Rates & Barrels - A Few Surprising First-Half Pitchers

Episode Date: July 3, 2023

In an episode cut in half by technical difficulties, Eno and DVR discuss a few of the most surprising starting pitchers from the first half of the season including Nathan Eovaldi, Marcus Stroman and Mitch Keller. Plus, they consider a few pitchers who might benefit from adding a cutter to their arsenal.  Rundown 1:52 Nathan Eovaldi: Current Roto Value Leader Among Pitchers 7:57 Marcus Stroman's Excellent First Half 13:55 Mitch Keller: Buying a First-Half Repeat? 20:39 Giving Other Pitchers a New Cutter 25:22 Is This a Potential Fix for Alek Manoah? Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic at $2/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Derek Van Ryper, Eno Saris here with you on this episode. We dig into some first half pitching surprises. It is the sibling episode to the hitter surprises episode that we did last week. We'll talk about some pleasant surprises from this year's group of pitchers. Dig into why that has happened. Maybe try to figure from this year's group of pitchers, dig into why that has happened, maybe try to figure out who the next group of pitchers will be. That's the hard part.

And we'll take a few mailbag questions in this show as well. Eno, how's it going for you on this Monday? Good. I'm coming to you from fabulous San Diego where the weather is great. The team is maybe not. It's not the way we drew it up.

It's not the way we hoped it was going to go in the NL West. No, it's tough. And it's one of those things where like, you know, the different parts all look great on paper, but they're just not going at the same time. I would say, you know, I shared this thing on Twitter where there are five and 15 in one run games. And a lot of people took it and were like, yeah, they suck.

There's this, there's this. This is Melvin. This is a problem. And I'm like, that's like a luck stat. You know, one run games is not usually something that, you know, you continue to dominate at or continue to suck at. It's just, that's chaos. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting.

I don't know how much that helps when you're in the middle of it. Well, we'll dig in. We've got lots of players to talk about on this episode. And the first one is the current leader in roto earned value to this point in the season that is Nathan Evaldi who in recent turns has shown little fluctuations in velocity which I think will always always always always command some extra attention so I was keeping a very close eye on what that final line looked like from him over the weekend.

The thing that Ivaldi's done very well all season long is he has pitched deep into his starts. He did it again against the Astros on Saturday. Seven scoreless innings, just two hits, five Ks, four walks, picked up another win. He's up to 10 wins now on the season. This is the best version of Nathan Ivaldi we've ever seen through a half season. The concerns for me would be fluctuating Velo and

the pace for being on a 225 inning pace at this point in the season. That seems a little problematic given his health history. I hope he can do it. I'm rooting for him. I really am. But what are your concerns about Evaldi even though he has been

fantastic to this point in the season? He had before this last start he had basically one two, three, four, five five starts in a row where the average

fastball declined and the max fastball declined. Yeah. And then in the last start before this one, it kind of was about the same. And then this one, his max VLO was up. Where was his sitting VLO? It's kind of hard. I'm looking at these Fangraphs charts.

It's kind of cool to see the spread, but they don't represent the average or the mean uh he went so he went from he was like 96s and then uh when the yankees came to town 97.5 average and then from then 95 96 95 96 96 95 95 94 8 93 9 94 3 and then the last one 95 9 95, 94, 8, 93, 9, 94, 3, and then the last one, 95, 9, 95, 6, 96. So that's a good sign, I guess. So the reason we're asking about this is because last year he didn't have a game where he averaged over 95 in the second half once he came back from injury and he wasn't as good I lived it I had him on a lot of teams last year I have him on fewer teams this

year still believed but I just felt like it was reckless to try and have him everywhere again given the factors we talked about a little bit earlier. The thing I like about him overall, though, even if the velo slips again, it is a pretty deep pitch mix. He's got the splitter, the cutter, and the curveball, and he's locating everything really well. So even though it would be a problem if he went through the second half with a tick and a half or two ticks less on his fastball,

I don't think he'd be the guy that went from best starter in the league from a fantasy perspective to can't use him in a lot of his starts. It would just be a guy that can flirt with a four ERA the rest of the season and be kind of a one, two, five whip guy with a below strikeout per inning strikeout rate. And that's fine. That plays, but that's a pretty far cry from what you've been getting. Yeah, it's really interesting because from an ERA standpoint, last year when he lost the VLO in the second half, he had a 4-9 ERA. So you say, well, I really don't want to be sitting with that bag this year. But his FIP at the same time was a 3-7-1.

But, a third but, his strikeout rate went from 9.4 per 9 to 6.6 per 9. So that's a lot of buts. That's a lot of buts. I like these locations though. You check out his heat map when you get a chance. The splitter

nice and tight down away or down and into righties. Cutters away from righties. Fastball's kind of in the meaty part of the zone. That's a little bit of an odd. Yeah, but he kind of pitches backwards. Even though he has good velo, he kind of hides the fastball a lot. Throws the slider a lot and fastball

counts. So, that's where he's at so far. Now, what are you doing in leagues where you have him? Do you have him anywhere? Yeah, I have him in a bunch of places. He just popped. Had great projections, partly because of that park, I think, partly because of his stuff plus.

So I've got him in a lot of places. A lot of the places I can't trade him. And the places where I do have him and I can trade him, I am thinking about it a little bit. I'm in second place in AL labor, and I could use a closer. And so I'm trying to put together different packages, but I keep staring at maybe there's something where I just trade know trade evalde and a non-closer reliever for a closer and a worse starter or something i'm looking at rest of season projections

through the fangraphs auction calculator popping the bat x in just to get a rough idea that projection system has evalde as the 31st best starting pitcher the rest of the way and again a couple injured guys that are ahead of them probably wouldn't really be there if we were trying to go through it as a ranking exercise. But let's just say he's a top 25 starter the rest of the way. That's still better than what you paid for on draft day. So you'd be pretty happy with that. And in terms of like a trade return, if you're looking for a closer like Eno, you're probably getting at least a closer to a good closer to back in the return. Right.

You can probably get a Paul Seawald or it's Jordan Romano still in that closer to group. Alexis Diaz. Maybe we'll talk about him in a little bit. There's there's some guys. The partner I'm looking at has Paul Seawald and Carlos Estevez. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm thinking I've been trying to get Estevez, but now I'm thinking.

You know, maybe Evaldi. We'll see. All right. Other names, lots of guys to get to. How about Marcus Stroman? I didn't see this coming from him. I do have Stroman in a few leagues this year. I kind of just liked him because of the park.

I thought decent ratios, high volume of innings. Didn't really expect a lot to change in the profile. Just thought what you see is what you get, And what you got last year was actually pretty good. 350 ERA, 115 whip. He's been even better so far. 276 and 109 for the ratios. 92 Ks in 107 and two-thirds innings. And what he lacks in strikeout rate, he's making up for in volume so far.

If he holds up physically and gets over 200 innings, he's done it a couple of times before back in 2016 and 2017. Stroman's going to probably finish pretty easily with a dollar value right around this current level. He can actually kind of cruise to that $22, $25 range based on the start that he's had so far, but I don't really see anything that's changed for him. I mean, a little bit of good luck on homers after a little bit of bad luck on homers last year? Is there anything you see that's different with Stroman? There's a weird thing where

he was maybe trying to go for, sorry, the dogs are with me and they're sad that everyone's gone and so they're going to bark. Marcus Stroman was trying to throw the four seam. I think maybe beginning of last year and try to throw it more and try to like maybe go for strikeouts more. You see a real bump in four seam and slider usage early last year.

And I think that wasn't uh into his strengths um and so i think what you've seen since is uh this year just way more sliders um and then uh you know the four seam usage is almost gone he just uses it every once in a while to change eye levels against lefties mostly. But I think he's just become the best version of himself. Sinker slider guy that has enough cutter change foreseam to keep lefties honest. Yeah, it's working. A pitcher that's aging really well and someone that might actually end up on the free agent market. He's got an opt-out at the end of the season too. So the home park that lured me in might not be his home park next year, depending on how things play out. I think Stroman indicated that he was trying to reach an extension with the Cubs. We'll see if anything changes. really interesting to uh to whether you're sometimes on brooks you can easily uh switch from lefty to righty to see pitch mix and when you when you put marcus stroman against uh when

you put him against righties uh he's 65 percent sinker 30 slider so uh he's a two pitch guy against them uh against lefties uh he still throws a sinker a lot but it's a it's a two-pitch guy against them. Against lefties, he still throws a sinker a lot, but it's a turbo sinker. It's a great one. So I think he can deal with that. But 14% cutter, 20% slider, 10% change, 5% foreseam. And if you do it for the year instead of just recently, it's 9% foreseam, 20 percent cutter uh 14 percent change so uh you can

i think this is kind of important sometimes uh first of all because like something like stuff plus doesn't uh platoon adjust and i think that a lot of the times that we maybe miss on a pitcher or there's a pitcher who's struggling we can't figure it out or a pitcher who's better than we expect uh sometimes platoon splits are part of it. I'm thinking of just across, we're not doing the bad surprises show today, but in that same rotation, Jameson Tyon, in terms of what he's trying to do against lefties,

you see some real fluctuation month to month where the beginning of the season, he was 33% foreseam, 32% cutter, 23% curve, 7% change against lefties. Now he's 52% foreseam, 8% cutter, 8% change, and 30% curve. So he's obviously trying to find something that works against lefties.

I talked to Clark Schmidt about what it was that he figured out against lefties. And I think that's a source of chaos in our appraisal of pitchers. We need to spend some time thinking about how they get opposite-handed hitters out. Yeah, how they negate or reduce the impact of the platoon advantage,

probably a tough analysis to do in some ways, though, too, because the splits are so limited in their actual statistical value because they're smaller, right? I mean, you start slicing partial seasons into lefty-righty splits, and things get pretty noisy pretty quickly, but that's more of a granular analysis

that I think is really important to do. Yeah, and honestly, if I told Jameson Tyon what to do against lefties, I'd probably be telling him to do that more cutter-heavy one, right? But the strikeouts have at least returned when he went to a more foreseam heavy. So, I mean, it's not like he's figured it out. But I'm guilty of having dropped him this week in the main event

and in a lot of places I finally gave up on him like a lot of people. But I will point out in his last start the strikeouts came back. He gave up five runs, but the strikeouts came back. And there's runs but strikeouts came back and there's something changing under the hood that's the thing that gives you some hope you need reasons to take a chance on a pitcher with bloated ratios at least jamison tyon's not just going out there doing the same thing over and over again and getting hit doing the same thing over and over again so if you need reasons for optimism that would be the biggest one that I've got for him. You've always wanted to be part

of something bigger than yourself. You live for experience and lead by example. You want the most out of life and realize what you're looking for is already in you. This is for you. The Canadian Armed Forces. A message from the Government of Canada. Best Western made booking our family beach vacation a breeze.

And it felt a little like... Life's a trip. Make the most of it at Best Western. Mitch Rates and Barrels, Word Cloud Hog Keller is our next pitcher. And the thing that really surprises me with Mitch Keller is that we're seeing the K rate way up, 27.3%. Easily the best we've seen since he debuted back in 2019. That was only 48 innings, and he really wasn't good from a ratios perspective during that season. Walk rate, career best, 6.5%. Very good. Swinging strike rate's only 8.9%.

You don't usually see a swinging strike rate that low on a strikeout rate as high as what Mitch Keller is doing right now. The cutter was a big addition to his arsenal, and we've seen other pitchers add a cutter and get a lot better. Corbin Burns a few years ago, I think, is a good recent example of this. Before we dig into other pitchers that could make that adjustment, the projections do not like Mitch Keller. They really don't. Yeah, they don't. Because there are a lot of inputs that are very poor.

I think even my own don't love him. I mean, yeah. We're at the point now, 105 good innings that are the best of his career should start to carry a bit more weight in those rest of season numbers, but you still see an ERA that's over a run higher

from the bat compared to what he's done so far. All of the projection systems on fan graphs have a 1-3 whip or higher, and all of the projection systems on fan graphs have a 1-3 whip or higher and all of the projection systems have the k rate coming down quite a bit down in the kind of mid to upper eights sort of range if you like k per nine that's like 22 to 23 percent if you prefer the percentage so where do you really see things going what are your projections have for keller and do you think there's something that they could be missing because of the previous inputs of keller that come from a pitcher who

had a slightly different arsenal yeah i think it's a fairly different arsenal um you know not only is there the addition of the cutter but i just had in my last piece of an interview with keller where we talked about how he has seven pitches. And he said the slider is a gyro slider and a sweeper. And so he throws four seams, sinker, cutter, curve, gyro slider, sweeper, and change. And I think what's happening here is that this is a guy who Stuff Plus has pretty much always liked, especially since he added the sweeper, and who didn't have good locations before. But now with seven pitches, I think what he said was, we talked about the banana peel,

where now with seven pitches, he can simplify his targets and he he agreed with me he simplified his targets a little bit glass now in that way but with a much larger repertoire and as you can see he's pretty much it looks like he's aiming middle middle doesn't it almost on all of them and then the movement is taking it to different places i think right so you know the four seam has enough ride to kind of pop at the top there the cutter is in on the hands we're looking at the heat maps right now on youtube and dogs please please shut up maybe they're coming home from the beach iggy and buster i think are upset that you are blowing up the possibility they could go out and trade for Mitch Keller in the face of the projections. That's what they're upset about. Is he on

an expiring deal? No. Keller's got this interesting thing where he's still under club control through 2025. So if you're the Pirates, you're probably thinking extension. If you want to just say, hey, we believe in this, and we don't want them to do it for too long. Are we paying for, you know, the Mitch Keller with a 3ERA or the Mitch Keller with a... My projections are on the nicer side.

So there's a lot of 413, 440 from the bat. My projections are like a 408. I don't know if you extend a pitcher that projects like that, that far away from free agency. I don't know. It might not be in the best interest of either side. Keller makes a lot more money if he does this for the calendar year. He makes more money if he proves he can do this again, yeah.

Yep. And at this point, the leverage is in the favor of the Pirates. Now, I think the other angle would be if you're the Pirates and you see that there's not a lot of pitching out there, do you consider trading Mitch Keller? Because you could get a lot back in the return. You have to go find another guy to fill that spot. Tough thing to do.

But I think it's pretty intriguing just because we're in a trade situation right now. A lot of teams want pitching, and somebody that you'd have for much more than this season would bring back a ton. I know that it hasn't gone well since their beginning stretch, but I think this is the year where you're like, we want to be 500 and we want to be building uh towards the future you know what i mean um and i don't there's enough going on with their bats coming together where you're like you know yeah we could trade them for bats but like we also need arms you know we've

talked about this on the fantasy end where it's like you know in dynasty leagues you know you're always like yes always trade your arms for bats until you're like well now i'm competitive and i have no arms and no one will trade me any yeah so i think uh i think this is just one of those ones where they keep them and in terms of uh you know fantasy or whatever i i think it might be a little bit of folly to buy high um just because uh this is the best location plus he's ever had the best command he's ever showing i i you have to here's a guy with a career nine percent walk rate who has a 6.5 right now you're just going to regress that you know and you know if with if that comes with a few homers or it reduces the strikeout rate or whatever it does,

it's not going to be great for his numbers going forward. So I don't think I'd put the over-under for his ERA going forward at 3-3 where it is now. No, no, I don't think so. I think if you wanted to be... Even if you were bullish on him, I think you'd still say like 3-7-5 or something. Yeah. Again, even Steamer, 3-98 is the most optimistic of the Fangrass projections. You could probably put the number there and you'd find that that's a pretty fair place to put it.

I think I'm just a little worried the Ks are coming down. I really am. I think that's the skill that I'm the least sure of right now when I look at Mitch Keller's profile. It's nice to see him pitching well, for sure. And even if you're going to regress him, this is a much more consistent version of someone that has been pretty matdingly inconsistent for us in the past. I want to ask you if you were going to give other pitchers in the league a cutter, since you can't just give everyone a cutter and have it turn them into someone completely different. Who would it make the most sense with? What type of pitcher are you looking for what other stuff in the arsenal uh it kind of leads you to say hey maybe this guy could throw a cutter and it would

open up a ton of other things or it would elevate their their baseline performance to a new level i think the the main thing you're looking for like we were talking about earlier in terms of platoon splits is somebody that uh maybe has other pitches that have large platoon splits also mechanically what i've heard is that cutter foreseam mix is not amazing because you can affect the shape of your foreseam and And you start to lose ride on your foreseam. Even Garrett Cole, who is only mixing in a few cutters, and the cutters looks the best it's ever been, I've seen a little bit of change in his foreseam fastball.

There have been organizations that have banned it for this reason. you know the there have been organizations that have banned it for this reason um and so uh i would think sinker sinker curve sinker slider guy who uh maybe has some problems with platoon splits i think that's the the very obvious one um that that's that's the sort of obvious test case for a cutter and so stephen matts Matz throws most sinkers in baseball. He was so much better, Steven Matz was, when he had that hard slider. Of course, I think it did have some effect on his health. He was throwing the wharf and slider. And ever since he kind of started throwing the wharf and slider,

which did lead to one of his best years uh you can see in 2019 he threw an 89 and a half mile an hour slider 14 of the time uh and in 2019 uh he had basically his best season you know and since then he's only topped 150 innings once so i think there's some relationship there anyway uh i still think a cutter maybe just a just a straight cutter instead of the wharf and slider might help him or maybe he just can't do it uh injury wise brady singer is my number one guy for a cutter i think brady singer, that would be huge for him. Yeah, you think about Brady Singer, I mean, he's even further away from free agency than Mitch Keller is, but he's not having that success yet. So with the Royals having the kind of season they're having, anything and anything could be on the table. But I think with Brady Singer, we just have some recent example

from last year of success. He was good last year. He was very good. I didn't have Singer, we just have some recent example from last year of success. He was good last year. He was very good. I didn't have him, so I missed out completely. But a 323 ERA, 114 whip, 150 Ks, and 153 innings, it looked like he had unlocked everything a year ago. And so far this season, it's just been a big step back. Lowest K rate of his entire career so far through his first 89 innings here in 2023. Yeah, and I could take a victory lap.

I mean, I don't have any shares, and Stuff Plus never loved him. But really, I think the key takeaway from Singer is just what we've been talking about, is be very wary of guys with platoon rates. And that'll get you out of trouble with even guys that stuff plus likes. Like Graham Ashcraft, we should have realized,

you know, would have some issues, you know, because he is basically a one-pitch pitcher against both sides. He has a sweeper for righties and a cutter for lefties. And what does he do otherwise? You know, so the one problem with Brady Singer, he kind of throws a gyro slider. So it would be better if he had a bigger slider to go with it.

But I still think he would be an interesting test case for this. There's some other guys that I think could use it. Jake Woodford is the guy that I'm looking at here. You know, I don't know. Stroman is a case. In terms of people who've done this other than Keller, I see Marcus Stroman, Cal Quantrill, Martin Perez, and Zach Eflin,

and even Adam Wainwright and Dane Dunning as previous examples of proof of this concept. I wonder if Alec Manoa could actually add a cutter. He's got the bad splits against lefties, sinker slider, actually had a much better start, just made a start at double A on Sunday, struck out 10, gave up a run on on three hits three walks over five innings 47 of his 82 pitches were strikes much much better than that first outing in the florida complex league that would actually make

quite a bit of sense to me just based on the fact that he's mostly a two-pitch pitcher throws the occasional change up in there as well and might be the kind of guy that's going to be a little more about weak contact than just overpowering elite strikeout rates. Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of times a cutter is a step in for a poor change, you know? And they don't function the same way, but I'm seeing Manoa has thrown eight cutters, supposedly.

So that's interesting. I wonder if that's something that'll change when he's coming up through the minors again. But, you know, in terms of results and averages, his changeup has given up a 314 batting average and a 457 slugging to lefties. Of course, his slider, 325 and 550, but that's what you're talking about

when you're talking about these poor splits. He doesn't have a good arsenal against lefties, and that doesn't require a real model or anything. You just have to be like, oh, he's a sink or slider guy. What does he do against lefties? It's a pretty simple, old school question. We are going to sign off

on our way out the door. A reminder, you can get a subscription to The Athletic for a dollar a month for the first year at theathletic.com slash rates and barrels. You can find us on Twitter.

Eno is at Eno Saris. I am at Derrick Van Riper. The pod is at rates and barrels. No episode on Tuesday. We're going to bump Project Prospect over to Wednesday because of the 4th of July holiday here in the States. So have a safe and happy 4th of July if you are celebrating that. We are back with you on Wednesday. Thanks for listening. Thank you.