Are You For Real? Surprising Pitcher Starts from Drew Smyly and Joey Lucchesi

April 25, 2023

Elliott Baas looks at starting pitchers who turned in surprising starts recently. These SP could emerge as waiver wire targets and sleepers for Week 4, or simply mirages.

Welcome back to "Are You For Real?", a weekly column where we take starting pitchers who had surprisingly good starts over the past week and put them under the microscope to determine whether they're legit or just smoke and mirrors.

It was good to be a lefty last week, and we'll be breaking down two spectacular starts from southpaws on Friday. First, we'll be looking at Drew Smyly's bid with perfection. Then, we'll dive into Joey Lucchesi's first MLB start since 2021.

Roster percentages are taken from Yahoo and are accurate as of 04/24/2023.

Drew Smyly, Chicago Cubs – 24% Rostered

2022 Stats: 106.1 IP, 3.47 ERA, 4.23 FIP, 14.5% K-BB%
04/21 vs. LAD: 7.2 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 10 K

Smyly flirted with history on Friday, carrying a perfect game into the eighth inning before losing it on a tragic collision with catcher Yan Gomes. Smyly may not have completed the perfecto, but it was an impressive outing nonetheless. Smyly now has an 0.98 ERA over his last three starts, making him an enticing waiver-wire option for fantasy players. Will he fall back to earth, or will it be all Smyles for those who add him?

Once a highly regarded prospect in Detroit’s system, age and injury troubles have turned the left-hander from a potential future frontliner to a veteran innings-eater. Smyly has simplified his pitching arsenal over the last few seasons, to the point where he is leaning heavily on just two pitches. In past seasons Smyly had relied on a four-seam, cutter, curveball approach on the mound. Things have changed for him since coming to the Cubs, as Smyly has reduced his repertoire to a sinker and curveball with the occasional cutter. In fact, Smyly threw only two different pitches—the curve and the sinker—in this start.

Usually, when a pitcher only throws two pitches, he makes his living in the bullpen, not the rotation. When a pitcher defies the odds and finds success as a two-pitch starter, the success is often the result of one, outstanding pitch. That pitch may be his curveball, which Cubs’ pitching coach Tommy Hottovy called a “unicorn pitch” thanks to its ability to deceive hitters. But what makes the pitch special?

Smyly’s curveball averages just 77.4 MPH on the gun, which is slow even for a curveball these days, but not what makes the pitch unique. What makes Smyly’s curveball stand out is the movement. Smyly’s curveball has a spin rate of 2086 RPM, nearly 400 RPM below the league average this season. We typically associate curveballs with high spin rates, and typically the higher the better, but Smyly provides a counter-example as he carves up batters with this low-spin offering.

The lower-than-average spin rate means the pitch doesn’t move as much as the standard curveball, but it also means the pitch doesn't follow the path and trajectory of a standard curveball, meaning the batter has a difficult time gauging where the pitch will end up, even if they recognize it as a curveball. Here are a few examples from this start.

The second example demonstrates the pitch’s deceptiveness well, as to the batter it looked like a juicy hanging curveball, but the batter swings under the pitch, expecting it to drop more than it actually did.

The numbers on his curveball are impressive as well, as opposing batters are hitting just .200 against the pitch with a .475 OPS and 15.1% swinging strike rate. Those numbers aren’t bad, and while one would be apt to point out the hilariously small sample size (166 curveballs thrown this season), one encouraging sign for Smyly is his curveball performance last season.

Smyly really began his curveball crusade after coming to Chicago in 2022, and last season opponents hit just .225 with a .588 OPS and 16.2% swinging strike rate. The number that impresses me most is the 39.7% chase rate Smyly had with the pitch last season. This suggests that Smyly can get consistent swings-and-misses with the pitch going forward and could even eclipse the 20.4% strikeout rate he put up last season.

The curveball looks legit, so should we all rush to add Drew Smyly? Not quite. The issue is that, outside of the curveball, Smyly doesn’t seem to have much to offer. His sinker has done nothing to even out his strong flyball tendencies and fails to generate the whiffs in similar numbers to his curveball. It’s not that I’m expecting big strikeout numbers from a 91 MPH sinker, but since Smyly doesn’t throw any other pitches, the sinker’s lack of strikeout upside puts a hard cap on Smyly’s overall strikeout ability.

There is more to pitching than strikeouts, but Smyly’s history of Gopheritis (1.45 career HR/9. 1.35 HR/9 last year), poor injury track record, and good fortune so far (.241 BABIP, 6.9% HR/FB rate) presents a lot of risk for the fantasy player. A high-upside pitcher who can produce big strikeout numbers offsets some of their risk, but Smyly doesn’t give us that upside on a start-by-start basis. Heck, this most recent outing was his first double-digit strikeout game since 2020. Ultimately, we’re looking at a two-pitch pitcher with one good pitch. He will have his moments and be occasionally useful in fantasy baseball, but it’s not worth investing any resources into acquiring Smyly.

Verdict:

At age 34, Smyly seems to have finally found himself as a sinker-curveball guy. His curveball looks like a stellar offering that should produce decent strikeout numbers and make hitters look foolish all year long. Beyond the curveball, there isn’t much to like about Smyly. He throws a middling fastball, has heavy flyball tendencies, and has averaged just 93.1 innings per season since 2019. Smyly is fine as a streamer or as a back-end rotation piece, but it’s unlikely that he’d provide anything more.

Joey Lucchesi, New York Mets – 10% Rostered

2022 Stats: Did Not Pitch
04/21 @ SF: 7 IP, 4 H, 0 ER, 2 BB, 9 K

Lucchesi made his first MLB appearance since 2021 last Friday and came back in style as he shut down the Giants for seven scoreless innings en route to a well-earned victory. The outing probably felt good for Lucchesi, who appears to be the new fifth-starter for the Mets following the Carlos Carrasco injury. Can Lucchesi hang on to his new role? And, more importantly, can he help us in fantasy?

Lucchesi may be a forgotten name, but he’s not wholly unfamiliar to those who have been playing fantasy baseball for a couple of years. Lucchesi had some decent prospect pedigree as an up-and-coming lefty in San Diego’s system and had some success with a 10.04 K/9 and 3.64 SIERA his rookie season. Lucchesi only regressed following that rookie year and has struggled to pitch in the majors at all, with just 51 total MLB innings pitched between 2020-2023. Lucchesi did undergo Tommy John surgery and missed all of 2022.

Lucchesi is a three-pitch pitcher, using a sinker, a cutter, and a curveball. He is an interesting pitcher to analyze in contrast to Drew Smyly, as both are left-handers, both throw with underwhelming velocity, and both have a unique curveball that shares characteristics with a changeup. Lucchesi throws his changeup-curveball hybrid (sometimes called a churve) by using a changeup grip, but throwing the pitch as if it were a curveball, producing a similar deceptive effect to Smyly. Here’s an example from this start.

The pitch looks impossible to hit there, and it’s been close to impossible for opposing batters to hit Lucchesi’s churve in past seasons. Opponents have a .207 AVG, .589 OPS, and 17.5% swinging strike rate all-time against the pitch. Lucchesi had a 20% swinging strike rate with the pitch in this start alone. Lucchesi has a 24.7% career strikeout rate, and he should be able to sustain a similar strikeout rate as a starter with this pitch.

The issue for Lucchesi is, again, quite similar to the issue with Drew Smyly. Outside of the one good pitch, Lucchesi doesn’t stand out in any particular way. His fastball is a 90 MPH sinker that has proven hittable (.773 OPS against all time) in the past. he has middling control with a career 7.9% walk rate, and he has had issues with health and consistency over the course of his career. Lucchesi has dazzled us with good starts before, and there wasn't enough in this one outing to show that he's taken another step forward.

Verdict:

The parallels to Drew Smyly are strong here, so much so that Lucchesi presents as the perfect consolation prize on waivers for those who miss out on Smyly. Lucchesi has similar skills and flaws, but his potential outcomes are even more volatile since he’s barely pitched over the last three years. Lucchesi can dazzle with his churve, but he doesn't offer much outside of that one pitch. He should be considered a streaming option or short-term add while the Mets get healthy.

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