Pitching Breakdown
Wednesday, April 25th, 2018
In case you all didn’t know, my name is Matt, mdellagnese14 on twitter. I am currently a student at Springfield College with a love and passion for sports, mainly baseball.
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I am mostly a Fanduel player, so the content in my articles will be for geared mainly towards Fanduel. However, I will include pricing from all three sites (Fanduel, Draftkings, FantasyDraft). Some plays may be better off for the two pitcher sites and I will mention that when needed about a pitcher.
Pitching is one of the most, if not the most important position in your MLB lineups and selecting the right one will help you tremendously. Go check out the MLB Pitching Strategy article to get my thought process on picking these pitchers each slate!
NOTE: most of the stats I used are from a 14-game sample to the handiness of pitchers. If I reference season numbers, I will mention that in the write-up!
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Definitions of Stats used in articles via Fangraphs.com
K% (Strikeout Percentage): Frequency with which the pitcher has struck out a batter, calculated as strikeouts divided by total batters faced.
An average K% is 20%, anything above is considered great or elite
BB% (Walk Percentage): Frequency with which the pitcher has issued a walk, calculated as walks divided by total batters faced. Average BB% for pitchers is 7.7%, anything lower is considered great or elite
BABIP (Batting Average on Balls in Play): The rate at which the pitcher allows a hit when the ball is put in play. A BABIP at or near .300 is considered average. EXAMPLE: if a pitcher has a BABIP of .200 it means he could be getting lucky and balls in play are turned into outs if they have a BABIP of .400 he could be getting unlucky on balls in play and they are turning into hits.
xFIP (Expected Fielding Independent Pitching): An estimate of a pitcher’s ERA based on strikeouts, walks/HBP, and fly balls allowed, assuming league average results on balls in play and home run to fly ball ratio. The Lower the xFIP the better. 3.80 is around average.
SIERA (Skill-Interactive ERA): An ERA estimator that attempts to more accurately capture a pitcher’s performance based on strikeouts, walks/HBP, home runs, and batted ball data. The lower the better 3.90 is considered average, so anything below that is great to excellent. Anything about is poor.
Hard% (Hard Contact Percentage): Percentage of hard-hit batted balls. Anything below 30% is considered average or better. the lower Hard% the better, meaning pitchers are giving up more soft contact.
wRC+: A rate statistic that credits a hitter for the value of each outcome rather than treating them all equally. League average is 100, each point above or below that is one percentage point better or worse than league average. wRC+ is a better representation of offense value.
O-Swing% = Swings at pitches outside the zone / pitches outside the zone
Z-Swing% = Swings at pitches inside the zone / pitches inside the zone
Swing% = Swings / Pitches
O-Contact% = Number of pitches on which contact was made on pitches outside the zone / Swings on pitches outside the zone
Z-Contact% = Number of pitches on which contact was made on pitches inside the zone / Swings on pitches inside the zone
SwStr% = Swings and misses / Total pitches
Yesterday’s Results: (here I will post fantasy points from previous day’s picks)
Early Slate (all games except the 7pm main)
Justin Verlander vs LAA: The Angels have been great this season and we just saw Cole do great against them and Morton struggled against them last night. Verlander will look to replicate what Cole did a few nights ago. The Angels have a 20.9% K rate against RHP and a below average wRC+ at 87. Verlander has dominated these hitters over 171 at-bats, and that is a fairly large sample size. They have just a .123 average, .222 wOBA with a 32.7% K rate. Pujols is the only hitter to have higher than a .250 average against him too. Verlander is pitching with a 31.7% K rate this year with just a 3.05 SIERA and allowing just 24.3% Hard%. He’s getting a lot of flyballs, (more than he usually does) but it hasn’t been hurting him that much. He’s demonstrating a career-high 13.9% SwStr% and a career low contact % at 76.6%. Verlander has been outstanding this year and he will continue it here this afternoon against the Angels.
Max Scherzer @ SF: What can we not say about Max, he’s been phenomenal this year. He has a 37.6% K rate with a very low 2.26 SIERA. It will be tough to pick between Verlander and Max today, but I think I will go with Max as my top gun this afternoon. He has a career-high 18.4% swinging strike rate and also a career low contact rate of 64.2%. Over the L14 the Giants have the 6th highest K rate to RHP at 25.5%. He has had success against the Giants as they have just a .209 average against him with a low .294 wOBA and a high 35.4% K rate against Mad Max. Not going to waste my time or yours on why to play him, if you can afford him, play him.
Jeff Samardzija vs WAS: He pitched just 5 innings in his first start off the DL and still put up 33 points against a good Angels offense. Now he gets a Washington team who is struggling a bit of late. I’ll look more at 2017 numbers with Shark right now because he has 1 start this year so far. Last year he had a 24.2% K rate during the year with a very low 3.8% walk rate. He will have to build his stamina back up and this is a better time to face the Nats when they are a little cold. He pitched with an average 3.63 SIERA last season and got 41.5% groundballs while getting hit hard 30% of the time which is average. He’s done “okay” against the current Nationals roster with them hitting .271 against him. The biggest damage against him is Matt Adams who is 7-14 with 2 HR. He does have a decent 23.5% K rate against them though. I’m not expecting a ton of Shark here today, but he will look to build off his decent first start of the year.
Sonny Gray vs MIN: What the heck is wrong with Sonny Gray this year. I cannot seem to find exactly what it is, his velocity, usage, and movement of his pitches are all very close if not better than last season. I think it could be due to his higher walk rate this year and he is getting BABIP’d a bit giving up a .379 BABIP this year. Other issues could be his LOB% where he is leaving fewer people on base and giving up more runs. If we look at his splits throughout the lineup, he struggles the 2nd time he sees hitters but is great his first and 3rd time through the order. That 2nd time through the order KILLS his advanced stats. He NEEDS to get his walks down to be successful, but I do not HATE this play for GPPs. The Yankees have been dominating the Twins this series and historically have crushed them at the Stadium. The Twins are middle of the pack with a 23% K rate and right below average wRC+. They are not hitting for a ton of power right now with a .119 ISO in their L14. The current roster for the Twins have a .237 average against Gray over 93 at-bats and a 25.8% K rate. He has had some success against them and he will look to turn it around. I do NOT trust him in cash games or smaller GPPs yet, but in a large field GPP he could be lower owned and we can hope he finds his groove tonight.
Felix Hernandez @ CWS: Another GPP ONLY play for me this afternoon. He hasn’t seen the White Sox all that much in the last 2 years (just 2 starts), but he has done fairly well against them in those two starts. He’s actually been decent this year aside from that horrible game against the Giants. If he’s able to get groundballs he should have some success here this afternoon. Their current roster does not have many at-bats against him so the BvP is a little irrelevant for me today. He has his struggles the 3rd time through the order but has been decent the first two allowing a .252 wOBA the first time and .262 wOBA the second time through the order. After that, it goes WAY up to .605. If he can get 5-6 innings with a 5-6 K’s here and they get him out before he has to face much of the lineup for the 3rd time, I think he could have an okay afternoon. Do not expect much, I think he could be very sneaky in large field GPPs.
My Personal Rankings
- Max Scherzer (all formats)
- Justin Verlander (all formats)
- Jeff Samardzija (GPP)
- Sonny Gray (GPP)
- Felix Hernandez (GPP)
