With fantasy trade deadlines on the horizon, understanding discrepancies in actual versus perceived value can be a crucial pivot point in determining league fortunes. On this week’s Regression Report, let’s take a look at five starters whose production in July was significantly better or worse than expected, and thus whose perceived value might be significantly different from their actual fantasy usefulness going forward.

To calibrate our standards for what is “expected” of a starter, we’ll lean on the Fielding Independent Pitching stat, abbreviated as FIP. The metric E-F subtracts this FIP mark from the pitcher’s “actual” performance as it is calculated in ERA. Thus, an exceptionally high E-F indicates a pitcher who, in theory, is overperforming his results–his ERA is significantly higher than his FIP. A negative E-F indicates the opposite, a pitcher who seems to be underperforming.

View your league’s top available players with My Playbook

Jonathan Gray (COL – SP) E-F, last 30 days: 2.77
You can’t use the classic Colorado home/road splits to explain away the struggles of promising young righty Jonathan Gray. Quite surprisingly, it’s been at Coors Field that Gray has served as a useful fantasy asset, managing a 3.71 ERA at home but a hair-raising 6.67 mark on the road.

Similar splits pertain to Gray’s devilish 6.66-ERA stretch over the past month (4.63 at home; 8.36 on the road), making it hard to write off the near-three-run gap between his ERA and FIP (3.89) over that span as the mere vagaries of the rocky mountain air.

The fact is, hitters are really barreling Gray up, managing 34% hard contact and 23% liners, rates that aren’t going to play in any environment. Then again, Gray’s been a bit unlucky on batted balls, despite the contact profile: that 23% HR/FB away from Coors over the last month is unlikely to hold, and the same goes for the .419 BABIP.

Meanwhile, Gray’s strikeout-minus-walk rate is peaking at 17%, so perhaps he’s set to turn a corner for the stretch run. Few players currently owned in less than 50% of ESPN leagues have Gray’s ace ceiling, so if you need a high-upside prayer to contend in your league, this Colorado righty might be worth a flyer.

Jaime Garcia (NYY – SP) E-F: 1.84
An unsexy but sneakily solid deep-league mainstay this season, Jaime Garcia might find his name on the minds of standard leaguers now that he’s been traded from the middling Atlanta Braves and Minnesota Twins to the contending New York Yankees. After all, Garcia has failed to log five innings in only one of his 19 starts this season, and the Yanks should put him in a nice spot to contribute in Wins down the stretch.

If that sharp gap in actual and expected performance is any indication, he might have some positive regression in his ratios due to him at well.

Indeed, Garcia’s posted a middling 4.05 ERA over the last month despite not surrendering a single home run over 111 batters faced. A respectable pairing of a 55% grounder rate and 21% soft contact rate suggest that Garcia’s been generating poor contact yet still getting bit by batted-ball misfortune.

And with his 21% strikeout rate over the last month a marked step up from his 18% mark on the season, Garcia could be in a nice spot to inch back towards a mid-threes ERA going forward, no small potatoes in our pitching-starved environment.

Rick Porcello (BOS – SP) E-F: -2.27
Last week erstwhile Cy Young-er Rick Porcello was the latest starter to surrender crooked numbers to the surging Royals, but that relatively respectable seven-inning, four-ER outing actually represented a downturn in recent performance for Porcello, bringing his July ERA up to 3.06–quite an improvement from his 6.63 mark in June.

But it’s hard to look at the underlying numbers here and convince yourself that Porcello is a changed man: he coughed up 40% hard contact in July, with 14 extra-base hits, including eight homers. Porcello’s respectable ERA might have a lot to do with his sharp 3.5% walk rate over that span. Then again, the suspicious strand rate approaching 90% doesn’t hurt either.

With Porcello hardly a difference maker in the strikeout column and the floundering Sox offense struggling to muster run support, the 28-year-old righty has a slim path to being an impact starter for standard-leaguers down the stretch. Porcello owners might want to take this recent, superficial hot streak as an opportunity to get out from under their shares before the regression hits.

Lance Lynn (STL – SP) E-F: -1.89
Lynn has been mystifying number-crunchers with his strong result all year, carrying a strong gap between his 3.20 ERA and 4.83 FIP into the month of August after a near-two-run gap in his expected and actual performance in the month of July.

Indeed, Lynn’s 1.47 ERA over 36-plus innings in July feels unsustainably stingy for a pitcher managing a pedestrian 10% strikeout-minus-walk rate over that same span (the mark is 106th among starters on the month).

The low run output mixed with paltry strikeouts certainly does not compute as far as fantasy production goes, and the 38% flyball rate and 5% HR/FB on the month seem bound to regress–but as always, the question is, regress to what? With Lynn limiting hard contact to 27% in July while coaxing almost 23% infield flies, you have to wonder if the low punchout total is a feature rather than a bug.

Lynn remains a perennial workhorse, throwing no fewer than 94 pitches in any of his six July starts. Part of this is a lack of efficiency–look at that 42% zone percentage. But then again, Lynn toted a similarly inefficient low-40s zone percentages during his excellent 2014 and 2015 seasons, which featured strong low-3.00 ERA marks despite unsexy strikeout rates, just as we’re seeing in 2017.

And so it might be the case that the whiff-hungry bias of the modern fantasy environment is encouraging us to call foul on a pitcher who knows his strengths and weaknesses and adjusts his approach accordingly. Lynn is unlikely to be as good going forward as he was in July, but the prospect of him settling in around his season ERA of 3.20 seems like a fair expectation.

If the Lynn owner in your league is staring too hard at that outsized FIP, buying Lynn as a solid contributor for the stretch run seems like a smart play.

Alex Cobb (TB – SP) E-F: -1.14
Maybe it’s easy to pile on a guy who just gave up eight earned in three innings. And maybe it’s also easy to excuse such a blow up when it came at the hands of the AL-leading Houston Astros, especially when Cobb had managed a 1.48 ERA across his previous four starts.

But Cobb’s FIP has been trending up all month, despite the flashy surface results. The “mere” one-plus run difference isn’t exactly a credit to his performance: what it means is the 4.31 ERA he rang up in July could have been even worse.

Last night’s start did seem like a whole lot of regression packed into one disastrous outing. The two long balls that Cobb surrendered to the ‘Stros bumped his July HR/9 mark to just below 2.0. Cobb’s 21% HR/FB on the month is certainly high (he’s at 12% on his career), but the 37% hard contact doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that this is a case of lousy batted-ball luck.

Thing is, Cobb isn’t fooling hitters (33% reach rate in July–53rd among starters) and he isn’t pounding the zone (53% first-pitch-strike rate–166th among starters), all of which puts a lot of pressure on him to fight through extended counts and hope his defense can back him up.

It’s a tight rope to walk, and up until last night, Cobb was managing. But I wouldn’t bet on it going forward. His 66% ownership at ESPN seems like a fair high-water mark. Now seems like a time to buy low, but I’m not biting.

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.