		13.3%	8.2%	0.84	1.57
Duffey	MIN	DET	32.1	4.18	4.19	1.45		21.6%	10.8%	0.84	1.62
Shields	SDP	ARI	409.1	3.52	3.62	1.25	42.9%	21.8%	6.7%	1.14	1.34
Hellickson	ARI	SDP	192.2	4.58	4.09	1.37		19.1%	6.9%	1.26	1.06
Gray	COL	LAD	31.1	5.17	4.12	1.53		19.4%	7.9%	0.57	1.47
Kershaw	LAD	COL	399.1	1.96	2.16	0.88	66.7%	32.7%	4.4%	0.52	1.81
Richards	LAA	SEA	343.1	3.17	3.58	1.14	65.0%	21.8%	7.8%	0.55	1.86
Walker	SEA	LAA	200.2	4.31	3.78	1.24		21.9%	6.9%	1.21	1.08
Sampson	CIN	SFG	36.1	6.94	4.72	1.82		18.5%	11.0%	1.24	1.17
Hudson	SFG	CIN	299	3.91	3.83	1.28	68.4%	14.3%	4.8%	0.84	2.21

ALL-IN:

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

Clayton Kershaw LAD (vs. COL) – Kershaw is the top option no matter who he’s playing these days, as he’s reduced opposing batsmen to a collective .173/.201/.228 slash with 112 strikeouts and just nine walks over his last 11 starts covering 87.0 innings pitched. His ERA has been 0.93 over that stretch, and what previously seemed impossible is suddenly within the southpaw’s reach: a third straight season with a sub-2.00 ERA. He has at most five starts left (more likely four) and one of those scheduled outings is in Denver so it will be a rocky road for Kershaw to traverse, as he needs to pitch another 30 innings of 0.90 ERA baseball (a total of three earned runs) in order to fit under the bar. Kersh has already set a personal best with 259 strikeouts this season, and he will hit 300 if he keeps up his current pace of 11.6 punchouts-per-nine for another 30 innings.

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.

Carlos Carrasco CLE (vs. KC) – Carrasco is one of the hardest pitchers to figure out, making him one of the most frustrating to own in any fantasy format. One start he’s striking out 11 Yankees, the next he’s getting bounced in the third inning against the White Sox, and he’s one of those pitchers that can shut down any offense when he’s hitting his targets but struggles to find that consistency on a start-by-start basis. The Royals have a very strong offense with the outstanding trait of putting the ball in play, a factor which will likely limit his K count regardless of pitch location.

Cole Hamels TEX (vs. HOU) – Hamels has been inconsistent in his time with Texas, both in terms of run prevention and generating strikeouts. Consider his K counts of the last five ball games: three, eight, ten, two, and eight. The Astros strike out more than any other team in the American League, encouraging a potential K spike, and Hamels has a track record of strong performance in big ballgames (including a 3.09 ERA and 77 strikeouts in 81.7 career innings of postseason pitching), so he could step it up as the Rangers go toe-to-toe with their in-state rivals, with the AL West division crown hanging in the balance.

Jordan Zimmermann WAS (at PHI) – Unlike the pitchers above him on this list, Zimmermann offers a somewhat narrow range of likely outcomes, with a relatively stable track record in terms of both run prevention and strikeout generation this season. He has fallen off from his career-best pace of last year, but looking at the season as a whole reveals a stat-line that is incredibly similar to that of 2013, a season in which Zimmer finished seventh in voting for the NL Cy Young Award. He has allowed just one run to score in each of his last three turns, though two of those games were against the lowly offenses of the Braves and the Marlins, and Z has yet to put up more than nine strikeouts in a game this season. He draws another weak opponent against the Phillies, underscoring his utility in DFS tonight.

Sonny Gray OAK (at CHW) – The 25-year-old right-hander has enjoyed his best season in 2015, posting a 2.28 ERA and a K rate of 20.6-percent that is just above his frequency of last season (his lower K-per-nine is the result of facing fewer batters per inning). He’s been in cruise control for most of the season, but Gray has endured a few hiccups lately and the lower K rate eliminates his margin for error, killing his fantasy value. He hasn’t struck out more than five batters in a ballgame since August 2nd, a stretch of six turns with just 25 total punchouts in 41.0 innings of work.

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%
Rodriguez	0.391	6.08	0.282	3.46	0.250	0.693	0.283	4.08	0.249	95.39	18.0%
Gausman	0.303	3.15	0.329	5.00	0.266	0.740	0.297	3.86	0.255	83.41	19.2%
Zimmermann	0.312	3.27	0.264	2.70	0.248	0.681	0.302	3.12	0.25	93.07	21.2%
Nola	0.324	4.01	0.274	3.25	0.252	0.724	0.267	4.02	0.234	88.00	20.6%
Volquez	0.305	3.14	0.296	3.35	0.252	0.723	0.274	3.94	0.236	95.21	17.5%
Carrasco	0.255	3.02	0.278	3.32	0.271	0.746	0.290	2.73	0.221	66.26	27.2%
Nicolino	0.341	3.86	0.340	3.68	0.245	0.722	0.287	4.55	0.277	88.63	8.0%
Verrett	0.301	4.15	0.217	2.33	0.251	0.669	0.207	4.07	0.188	32.93	20.5%
Sabathia	0.242	5.08	0.386	5.22	0.265	0.770	0.332	4.80	0.292	93.45	19.9%
Ramirez	0.294	3.74	0.353	5.32	0.251	0.742	0.282	4.50	0.249	70.94	18.5%
Kazmir	0.301	3.14	0.279	3.11	0.242	0.697	0.277	3.43	0.229	94.85	21.3%
Hamels	0.291	2.08	0.290	3.33	0.245	0.743	0.299	3.21	0.235	104.40	24.2%
Gray	0.270	2.35	0.261	3.11	0.254	0.705	0.261	3.37	0.217	100.18	20.4%
Danks	0.305	4.35	0.355	4.79	0.256	0.704	0.296	4.58	0.268	100.00	15.6%
Lobstein	0.278	3.73	0.349	5.48	0.259	0.725	0.297	4.26	0.271	89.18	13.3%
Duffey	0.353	3.52	0.296	4.76	0.268	0.738	0.319	3.88	0.258	82.83	21.6%
Shields	0.336	3.60	0.307	3.43	0.266	0.736	0.300	3.95	0.252	103.86	21.8%
Hellickson	0.312	4.43	0.352	4.71	0.245	0.690	0.302	4.30	0.264	93.17	19.1%
Gray	0.335	3.29	0.349	6.62	0.246	0.739	0.357	3.40	0.291	72.71	19.4%
Kershaw	0.236	1.91	0.234	1.98	0.253	0.677	0.280	1.95	0.195	103.00	32.7%
Richards	0.258	3.03	0.284	3.35	0.240	0.714	0.273	3.21	0.22	100.74	21.8%
Walker	0.319	3.93	0.302	4.79	0.249	0.707	0.290	4.09	0.246	87.75	21.9%
Sampson	0.428	6.75	0.326	7.06	0.268	0.739	0.359	4.74	0.305	81.44	18.5%
Hudson	0.338	3.57	0.299	4.22	0.251	0.711	0.302	3.88	0.273	86.65	14.3%

CALL:

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

Scott Kazmir HOU (at TEX) – With Kazmir facing Hamels, it’s a battle of left-handed mercenaries as two surprise teams show up to a gunfight in the AL West. Kaz pitched poorly against his other divisional opponents in his last two starts, giving up seven runs and 18 baserunners over 10.3 innings against the A’s and Mariners. Tonight he faces a Rangers club that struggles against lefties (a sub-700 OPS and 22.2-percent K rate) and who has not been squaring up the baseball for the past week, with a seven-day stretch of a .267 wOBA and 586 OPS. However, the Rangers have been deadly in Arlington (.332 wOBA), effectively canceling out some of the platoon effects and recency bias.

Garrett Richards LAA (at SEA) – Perhaps no pitcher in baseball has a wider range of likely outcomes in the strikeout department than Richards. He is coming off of an 11-strikeout game against the Dodgers, the second 11-K game of this season and the third time he’s cracked double-digit strikeouts. The start prior he struck one just one batter over six innings, walking five, giving him a remarkable 10-K spread from one start to the next. The Mariners touched him up for 12 hits and four runs in 5.3 innings the when they went head-to-head in July.

James Shields SD (at ARI) – He started the season with buckets of strikeouts and homers, reeled back the whiffs as well as the long balls for the first half of summer, but now he’s settled into a groove where the strikeouts stay modest and the runs come in bunches. The main instigator has been a lack of control, as Shields has walked 15 batters across his last four games (23.7 innings), which combined with his five homers allowed has yielded an opponents’ line of .269/.376/.473 during the four-game stretch. He has been able to handle the lesser offenses of Philadelphia and Atlanta over the past month, but those lineups pale in comparison to NL-leading offense of the Diamondbacks.

Aaron Nola PHI (vs. WAS) – It seemed like the Nats were just on a tear but the bats went quiet almost as quickly as they had awakened, and over the past seven days Washington has just a 664 OPS as a team. They have also been taking that slow walk back to the dugout with regularity, sporting a 28.8-percent strikeout rate over the same span that will play into Nola’s favor. The rookie right-hander is not a strikeout machine himself but he can hold his own, including 51 strikeouts so far at the MLB level this season, but his value is better exemplified by the fact that he has walked two or fewer hitters in nine of his ten starts this season.

Taijuan Walker SEA (vs. LAA) – Walker was a clever GPP play for much of the season due to his tendency to either implode or dominate, but recently there has been much more of the former than the latter. He only lasted 3.0 innings in his last start before he was KO’d by three homers and six runs on the scoreboard. Walker has a 5.20 ERA over his last five starts, and though he has only walked five batters in those 27.7 innings, he has also whiffed a modest 18 hitters. In fact, he hasn’t had a game with more than a half-dozen punchouts since July, as the upside of rostering the right-hander has seemingly vanished.

Kevin Gausman BAL (vs. BOS)

Edinson Volquez KC (at CLE)

Eduardo Rodriguez BOS (at BAL)

CC Sabathia NYY (at TB)

Tim Hudson SF (vs. CIN)

Logan Verrett NYM (vs. MIA)

Erasmo Ramirez TB (vs. NYY)

Jon Gray COL (at LAD)

John Danks CHW (vs. OAK)

Jeremy Hellickson ARI (vs. SD)

Tyler Duffy MIN (vs. DET)