RADIO
Nothing is more discouraging than watching your fantasy pitcher get lit up like a Christmas tree every time he toes the rubber. ERA and WHIP are both rate stats, meaning that it takes a lot of good performances to smooth over a disaster. Furthermore, owners with IP caps eventually reach a point where they don't have enough innings left to realistically compete in the rate categories.
Two promising pitchers who have discouraged their owners thus far are Colorado's Tyler Anderson and New York's Masahiro Tanaka. Anderson was seen as a nice $1 play to fill out a rotation after rookie success at Coors Field, but hasn't yet lived up even to his modest price tag. Tanaka was seen as an ace in some quarters, likely burning owners who now lack a staff anchor. Are either of these guys going to turn it around?
Ownership rates provided are from Yahoo leagues.
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The Fantasy Jury is Out
Tyler Anderson (SP, COL) 25% Owned
Note: This piece was written before Anderson was placed on the 10-Day DL with left knee inflammation.
Anderson is 3-5 with a 5.85 ERA (3.73 xFIP) in 60 IP this season, numbers that do not help at all in fantasy. Most of his "luck metrics" suggest that better times are ahead: his 68.7% strand rate seems a little low, .331 BABIP a little high, and his 24.1% HR/FB astronomical. We are talking about a Coors pitcher though, so we probably should not blindly expect his luck to even out.
Most of the damage occurred during a disastrous April that saw Anderson compile a 7.71 ERA. His overall GB% was just 35.7% that month, and he didn't strike anybody out either (17.5% K-rate). May was much better by surface stats (3.94 ERA), but the peripherals are even more encouraging. His GB% rose to 55.8%, while his K-rate surged to 27.8%. It isn't clear what happened in April, but Anderson looks like the guy we were interested in last season.
Of course, not every promising arm succeeds at Coors Field. The key to success at Coors is to induce ground balls (which the thin air doesn't affect) without using sinkers or curves (which break differently at altitude). Anderson has not made any significant pitch mix changes this year, so he still relies on a fastball/cutter/change combination to generate grounders and Ks. In theory, this approach should work at Coors. In practice, however, both the heater (53.6% to 39.2%) and cutter (56.3% to 34.5%) are inducing significantly fewer grounders than they did last year. Chances are this is the result of whatever happened in April, as Anderson's GB% was back where it should be in May.
It is one thing to generate grounders, but quite another to produce soft grounders. Batters are averaging an exit velocity of just 75.9 mph on grounders against Anderson this year, the lowest mark in baseball (min. 100 balls in play). His 81.6 mph mark last year was also in the top 10 of the league if you remove relievers, suggesting that he has a knack for this. The Rockies also play fantastic infield defense, as Nolan Arenado has 13 Defensive Runs Saved, DJ LeMahieu has seven, and Trevor Story has three despite missing some time to a left shoulder strain. This should allow Anderson to post a solid WHIP moving forward.
Anderson also seems to possess a solid repertoire of pitches. The change is his stand out offering, boasting a 20.2% whiff rate and 42.3% chase rate. It is ably set up by a fastball that lives in the zone (57.4% Zone%), allowing Anderson to avoid walks (7.6% BB%) and get ahead in the count. The cutter is something of an in-between pitch, as it offers a solid whiff rate (15.5%) while also landing in the strike zone a reasonable amount of the time (47.4% Zone%). This arsenal supports his current 22.4% K-rate, but likely lacks the upside to go beyond it.
Anderson is exactly the same guy he was last year, but a terrible April is still making his season line look brutal. He's a fantastic waiver add in most formats, and he probably won't cost much in a trade if you strike while his stats look bad.
Verdict: Champ
Masahiro Tanaka (SP, NYY) 94% Owned
Tanaka has been worse than Anderson so far, posting a 5-5 record and 6.34 ERA (4.06 xFIP) in 2017. Like Anderson, Tanaka's luck metrics all support positive regression: 68.1% strand rate, .339 BABIP against, and 21.2% HR/FB. However, a pitch mix change may prevent that from coming to fruition.
Tanaka's style is simple. He tries to get ahead in the count so he can put batters away with his devastating splitter (23.2% whiff rate, 54.5% chase rate). It's never a strike (26.8% Zone%), so Tanaka can only use it when ahead in the count. Tanaka is throwing more 4-seamers this year in an effort to do that (20.8% after just 6.5% last year), but the offering's 45.2% Zone% (52.1% career) isn't getting the job done. Some pitches benefit from evading the strike zone, but not Tanaka's heater (.356/.396/.622 slash line against). He features a sinker that could fill this role too, but its 50.6% Zone% is only okay. Like many sinkers, batters tee off on it as well (.365/.452/.794 line against). Tanaka used to throw a cutter to help set up the split, but he has virtually abandoned it (9.2% last year, 2.1% this).
Once Tanaka falls behind in the count, his split is off of the table (20.8% used versus 30.2% last season). He becomes more predictable, allowing batters to hit the ball with more authority. Last season, airborne baseballs hit against Tanaka averaged 92.6 mph in exit velocity, and he was great at preventing Barrels (4.3% Brls/BBE). This year, the average airborne exit velocity has shot up to 94.7 mph, tied for ninth highest in all of MLB. His Brls/BBE rate is up to 10.7%, also ninth-highest in the league. When you call Yankee Stadium home and share a division with Fenway Park, Camden Yards, and the Rogers Centre, allowing hard-hit airborne contact is a recipe for disaster.
This suggests that Tanaka should be fishing for grounders, but the team behind him is not built to handle them. The Yankees have received negative DRS from every infield position including catcher this year, with Chase Headley's -6 at third base standing out as especially poor. Grounders against Tanaka have a BABIP of .301 as a result, a number that is unlikely to head south unless the Yanks improve their infield defense.
That leaves only Ks as an avenue for success, and Tanaka has not posted a truly plus K-rate since his rookie 2014. His current K% is 20.5%, identical to last year's mark despite a slider (22.6% whiff rate, 49.6% chase) that is dramatically overperforming relative to its career averages (16.3% and 39.8%, respectively). Poorly located fastballs probably do not make the slider more effective, so it could get ugly when the slider calms down. Owners in shallow formats can just drop him, while deeper leaguers should try to sell him for pennies on the dollar.
Verdict: Chump
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