These are troubling times. Fantasy pitching staffs have been shredded. The red-inked “DL” marker is by now a ubiquitous and dreadful flourish. Few owners, if any, count starter depth as a luxury.
As a result, the starter market is as ravenous as ever, making it especially important to understand how the underlying skill for the starters left standing actually shape up next to their surface results. Turbulent as the market may be, there’s still chance to capitalize on the perceived value of players who seem destined for regression, whether positive or negative.
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Despite his 2.76 ERA through 45-plus innings, Rangers ace Yu Darvish has earned very little fanfare for his strong first lap of 2017 results.
Owners and experts alike might be waiting for the other shoe to drop, and you can’t exactly blame them. Darvish’s current success in the ERA column has come despite some rather alarming trends in his underlying stats.
Look no further than that 4.14 walks-per-nine (BB/9) rate, the highest such mark since his rookie season, reversing what had been an encouraging trend of gradually cutting down on free passes over each of his four MLB seasons.
Darvish’s walk rates are notably spiked on all of his primary pitches: his four seam, his slider, his curveball, and his cutter. That cutter has been especially ineffective, sporting a 3.2-percent strikeout-minus-walk rate (K-BB%) compared to a 27.8-percent mark from last season. Clearly hitters are seeing that pitch better–it’s inducing notably fewer infield flies, with more line-drives and a higher isolated slugging (ISO).
The result is Darvish’s highest expected fielding independent pitching (xFIP) to date, a 3.74 mark that spots nearly a run on his actual ERA.
Look for that ERA to edge closer to that high-3.00s mark if Darvish can’t correct his control issues. If you’re in a rare position of surplus with respect to starting pitching (do any such owners still exist?), it might still be possible to sell Darvish as a top-10 starter going forward, allowing you to pocket the profit while forcing your league-mate to stomach the inevitable regression.
From a skills perspective, erstwhile ace Jeff Samardzija is having a fine go of things in early 2017. His K/9 is through the roof, sitting above 10.5, impressive even by the standards of his breakout seasons with the Cubs earlier in the decade, where he averaged around 9.0. Meanwhile, his 2.23 BB/9 is not exactly sterling, but it’s at least a tick below his 2.84 career mark.
There are signs of encouragement elsewhere: his hard contact and fly ball rates are slightly down from last season, his soft contact way up. He has a revamped slider with plus movement and a near-17-percent whiff rate, up almost four percentage points from last season.
All that’s missing are the results, which thus far have been shockingly poor considering his stout peripherals. Even 8 shutout innings against the Dodgers this week couldn’t quite push Samardzija’s ERA on the season under 5.00.
That hair-raising line is no doubt underwritten by a 20-percent homer-per-fly rate (HR/FB%), gaudy even by Samardzija’s standards. It’s a top-14 mark across the majors, and among these 14 players, Samardzija has a bottom-half flyball rate and a bottom-third hard hit rate. In other words, The Shark has gotten quite unlucky, especially considering his home ballpark is one of the most homer-suppressing venues in the majors.
Samardzija’s 11-K performance against the Dodgers might have unlatched the buy-low window, but that unsightly overall line should still have less patient owners willing to sell for cents on the dollar.
Another hurler whose final line masks strong recent trends is Kenta Maeda, who struggled quite mightily in his first four starts of 2017 but has turned things around over his last two turns. Look at how those two samples stack up in terms of ERA, xFIP, on base puls slugging (OPS) and fly ball rate (Flyball %).
| Sample | IP | ERA | xFIP | OPS | Flyball % |
| First four starts | 19 | 8.05 | 4.53 | 1.007 | 53.4% |
| Latest two starts | 12 | 2.25 | 2.33 | 0.517 | 26.9% |
Granted, the two rejuvenated starts came against the San Diego Padres and Philadelphia Phillies, hardly a murderer’s row. Still, it’s worth noting here how the improved results correspond with a marked downturn in fly ball rate.
We can credit this shift to a decrease in four-seam use in favor of his cutter and slider, soothing the homer-itus that plagued Maeda in the early goings. Of course, the flat zero HR/FB of Maeda’s two most recent starts will ping-pong back towards the low double-digits soon enough, but it’s nice to see Maeda make effective adjustments in response to his early struggles.
Starter-needy owners take note: there aren’t too many pitchers with legitimate top-20 starter upside who can be had this cheap. Maeda’s limited MLB track record makes him a high-variance play, but these are indeed desperate times.
This week’s high-profile gem against the defending World Series champion Chicago Cubs will have Yankee lefty Jordan Montgomery on the minds of starter-starved owners during the upcoming waiver period.
Indeed, limiting the Cubbies to three hits and two earned runs over nearly seven innings is no small feat for an untested rookie. Still, owners should temper their expectations, as Montgomery carried a gnarly 4.5 BB/9 that hasn’t yet come back to bite him in the form of earned-run damage.
Montgomery deserves some credit for boasting a 16-percent swinging strike rate (check out his nasty slider, with a 28-percent whiff rate and a .262 OPS against), as well as for limiting hard contact overall. That said, his near-65-percent medium contact rate suggests that perhaps hitters are just missing his subpar four-seam and two-seam fastballs. Remember, you don’t need to hit it all that hard to get it out of Yankee Stadium, one of the most homer-friendly venues in the majors.
The young lefty has certainly earned his stripes as a deep-league mainstay, but I wonder if Montgomery isn’t already owned in most of the leagues for which he’s truly useful. Standard-league owners should tread lightly, though, as his best work may be behind him.
There’s bad batted-ball luck, and then there’s Adam Wainwright‘s .446 batting average on balls in play (BABIP). Talk about tough hops!
It’s not as if Wainwright’s peripherals are sparkling: his hard contact is up even compared to last year, when he posted a career-worst 31.2-percent rate, and his BB/9 is the highest it’s been in a decade.
Still, his big looping curveball remains a tremendous weapon, with a near-30-percent K-BB% and measly .031 ISO allowed across a 137-pitch sample. Meanwhile, Wainwright’s cutter is getting clobbered, surrendering a 1.143 OPS on a 30% HR/FB, both well out of line with career norms.
Of course, Wainwright could very well be on the wrong side of a declining skill set. That’s a high BABIP indeed, but maybe he’s just becoming extremely hittable. Then again, he could also be poised to make adjustments and push that ERA closer to his respectable 3.64 xFIP.
If all it costs you is a waiver claim to find out which is the case, one last dance with the once-great Waino seems like a low-cost speculation worth making, especially given the depleted starter pool.
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Tom Whalen is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Tom, check out his archive or follow him @tomcwhalen.
