All statistics are agnostic–they present information and leave the analysis to us. Perhaps left-on-base rate (LOB%) is especially so, thanks in large part to its simplicity. This statistic means pretty much exactly what it says it means: it lists the percentage of runners that a pitcher leaves on base at the end of each inning over the course of a given span.
What do we do with this stat? As per usual, this one state alone can’t tell the whole story, but it can provide a window into exceptional performance and help us anticipate future regression, positive or negative. Here are five pitchers whose eye-catching LOB% numbers over the last month of play seem to encourage a deeper dive into their value for the rest of the season.
View your league’s top available players with My Playbook 
Dan Straily (MIA – SP): 99% LOB, last 30 days
Somehow, Straily sports a pristine 2.67 ERA over the last month while tallying the 7th lowest strikeout rate among qualified starters over that same span. Stuff like this fries the circuits of fantasy obsessives, who tend to associate high-level pitching results with high strikeout totals. How can one exist without the other? Does not compute.
Straily is especially notable because he’s been pitching to great success for virtually the entire season, with his 3.32 ERA across 108-plus innings representing one of the truly unexpected breakouts amid a mostly dismal starting pitcher pool.
Straily’s recent stretch of excellence is certainly a high point in terms of results, though the 99% strand rate over that span casts some doubt on whether Straily can pitch to this level going forward. That absurdly high LOB% is especially suspect given how low Straily’s strikeout totals have been. It’s nothing short of a minor miracle that he’s managed to wiggle out of trouble so often without posting at least average punchout totals.
Straily’s sub-3% walk rate rests some of the credit on his skills, though the 37% hard contact rate and 51% fly rate should have Straily in line for some major regression on the strand rate front, and thus on the ERA front. I wouldn’t be investing in Straily as anything better than a 4.00 ERA arm going forward.
Aaron Nola (PHI – SP): 91% LOB
Things were looking pretty dire for Nola in the first two months of 2017, with the young Phillies righty sandwiching 32 innings of 5.06 ERA ball around a DL stint for a lower-back strain in late April.
Nola’s last month has been an entirely different story–35-plus innings with a 1.78 ERA find the 24-year-old in the fine form that made him one of the surprise stories of 2016’s first half.
The key to Nola’s success has been reviving his mint curveball, a pitch that grades in the top five league-wide in weighted value (right up there with curves from James Paxton and Rich Hill) while inducing 15% swinging strikes on the season while limiting hitters to a .555 OPS across 409 offerings.
Is the curveball all Nola needs to continue to rank among fantasy’s upper tier? Probably not. Nola’s fourseam and sinker are both seeing career-low reach rates, and when hitters guess right on the fastball, they’re hitting it hard to the tune of a .217 ISO, a career-worst mark. The 14% walk rate on the fourseam is also rather concerning. Perhaps Nola is having trouble corralling the added movement on that pitch.
It’s also worth noticing how the majority of Nola’s starts over the last month have come against rather light competition, including the Padres, Pirates, Braves, and two dates against the Cardinals.
All of which is to say that Nola’s current 3.54 overall ERA might represent a low mark for the promising young Philly when all is said and done this season. Obviously, Nola (somehow only 70% owned in ESPN leagues) is a must-add wherever he’s available, but I wouldn’t be trading for him until he takes his lumps and the market sobers up.
Zack Godley (ARI – SP): 55% LOB
After a seven-run pasting at the hands of the Atlanta Braves on Sunday, surprise D-backs breakout Zach Godley looks like a classic buy-low target, with just about everything in his profile over the last month looking sharp save for his 4.56 ERA and some bad strand-rate luck.
Perhaps the vagaries of the tough hop are a feature rather than a bug for Godley, whose 57% grounder rate is an elite mark among qualified starters. But this month it hasn’t been BABIP that’s bitten Godley, but rather a few untimely homers that have dented his month-long sample. Indeed, Godley has surrendered a hair-raising 1.250 slugging percentage on fly balls in his two July starts. Compare that to a 3.60 ERA and .756 slugging on flys over the remainder of the season, and it seems clear enough that Godley’s hit a gnarly rough patch, some inevitable regression on the 2.67 ERA that he carried into July.
For a guy with a 25% strikeout rate who hadn’t surrendered more than three runs in a start until Sunday, Godely’s 67% ownership at ESPN seems criminally low. Snap him right up if he makes an appearance on your wire this week.
Jose Berrios (MIN – SP): 56% LOB
After Berrios seemed to put his 2016 struggles well in the rear view with a positively stifling first month of 2017 (2.74 ERA and 22% hard contact in 46 innings), some old ghosts are popping up for the Twins’ youngster as he’s posted a 5.33 ERA and 1.48 WHIP over his last five starts.
But what has to be comforting for Berrios owners is that the outsized WHIP numbers aren’t the result of the control woes that marked Berrios as unready for the spotlight last season. As a matter of fact, the 23-year-old’s walk rate is slightly down over this last month compared to the first. Instead, some bad batted-ball luck appears to be bleeding into Berrios’ surface results. Check out that league-average 30% hard-hit rate compared with an above-average .325 BABIP and 17% homer-per-fly.
Also, note how three of Berrios’ six home runs allowed over the last month came in a single outing, against a Royals team that since that start has been dead cold in terms of power production. And it’s not as if Berrios got chased early, either–he still managed to labor through five innings of work.
The underlying numbers have Berrios very much pegged to regress positively over the second half. Even if that doesn’t entail stellar sub-3.00 production, it’s still more likely than not that he’s a stable top-40 option moving forward. But if the Berrios owner is sweating his seeming return to the ways of his disastrous 2016, now’s the time to pounce.
Jeff Samardzija (SF – SP): 68%
This season has been a series of peaks and valleys for The Shark, who was a trendy buy-low target while he toted an ERA over 6.00 in the first month of the season, only to have his unreal strikeout-to-walk rate (K/9) become a go-to “you’ll never guess” factoid through May and June.
Well, July has found the veteran righty faced with yet another valley, sporting a 5.01 ERA over his past five starts. Samardzija’s 68% LOB over that span might not seem like a red flag (league average is usually in the low 70s from year to year), not until you consider that a pitcher with a strikeout-minus-walk rate approaching 23% should have a much less difficult time keeping runners on base.
This is where Shark’s homeritis likely fits in. Indeed, the homer woes are hard to dismiss out of hand, since Samardzija’s 1.45 HR/9 mark on the season represents his worse such rate in any substantial MLB sample. It’s an odd trend, considering he now calls home the most homer-unfriendly ballpark in the majors.
Maybe what the big righty has in the cards is one of those statistically anomalous seasons where he maintains a close to a 20% homer-per-fly despite his major home-field advantage and league-average hard contact. Maybe he continues his stinginess with the free passes yet manages to find the exact wrong spots to give up the long flies. Maybe he’s just not designed to pitch to his 3.82 FIP. Maybe–but it seems unlikely.
Even if the homer bug keeps biting The Shark, he’s got exactly what fantasy owners need–volume innings and volume strikeouts. And he’s back to being a premier buy-low target.
Subscribe: iTunes | Stitcher | SoundCloud | Google Play | TuneIn | RSS
Tom Whalen is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Tom, check out his archive or follow him @tomcwhalen.
