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Thunder Dan Palyo analyzes the suprising turnarounds that four MLB pitchers have made this season and whether or not you should pick them up for your fantasy baseball team.
We are often too quick to write off players or give up on them mid-season. It's easy to label a pitcher a "gas can" or a hitter a bust if they struggle. Sometimes we are more patient with young players than veterans, but the fact remains that every baseball player regardless of experience is constantly trying to improve and they're making changes or tweaks that they believe can get them out of a funk or take them to the next level.
Every player's trajectory of their performance over the course is quite different. If you were to plot them out on a graph, some would look like roller coasters while others would be closer to flat, but every player has their peaks and valleys.
The pitchers I want to analyze today fell off a cliff early in the season and were struggling mightily - each of them for their own reasons. But their performance over the last month has restored some hope that they can finish the season strong. Each of these players is widely available in leagues and in this piece, I want to dig into which of them could be potentially solid additions to your fantasy baseball team down the stretch.
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Luis Medina, Oakland Athletics – 9% Rostered
2023 Stats: 75.2 IP, 5.35 ERA, 4.50 SIERA, 1.47 WHIP, 22.8 K%
Last 30 Days (4 starts): 22 IP, 2.86 ERA, 3.07 SIERA, 1.05 WHIP, 30% K%
I can't take credit for being the analyst that saw Medina's revival coming. I read a lot of work done by other baseball writers and I have to shout out Eric Samulski for being ahead of the curve here on Medina. He was already writing about Medina's pitch mix change back in mid-July after seeing Medina strike out nine Red Sox (his favorite team). I'm always intrigued when pitchers flip the switch to their strikeout potential because I bet on strikeout props every day and so I started to look into Medina as well to try to get ahead of the market on his strikeout props.
The good news is that he struck out six in his next three starts and has won me some money in the process. I also added him to some fantasy teams just recently because it seems more like his results could stick than just be fluky. He pitched well against a good Houston team and again in Coors Field - one of the toughest parks for pitchers in the league.
We can see here that he made a pretty big change right around the start of June when started drastically reducing the number of four-seamers he was throwing and started throwing his sinker instead. His fastball is easily his worst pitch based on Statcast metrics and his sinker is inducing weaker contact instead. He's also ramped up his slider usage to around 27%. That's been big for his strikeouts as it's easily his best pitch, carrying a 52% whiff rate.
Over these last four starts, Medina has posted an impressive 16.6% SwStr% and 5.6% BB%. Compare those to his season-long number of 11.2% SwStr% and 10.8% BB%. I've said it a bunch of times before, but there comes a time in every young pitcher's career when they start to understand how to pitch and not just throw. We saw it earlier this season with Mitch Keller and perhaps we are seeing it with Medina here, too, as he's now throwing three different pitches at least 25% of the time or more.
Verdict: BUY MEDINA IN ALL FORMATS
In really shallow leagues, you might not need him, but this is a young pitcher who has shown some nice upside over the last month and who has some impressive stuff. I really like what he's been doing and these July numbers are really impressive. There are still going to be bumps in the road, but it certainly seems like his arrow is pointing up.
Steven Matz, St. Louis Cardinals – 26% Rostered
2023 Stats: 93 IP, 4.06 ERA, 4.19 SIERA, 1.39 WHIP, 21.6% K
Last 30 Days (5 starts): 29 IP, 2.17 ERA, 3.64 SIERA, 0.93 WHIP, 25.4% K%
Don't look now, but Matz ranks 67th overall on the Yahoo player rater over the last 30 days. He began the season in the Cardinals' rotation but was booted to the bullpen as a long reliever in late May after his ERA has risen all the way to 5.72.
But Matz pitched pretty well in relief and made his way back into the rotation by July and now finds himself as one of their top remaining starters after the team traded Jack Flaherty and Jordan Montgomery at the deadline.
What changed for Matz is a lot harder to find than it was for Medina. He didn't alter his pitch mix really much at all, he still throws mainly three pitches with his sinker being his top pitch and his changeup being the main complement.
Steven Matz's 3Ks in the 2nd. pic.twitter.com/DJOXwqwdbx
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) July 21, 2023
It's quite possible he was just the victim of some bad luck as his BABIP was .354 through the first half of the season and his strand rate was 71%. At some point, his inability to get out of innings and the fact he was giving up runs in bunches without making really bad pitches probably ate away at his confidence, too.
Verdict: MATZ IS VERY SERVICEABLE IN ALL FORMATS
So what we are seeing now is some positive regression in his favor. He was never bad, to begin with. And he may even be pitching a bit over his head right now. He is what he is - a pretty good, but not great pitcher who can give you a moderate amount of strikeouts without hurting your ERA or WHIP too badly.
Jameson Taillon, Chicago Cubs – 27% Rostered
2023 Stats: 89 IP, 5.46 ERA, 4.61 SIERA, 1.37 WHIP, 20.1% K
Last 30 Days (5 starts): 30.1 IP, 2.67 ERA, 4.45 SIERA, 1.02 WHIP, 19.7% K%
Taillon was once a major prospect for my beloved Pittsburgh Pirates but suffered multiple arm injuries that really set back his development. He revitalized his career with the Yankees and finished last season with 14 wins and an ERA of 3.91. The Cubs signed him last Winter to help bolster their rotation, but he had a terrible first half and was probably dropped by many managers who drafted him this season.
Taillon has seen his groundball rate drop all the way to 36.5% this season, which is a problem when you pitch in the NL Central and make a bunch of starts in home-run friendly venues like Wrigley Field, Great American Ball Park, and Miller Park.
Like Matz, he was also getting pretty unlucky in the first half with a BABIP of .310 (not all that bad) and a 57.8% strand rate (really bad). So he was bound for some positive regression but had still pitched worse than expected and he needed to do something different in order to start getting some better results.
Jameson Taillon, Nasty 81mph Curveball. 😨 pic.twitter.com/c0ftJ3NLMm
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) July 30, 2023
Taillon altered his pitch mix in the opposite direction of Medina and actually simplified things a bit. Taillon is a pitcher who has six, even seven different pitches that he. can deploy and he wasn't throwing any of them more than 30% of the time. To me, that's often a sign that a pitcher doesn't have enough confidence in any single pitch to feature it and is constantly trying to mix it up to keep hitters guessing.
He was throwing his cutter more than his four-seamer and leaning on his sinker, too. But the cutter and sinker weren't getting results, so he dropped the usage of those two pitches dramatically and decided to feature his fastball. While the fastball can still get hit hard, throwing it more often helps create a bigger velocity gap with his offspeed pitches, especially his sweeper and curveball that register in the low '80s. The cutter has actually been more effective in the last month since he's been using it less, too, and his ground ball percentage has gone back up in the mid-40s, even if his strikeouts haven't really increased much.
Verdict: I'M LESS CONFIDENT THAN MATZ, BUT ADD TAILLON FOR NOW AND SEE IF HE CAN KEEP IT UP
The Cubs are rolling right now and the entire team is playing with confidence. Taillon pitches today, so let's see if he continues to have his best stuff as he faces a tough Reds lineup. He ranks 70th overall on the Yahoo player rater over the last month, that's pretty substantial. And we know that he knows how to pitch and can be effective even without blowing guys away.
Austin Gomber, Colorado Rockies – 9% Rostered
2023 Stats: 114 IP, 5.68 ERA, 4.93 SIERA, 1.44 WHIP, 15.7% K
Last 30 Days (5 starts): 30 IP, 3.00 ERA, 4.68 SIERA, 1.10 WHIP, 14.5% K%
Austin Gomber is rostered in just 9% of leagues just like Luis Medina. But one of these pitchers is not like the other. While Gomber has reeled off a string of solid starts, I am the least confident in his resurgence of the bunch.
Other than a much-improved walk rate and some more movement on his curveball, those Statcast sliders paint a pretty bleak picture. And I include the rolling xwOBA charts as well to drive home the point that even while he's trending up over the course of the season (the xwOBA is trending down in the third chart), he's still basically an average or slightly below-average pitcher even at his best.
The lack of strikeouts makes him hard to palate for fantasy and there's nothing to suggest that's going to improve at any point. Even during this last five-start stretch, he still ranks just 221st on the Yahoo player rater.
Verdict: GOMBER CAN BE IGNORED IN ALL BUT THE DEEPEST OF LEAGUES
Even in his best form, Gomber is simply a mediocre starting pitcher who doesn't strike guys out often enough to warrant consideration. And pitching at Coors Field for his home games is going to catch up with him eventually with as much contact as he allows. A move out of Colorado would do him good perhaps later in his career and he'd probably be wise to switch over to a sinker at some point and try to become a groundball pitcher - following Matz's blueprint for success.
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