Are You For Real? Surprising Pitcher Starts from Week 25

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

Welcome to Are You For Real?, a weekly column where we look at pitchers who turned in surprisingly good starts and try to determine whether they are the real deal. We're already on Week 25, meaning it's the fantasy playoffs in head-to-head leagues, or crunch-time in Roto leagues. Every start, every win, and every strikeout matters in our rotations this time of year. This week the central arms showed up in a big way, and we're looking at three pitchers who play for teams in America's heartland.

Miles Mikolas helped contribute to St. Louis's wild card efforts with five scoreless against the Padres on Friday. The Tigers aren't wild card hopefuls, but Wily Peralta fired seven scoreless on Sunday over Tampa Bay. Pittsburgh's Max Kranick didn't have the prettiest final line, but generated a lot of swing-and-miss in Miami on Sunday.

Roster percentages quoted in this piece are based on Yahoo availability and are accurate as of 9/20/2021.

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Miles Mikolas, St. Louis Cardinals

8% Rostered

2021 Stats (prior to this start): 26.1 IP, 5.47 ERA, 4.91 FIP, 2.3 K/BB ratio

09/17 vs. SD: 5.2 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 2 BB, 3 K

The Cardinals’ September Voodoo magic is in full swing this year, as they surge towards a wildcard spot despite having a roster that, on paper, shouldn’t be hanging around with the other contenders. The Lizard King was big part of that magic on Friday, helping deliver a serious blow to the wilting San Diego Padres with 5.2 scoreless innings. Frustratingly, Mikolas fell one out short of notching his first quality start of the year because St. Louis wanted to bring in a lefty to face Adam Frazier. Still, this was still the closest we’ve seen to vintage Miles Mikolas all year. With the fantasy season winding down, Mikolas could prove to be the veteran resurgence that provides a boon to those of us still duking it out in the playoffs.

Mikolas flamed out his first go-round in major leagues, and spent the 2015-17 seasons dominating batters in Japan in the NPB to the tune of a 2.18 ERA in 62 starts. After inking a two-year deal with St. Louis in late 2017, Mikolas became the poster child for the foreign league reclamation project with a breakout 2018 season where Mikolas went 18-4 with a 2.83 ERA over 200.2 IP. He followed it up with a less impressive 4.18 ERA in the 2019 year of the rabbit ball, but still pitched 184 innings and looked like a reliable back-end starter. However, injuries have seriously derailed the last two seasons for Mikolas and ruined his reputation for dependability. He underwent non-Tommy John elbow surgery in 2020, and has battled elbow and shoulder issues in 2021. When he is healthy, Miles uses a five-pitch mix consisting of a four-seam fastball, sinker, slider, curveball, and a changeup. With Mikolas, it’s always been less about the stuff and more about control, as the Lizard King could also be nicknamed the Location King, for his stellar ability to limit walks and pound the zone.

During his 2018-19 peak, Mikolas was famous for his microscopic walk rate, walking 3.9% of all batters he faced over those two seasons, good for a 1.43 BB/9 rate. He was tied with Mike Leake for the lowest walk rate among qualified pitchers over that two-year stretch. When it comes to elbow and shoulder issues, we sort of instinctively think that the injuries will diminish the pitcher’s stuff. We worry about velocity, spin, and break, and while those things can definitely be affected, something that is often overlooked in pitchers returning from injury is command and control. Even if the pitcher can throw as hard or as sharply pre-injury, he may not be able to locate the pitch like he could pre-injury. That’s been true for Mikolas thus far, as his walk rate has ballooned to 7.3% and he’s walked 2.81 batters per nine this season. That is still an above average rate, but a far cry from the elite level he used to sustain. In fact, with this most recent start Mikolas has walked multiple batters in three of his seven games this season, while he only walked multiple batters seven times in 32 starts back in 2018.

What’s interesting about Mikolas’s jump in walk rate is that he’s actually pitching with the highest zone rate of his career at 58.4%. Mikolas is absolutely hammering the zone with his four-seam fastball and sinker, owning a 64.8% zone rate on both pitches. He doesn’t seem to have a problem finding the zone, but let’s see where he’s actually putting the ball. Below is a heatmap comparison of his sinker between 2018-19 (top) and 2021 (bottom).

It’s certainly a small sample size as Mikolas has only tossed 32 innings this season compared to the 384.2 he threw between 2018-19, but he seems to be throwing towards the right side of plate more often. This could be a result of diminished command, as Mikolas can still find the zone, but it’s a bit all-over-the-place within the strike zone. Let’s have a look at his heatmaps on the four-seamer now.

This one is a little more drastic, as Mikolas is clearing trying to keep the ball up much more this season compared to past seasons. The high fastball is in vogue in baseball right now, so this is likely an intentional shift. However, pitchers normally do this to try and generate more whiffs, which Mikolas is not doing (whiff rate on his fastball is down 4% from 2019), or they try and keep the fastball up higher because they don’t trust it in the heart of the zone. It’s hard to argue with the results, as batters have hit just .148 with a .259 SLG off Mikolas’s four-seamer this season, but with a .294 xBA and .535 xSLG, it looks like Mikolas may have benefitted from good BABIP luck more than anything else.

I mentioned that the whiff rate is down on Mikolas’s four-seamer, but it’s worth noting that the velocity is also down about 1 MPH from his 2018 peak. Maybe it’s not that Mikolas’s command is worsened by his injuries, but his stuff is weaker and he no longer trusts going right at hitters with the pitch, instead feeling the need to attack with high fastballs. This can be a successful approach, but it’s an “old man” way of pitching, with Mikolas’s teammate J.A. Happ serving as one of the pioneers of this approach, saving his career in his mid-30s by throwing the high fastball. Mikolas was throwing a bit harder in this outing, averaging 93.8 MPH with the fastball, but I’d still be worried about the other shoe dropping given how poor the expected stats have been with Mikolas’s fastball.

Outside of the fastballs, we still may be looking at a decline in stuff for Mikolas. One of the most alarm metrics in Mikolas’s profile is his 31.4% chase rate, a 5% decline from his peak. The chase rate on his slider is way down this season, with a pathetic 25.4% o-swing rate on Mikolas’s slider this season. Mikolas’s walk rate is up not because his command is lost, but because his stuff isn’t good enough to fool hitters. Batters can lay off the sliders and high fastballs and make Mikolas pitch in the zone, yet Mikolas’s stuff isn’t good enough to go after hitters in the zone. He was never a strikeout guy, now he is among the lowest in chase rate and swinging strike rate among starting pitchers in the major leagues. His 7.1% swinging strike rate is tied for fourth-lowest among starting pitchers (min. 30 IP), hanging out with the likes of Jake Arrieta and Chi Chi Gonzalez. Not company any pitcher should want to find himself in.

The overarching problem with a profile like Mikolas’s is that he’s got such little margin for error due to weak stuff, that when his pitches become a little bit worse due to injury and age (Mikolas is 33), he can no longer walk the good command, groundball tightrope he balanced so precariously earlier in his career. It would be easier to overlook these flaws if Mikolas was piling up the innings like he used to, but with his injury troubles the Cardinals likely won’t want to push him beyond 85-90 pitches very often. That means we won’t get the quality starts and it will be hard to get consistent wins for Mikolas, so at best we’re hoping for five innings with 0-2 runs allowed and 2-4 strikeouts. That’s just not enough to gamble on a pitcher with a 5.00 SIERA during the fantasy playoffs.

Verdict:

Injuries have taken a toll on Mikolas’s stuff, which has in turn affected his once elite walk rate. Mikolas can no longer pound the zone with his stuff, and batters won’t chase his below average breaking balls. That means we’re mostly spinning the BABIP roulette wheel with Mikolas, and that’s just too risky for a low-upside pitcher. He might continue to defy the metrics as so many Cardinals seem to do, but he’s a low-end desperation streamer at best for his next start at Milwaukee on Wednesday. The  Brewers have been raking as of late with a .330 team wOBA over the last 14 days. As things shake out now, Mikolas has two more starts, both against Milwaukee, though the Cardinals could reshuffle as they try and compete for a Wild Card spot. Adam Wainwright seems like a likely candidate to pitch on short rest if necessary.

Max Kranick, Pittsburgh Pirates

1% Rostered

2021 Stats (prior to this start): 24.2 IP, 7.66 ERA, 4.78 FIP, 1.9 K/BB ratio

09/19 @ MIA: 5 IP, 4 H, 3 ER, 4 BB

Kranick made some waves earlier this season by firing five perfect innings in his 2021 debut against the Cardinals in June, but things have been, let’s say, less than perfect for the young righty ever since. He spent most of July getting hammered before earning a one-way ticket back to Indianapolis. Kranick reemerged on Sunday to deliver five strong innings for the Pirates in their matchup with Miami. The final stat line isn’t that impressive on paper, but Kranick piled up a whopping 19 swinging strikes in just five innings, which certainly deserves our attention. With strikeout stuff like this, Kranick could certainly be a sneaky deep league add for the final few weeks, but is there any overlooking his awful ratios to this point?

Kranick is a Pennsylvania product through-and-through, born in Scranton, PA and attending high school in Archbald, PA, Kranick was selected by Pittsburgh in the 11^th round of the 2016 MLB draft. He was never much of a prospect, ranking as the Pirates’ 28^th overall prospect by MLB Pipeline coming into 2021, which is an exceptionally low ranking considering he’s 24 years old and had been in the system for five years. Kranick uses a four-pitch mix, consisting of a four-seam fastball, slider, curveball, and a changeup. His fastball velocity is probably his best individual attribute of any pitch, as Kranick has averaged 94.4 MPH on the heater this year, and can max out around 98 MPH. Even though his fastball looks like the best pitch on paper, Kranick’s slider was the star of the show on Sunday, as he notched nine of his 19 swinging strikes with this pitch.

The slider is Kranick’s favorite breaking ball, as he uses it 29% of the time, more than double his other secondary pitches. It’s a hard, sharp slider averaging 88 MPH. Batters have managed a .257 AVG and .371 SLG against Kranick’s slider this season, although Statcast suggests Kranick has been a little unlucky on the results, giving him a .216 xBA and .289 xSLG on his slider this season. The pitch also has exceptional vertical movement, as Kranick has an extra 4.5 inches of drop with his slider compared to league average. While Kranick’s slider was never highly regarded by scouts, a few of them really popped in this start, and below is an example of one of his best.

That early-game 92 MPH slider to Jesus Sanchez was a real beauty, and seeing a pitch like that makes one wonder why Kranick hasn’t had more success at the minor league level. He’s only had a strikeout rate above 20% during one stop in the minor leagues, and has struggled to stay on the field, battling chronic shoulder issues and throwing over 100 innings just once during his professional career back in 2019 (he’s at 99.2 for 2021, so barring an unforeseen catastrophe, he’ll hit 100 this year too). An issue for Kranick I observed during the course of this outing was an inability to hit that velocity or movement consistently as the game progressed. Obviously, a pitcher’s stuff will wane as his pitch count rises, but even in the early game not all of his sliders looked that good. Here are a few more that were less eye-popping.

He was lucky Lewin Diaz missed that first one, and the second one seems to have a caught a little more plate than Kranick wanted. This might explain why the whiff numbers on his slider are unimpressive other than this outing. Kranick has a 17% swinging strike rate with the pitch this season, but if we subtracted this game he would have a much less impressive 13.6% swinging strike rate. I mentioned he was lucky Lewin Diaz missed the slider, but I think that speaks more to the quality of the matchup here. The Marlins aren’t just a bottom-feeder team, but many of their best hitters, such as Jesus Aguilar, Brian Anderson, and Garrett Cooper, are on the injured list. Batting average certainly isn’t everything, but only one starting Marlins hitter had a batting average above .251 coming into this game, and they started four players with a batting average below .205. There’s soft matchups, and then there’s borderline Triple-A lineups, which is what Miami rolled out on Sunday. 19 swinging strikes is impressive and enough to get my attention, but this outing says more about the opposing hitters than Kranick.

Although he didn’t use it as much as his slider, one pitch that has been impressive for Kranick this season is his curveball. Batters have really struggled against this pitch, hitting just .143 with a .214 SLG on the year. Kranick also has a stellar 17.6% swinging strike rate with his curveball, and unlike the slider, that rate isn’t as heavily influenced by this one outing. Kranick has done a good job inducing poor contact with this pitch, as opponents have an 84.5 MPH average exit velocity and a 29-degree average launch angle against this pitch, making it a pop-up machine. In fact, Kranick has not allowed a single line drive off his curveball all season. He’s only thrown 74 curveballs in the majors this year so the sample size is far too small to extrapolate or draw definitive conclusions from, but it’s encouraging to see such strong results. Long-term, I'm thinking Kranick profiles as reliever, because he can ramp up his velocity and get the most out of his breaking balls in a bullpen role. Perhaps Kranick may use the offseason to adjust his approach and utilize his curveball more often, which is something worth monitoring for those in really deep leagues that might be able to steal a back-end starter for zero cost come draft day 2022, but it would have to be a really deep league.

Verdict:

Kranick seems to have taken advantage of a really weak lineup on Sunday, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to like in his profile. His slider looks really good when right, and his curveball has gotten excellent results in a limited sample this season. Between a .365 BABIP and 61.8% LOB rate bad luck has definitely played a role in his 7.28 ERA, and I think he could be a 4.50 ERA pitcher in the right circumstance. That’s still a pretty low bar for all but the deepest of leagues, though as things line up currently he should catch a home start against the Cubs on September 30. Hopefully you aren’t desperate enough to need him for that outing, but if he has another strong showing at Philadelphia this weekend you could do worse than Kranick vs. the decimated Cubs lineup if you’re in a league where a pitcher with a <5% roster rate has value. His overall ERA should scare anyone else off from adding him, but we know he’s a little better than that 7.28 mark.

 Wily Peralta, Detroit Tigers

13% Rostered

2021 Stats (prior to this start): 76 IP, 3.32 ERA, 4.98 FIP, 1.7 K/BB ratio

09/19 @ TB: 7 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 3 BB, 3 K

Peralta’s season-long numbers would seem to disqualify him from this column, but he has a horrendous MLB track record over the past few seasons. Prior to 2021 Peralta was last seen pitching to a 5.80 ERA out of the Royals bullpen in 2019, and the last time he was a starter he got hammered for a 7.85 ERA in 2017 for the Brewers. The 32-year-old was the next man up for Detroit after Jose Urena and Julio Tehran didn’t work out in their rotation (Really, Al Avila? I know you’re rebuilding, but show a little respect for your fans). Peralta has been hot and cold as a starter this season, but he’s currently hot, allowing just one earned run over his last three starts and has fired 13 scoreless innings over his last two outings. Can we catch Peralta at the perfect time to boost our championship chances, or this one veteran that should be left to the rebuilding clubs of the world?

As mentioned above, Peralta was once a starter for the Brewers and had at least one decent season, pitching to a 17-11 record and 3.53 ERA over 198.2 innings back in 2014. Unfortunately, things unraveled in a hurry and Peralta never posted an ERA below 4.70 as a starter again. He worked his way into the Royals’ closer mix in 2018, but pretty much anyone with a pulse has worked their way into the Royals’ closer mix over the past few years. Peralta works with a four-pitch repertoire, including a four-seam fastball, sinker, slider, and split finger. Whenever it comes to a late-career resurgence, the most important thing to look for is something different. That’s especially true when the player was never really that good to begin with, which is the case for Peralta. Fortunately, there is one glaring change for Peralta that’s made all the difference, and that’s the splitter.

Peralta had never thrown a pitch categorized as a splitter prior to 2019, but it’s been the key to his success in 2021. This pitch has dominated opposing hitters, as batters have mustered an infinitesimal .060 AVG off Peralta’s splitter this season, along with a .120 SLG and 80.2 MPH average exit velocity against. The most remarkable thing about this pitch is the absolutely bonkers 1054 average RPM, which is the second-lowest average spin rate of any pitch in the league, just behind the splitter of another ex-Brewers starter, Junior Guerra. Peralta’s splitter also has the lowest average velocity of any splitter in the majors at 81.3 MPH, giving him over 12 MPH of separation between his splitter and fastball. I could gush over the measurables on this pitch for a while, but let’s have a look at this thing in action, because it’s a sight to behold.

The low spin rate makes the pitch almost knuckleball-esque, as it appears to float through the air as it reaches home plate. This helps increase deception and keeps batters out in front of the pitch, and the low spin rate is a big reason behind the splitter’s monster 19.8% swinging strike rate.

When it comes to splitters, the first two pitchers that come to mind are Kevin Gausman and Shohei Ohtani, both of whom wield deadly splitters. Those two also happen to be the only two pitchers with better run values on their splitters this season, despite Ohtani throwing about 50 more innings than Peralta and Gausman throwing about 100 more innings than Peralta this season. Does Peralta have the upside of Gausman or Ohtani? Of course not, as both of those pitchers have more complete repertoires, but Peralta’s splitter is shaping up to be a special pitch.

While I’d love to go all-in on Peralta based on the splitter, the rest of his game leaves a lot to be desired. He’s really overperformed on batted balls thus far, with a .238 BABIP against and .247 xBA (vs. a .225 actual BA against). His four-seam fastball is the most suspect of these pitches, as batters have hit .220 off the pitch with a .307 wOBA, but have a .289 xBA and .374 xwOBA against Peralta’s fastball. Opponents have also smacked the pitch for a 90.6 MPH average exit velocity, 8-degree average launch angle, and a 33.3% line drive rate against. A bad fastball has been Peralta’s undoing in the past, and he’s likely to experience regression on these batted ball outcomes over time.

While Gausman and Ohtani are sexy names to throw out, a closer comparison for Peralta could be Ohtani’s teammate, Alex Cobb. Cobb is also a bad fastball veteran with a dominating splitter, though Cobb has been proven to be a more capable strikeout pitcher over the course of his career, especially this season, but Peralta could be a discount version of Alex Cobb going forward. That may not be the most exciting player to add or to view as a sleeper for next season, but there’s value in a pitcher like that. Peralta could unlock a better strikeout rate if he began leaning more heavily on his splitter and shied away from the slider, but his 15% strikeout rate is so poor that even if he saw a jump it would still be well below league average.

Verdict:

Peralta has introduced a career-saving splitter this season, and the pitch looks like a gem. A bad fastball and poor peripherals (5.14 SIERA, 1.63 K/BB ratio) should temper our top-end expectations, but Peralta is a capable streaming option going into the last two weeks, and could be a sneaky 2022 sleeper if he finds a spot in a major league rotation. With all the young prospects nobody, and I mean nobody, will be in on Peralta next season, but I’ll definitely look at him as a $1 pitcher in 15+ team leagues or AL-only leagues if he has a rotation spot. His next start comes at home against the Royals on Saturday, and he’s a decent streaming option if you need him there. I would certainly start him over Mikolas. His final start should come against the White Sox in Chicago, which is not an ideal matchup, but he might be worth the start their too if the White Sox are resting their regulars.

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