Are You For Real? Surprising SP Starts from Week 10

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

Welcome back to "Are You For Real?" Each week, we look at lower-owned starting pitchers who have performed unexpectedly well in their last outing(s).

This week we head south for a deep dive on two Texas right-handers, the veteran Lance Lynn and the youngster Ariel Jurado. Then we hop over to Miami for a peek at changeup specialist Trevor Richards.

Ownership is based on Yahoo leagues and is accurate as of 06/04/2019. The goal of this article is to look at pitchers widely available that could be useful in fantasy, whether they have been recently added by a ton of teams or are still sitting on waivers.

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Ariel Jurado, Texas Rangers

4% Owned

2018 Stats: 54.2 IP, 5.93 ERA, 5.28 SIERA, 1.7% K-BB%

05/31 vs. KC: 6 IP, 5 H, 2 ER, 3 BB, 6 K

Jurado was a disaster in 2018, looking like one the worst pitchers in baseball whenever he took the mound for Texas. He's gotten off to a much better start in 2019; in 29.2 innings Jurado has a 2.43 ERA, 3.79 FIP, and an 11.2% K-BB%. He’s improved in practically every way, but given how poor he pitched last season and the limited strikeout numbers, it’s hard to fully buy into him. Jurado’s repertoire is centered around his sinker, a 93 MPH offering that he uses 42.6% of the time. He also throws a four-seamer that clocks in one MPH harder. A slider is his primary breaking ball to righties, while occasionally mixing in a curveball. He uses a changeup as his secondary pitch against left-handed batters. While the arsenal seems deep because Jurado throws five pitches, make no mistake, he lives and dies by the sinker.

Jurado is something of a throwback in today’s game. With leaguewide sinker usage at an all-time low of 14.3%, he is throwing the pitch more than 40% of the time, and getting great results along with it. Opposing batters are hitting.245 against the pitch, but have a .287 xwOBA and -2-degree average launch angle against. This is a vast improvement compared to last season, where Jurado’s sinker got smashed for a .326 AVG and .496 SLG by opposing batters. Movement and command have made all the difference for Jurado, as he’s gained a half inch of horizontal movement with his sinker, and he’s locating it much better this season. Here is a side-by-side comparison of his sinker heatmaps (via brooksbaseball.net) from 2018 (left) and 2019 (right).

See how much more red there is towards the bottom in 2019? That means the sinker is, well, sinking. Leave the sinker around the middle of the zone, like he did last year, and you’ll get crushed. A quick peek at his 2018 numbers are proof of that.

When it comes to inducing groundballs with a sinker, no one has been better than Jurado, who has a league-leading 73% groundball rate with his sinker (min. 100 pitches thrown). Getting groundballs with a sinker is like getting strikeouts with a slider; it means the pitch is working as intended. Unfortunately, pitchers don’t get credit for groundballs in fantasy like they do for strikeouts, and Jurado is seriously lacking in the strikeout department.

While Jurado has improved in the strikeout department this season, his 17.6% K rate is still woefully below average and untenable in a fantasy context. His best strikeout pitch, the slider, has just a 10.6% SwStr rate and a 36% chase rate, both paltry marks for the pitch type. The pitch is also towards the bottom of the league in terms of movement, and has a below average spin rate at 2147 RPM. And that’s his best strikeout pitch. Jurado doesn’t have anything else that can consistently produce whiffs, and the fact that he got eight swinging strikes in his start against the Royals says more about the quality of the opponent than it does of Jurado. A 17.6% strikeout rate doesn’t cut it in today’s game, and the amount of contact Jurado allows is frightening considering his home ballpark. His low-dominance pitching style means he’ll likely never ascend beyond streamer level.

Verdict:

Is Jurado better than he was last year? Absolutely. Is he a trustworthy fantasy option? Not quite. His improved sinker command has made him a great groundball pitcher, but a lack of strikeouts ultimately caps his upside. He could be streamed in a soft matchup, but it’s always tough to trust a streamer in Texas. He’s worth an add in AL-only, but owners should be judicious about when they choose to deploy him.

Lance Lynn, Texas Rangers

43% Owned

2018 Stats: 156.2 IP, 4.77 ERA, 4.26 SIERA, 12.1% K-BB%

06/01 vs. KC: 6.1 IP, 6 H, 2 ER, 0 BB, 7 K

Lynn looked like  a disaster on the mound through the first six weeks of the season, posting a 5.75 ERA with a 4.87 xFIP and 42.6% hard hit rate against in his first seven starts. He’s turned things around in a big way as of late, putting up a 2.97 ERA and 25.9% K-BB% over his last five starts. Lynn is now on the mixed league radar, but digging into his profile, one can’t help but wonder what exactly precipitated his turnaround. Not much has changed in pitch mix from the beginning of the season compared to now, with the most significant difference being a 5% increase in cutter usage. That may explain a bit of his strikeout increase, but it wouldn’t account for the 10.5% jump that Lynn has had over the course of the last few weeks. He isn’t throwing harder, or with more movement, so it’s hard to pinpoint why Lynn is pitching so well.

The answer may be obvious, and unfortunately, it has little to do with Lynn’s skill. The quality of his opponents during this hot stretch has not only been weak, but it’s largely been the same teams. Lynn has had the good fortune of facing Seattle three times over the last six weeks and has a 2.70 ERA and a 13.5 K/9 against them in those starts. He has also faced Kansas City twice during his hot stretch, and has a 2.19 ERA and an 8.76 K/9 against the Royals this season. The only tough matchup Lynn has faced during this hot streak was Houston, and while he had a decent line of seven innings, three earned, eight strikeouts, he also served up three home runs in that game. Home runs have never been a major issue for Lynn outside of 2017, his first year back from Tommy John Surgery, so the longball isn’t a concern itself, but the fact that he’s done most of his work against two subpar teams is a red flag.

To Lynn’s credit, he’s made one leap this season, and that’s improved command. He’s cut his walk rate to a career-low 6.9%, and his 52.1% zone rate is his best as a starter. Those gains have pretty much all come with Lynn’s four-seamer, as his four-seam fastball zone rate has shot up to 66.8%. Walks have been a huge problem for Lynn throughout his career, especially in 2018, so this is the type of improvement that could precede a breakout. It’s hard to buy into the strikeout numbers for Lynn; he may have a career-best 10.3% SwStr, but that is still below the league average, and merely aligns with leaguewide SwStr inflation. Swinging strike rates have risen every year since 2010, so Lynn’s rate really isn’t all that impressive in today’s game. He is fine as a streamer against weak opponents or in two-start weeks, but it doesn’t look like Lynn is a changed pitcher.

Verdict:

Lynn has been beating up on the Mariners and Royals for most of his hot streak. That doesn’t necessarily mean he hasn’t improved, but it’d be easier to believe in him if he does well against above average teams. He has legitimately improved his control, but don’t count on the strikeouts. Lynn is usable as a streamer, but don’t hesitate to sell high if the opportunity arises.

Trevor Richards, Miami Marlins

22% Owned

2018 Stats: 126.1 IP, 4.42 ERA, 4.28 SIERA, 13.9% K-BB%

06/02 @ SD: 5 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 2 BB, 8 K

Richards got some sleeper hype coming into the season, but a string of bad April starts caused much of that hype to quickly deflate. He’s pitched much better over the last two weeks, with a 1.86 ERA and 8.63 K/9 over his last four starts. Richards is known for one thing, and that’s his killer changeup. The reputation for Richards’ changeup is well deserved, as opponents have hit .167 against the pitch with a 19.9% SwStr rate this season. While Richards’ changeup has been borderline elite, the rest of his game has lagged quite far behind, which is why he’s never ascended beyond streamer status.

For Richards to take the next step, he needed to either develop an effective third pitch or improve his control. In an ideal world, he would do both, but even an improvement in one of those areas would be huge for Richards. Developing a third pitch can be thrown out the window, because Richards has fully leaned into his changeup during his recent hot stretch. He’s used his changeup 41.69% of the time over his last four starts, and only threw six pitches that were not classified as a changeup or fastball. On one hand, using his slider and curveball less often should lead to better results, as batters are hitting over .300 against each pitch with an ISO above .250. But from a practical sense, this two-pitch pitching style cannot sustain long term success. His slider and curveball are both below average offerings, but two-pitch pitchers have a hard time surviving in big league rotations, and rarely ever go deep into games. Richards changeup is great, and he’s getting better results with his fastball, but his upside is limited without a third pitch.

But what about his control? That’s improved, right? Technically, yes, as Richards has a 2.63 BB/9 over his last four starts. However, this walk rate seems to again be the product of Richards decreased breaking ball usage. Richards has an 18.8% walk rate with his slider this year, and that’s because the pitch doesn’t fool hitters. He has a pathetic 11% chase rate with the pitch, and since sliders are typically thrown outside of the zone, a poor chase rate leads to walks. His 12.9% BB rate with his fastball is exactly the same as last season, and his zone rate has only improved by 2%. He stopped walking people the same way he stopped allowing so many runs, by reducing his slider and curveball usage. That is something of a band-aid fix for a more permanent problem, which is a shallow arsenal. Richards can certainly pull a good start out here and there, but without an effective third pitch, he will forever remain a streamer.

Verdict:

Richards boasts one of the league’s best changeups. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have much to compliment it. He could be a decent strikeout source or a streaming option in favorable matchups, but he needs a third pitch to take the next step. His slider was supposed to be that third pitch, but it’s been ineffective thus far, and he’s begun phasing it out of his repertoire. There’s interesting potential here, and Richards is always worth keeping tabs on, but this isn’t the breakout we were expecting.

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