Are You For Real? Surprising SP Starts (Week 14)

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

Welcome to our surprising starts series. Every week we’ll be going over a few surprising starting pitcher performances around the majors to determine whether these starts were smoke and mirrors or something more.

This week we saw some great performances over the weekend from three young pitchers. Max Fried utterly dominated the Cardinals for 11 strikeouts, German Marquez twirled a gem at Dodger Stadium, and Brad Keller allowed just one earned run total in a two-start week.

Fried's performance was highlighted by his filthy curveball, while German Marquez continued his success on the road. Brad Keller got it done as a groundball specialist with a 95 MPH fastball.

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Real Deal or Mirage?

Max Fried, Atlanta Braves

2018 Stats (Triple-A): 50.1 IP, 4.29 ERA, 3.23 FIP, 2.4 K/BB ratio

06/30 @ STL: 6.2 IP, 4 H, 0 ER, 3 BB, 11 K

Fried is the latest among young Atlanta Braves starters to make a splash in a spot start, and his start was arguably the most impressive of all rookie Atlanta pitchers with 11 punchouts against the St. Louis Cardinals. Coming into the season Fried was the 8th highest ranked pitching prospect by MLB Pipeline, which speaks more to the depth of the Braves’ system rather than Fried’s talent. Fried projects as a future starter, and the eighth best pitching prospects in most systems are usually projected as bullpen pieces.

Fried has a four-pitch arsenal consisting of a four-seam fastball, a two-seam fastball, a curveball, and a changeup. He most relies on the four-seamer and curveball, which were his two most regarded pitches as a prospect. The four-seamer averages about 93 MPH and can top out at 96 MPH. Fried’s curveball is the jewel of his arsenal. The curveball drops down to 74 MPH and has significantly above average spin and vertical movement. Fried got 15 swinging strikes in this start against the Cardinals, and eight of them came from the curveball. Since Fried's curveball is such a well regarded pitch we'll have a look at two curveballs from this start.

The pitch drops sharply and has a little horizontal movement from right-to-left, going inside on lefties and outside on righties. Fried’s curveball has been good against all hitters, but especially good against right-handed batters. This season right-handed batters have not secured a hit on a Fried curveball and have struck out 78% of the time. It’s been a pretty small sample for Fried thus far, and those numbers were heavily influenced by this game since the Cardinals only started on left-handed batter, but it's still impressive nonetheless. This curveball has the makings of a legitimate swing-and-miss pitch, and Fried should be able to be a contributor in strikeouts.

There are two big hinderances towards immediate consistent success for Fried, and they are common issues among young pitchers. He doesn’t have a reliable third pitch and he has spotty control. Fried’s had a walk rate of 8% or higher at every level of the minors and has had a 13.7% walk rate thus far in the majors. This is something that may just require seasoning and experience, and will probably be an issue for Fried all season. Hopefully he can make incremental gains throughout his development and make the issue manageable.

As far as a third pitch goes, Fried’s changeup has gotten crushed in his limited action as a big leaguer. It’s a pitch that he scarcely throws, but batters are hitting .400 with a .250 ISO against the offering. The changeup does have a 19.4% whiff rate, however that may be because the quality of Fried’s other pitches keep hitters off balance at times. He also only throws the changeup to right-handed batters. Fried throws either his four-seamer or curveball 82.6% of the time, and that approach is probably good enough against lefties, but he’ll need a reliable third pitch to get righties out consistently.

Being a young lefty on the Braves it’s easy, perhaps too easy, to compare Fried to Sean Newcomb. Newcomb was a rookie lefty with a vaunted curveball, poor control, an questionable third pitch. In 2017 batters hit over .400 against Newcomb’s changeup and he threw it almost exclusively to right-handed batters. This season Newcomb has improved his control and gotten better results with his changeup, a pitch he’s now begun using more than his curveball. Fried could definitely find success in similar fashion to Newcomb, but Newcomb had his share of problems before coming into his own this season. Fried has a lot of potential, and his curveball is arguably better than Newcomb’s, but he might not put it all together yet this season. That being said, Fried is worth adding even in standard mixed leagues. There is big strikeout upside here, and if we continue to use Newcomb as an example, even the Newcomb of 2017 was useful last year.

Verdict:

Fried’s curveball looks like a dominant strikeout pitch. Walk issues and the lack of a third pitch will hurt him, but there is a lot of potential with Fried. He’s worth adding as a flier in mixed leagues. There may be questions of Fried’s long-term status in the rotation, but if he pitches well enough Brandon McCarthy or Anibal Sanchez won’t bump him from a starting role.

 
German Marquez, Colorado Rockies

2018 Stats (prior to this start): 83 IP, 5.53 ERA, 4.69 FIP, 2.4 K/BB ratio

06/30 @ LAD: 8 IP, 2 H, 1 ER, 0 BB, 9 K

Marquez has been an interesting pitcher ever since he made his debut in 2016. He debuted at 21 and has stuck around in the Rockies’ rotation, but didn’t have the uber prospect pedigree or minor league numbers that one would expect from a player getting the call at such a young age. Marquez has also been a Coors Field casualty over the course of his career. He has a 5.43 ERA all time at home and a 7.93 ERA at Coors Field this season. He also averages 96 MPH with his fastball and can touch 100, plus has two solid breaking balls, a curve and a slider, to go along with it. There are a lot reasons to be interested by Marquez, but his inconsistencies and struggles at home have kept him firmly off mixed league radars.

Marquez was at his best on Saturday, striking out a season-high nine batters and getting 17 swinging strikes, eight of which came from his curveball. Marquez’s curveball isn’t quite on the level of Max Fried’s, it has about six fewer inches of drop and a lower whiff rate, but it’s still a quality offering. Here’s a look at one of his better curveballs from Saturday.

At its best the curveball dives sharply down and is nigh impossible to hit, but as we know thin air negatively affects breaking ball movement. Marquez may be more aversely affected than the average pitcher at Coors Field because he relies on his curveball so much. He also really struggles against lefties at home. Marquez has pretty even platoon splits on the road, but at home lefties have demolished him for a .385 AVG and 1.119 OPS. Pitch f/x splits don’t dive deep enough to look at individual pitch performance based on stadium, but Marquez’s curveball got touched by lefties more in June than any other month, and in June he had his most home starts with four. Here’s a graph displaying the differences (from brooksbaseball.net).

These are small samples, and it’s a pretty weak correlation to begin with, but this month-by-month comparison may off a glimpse some of his problems at home with left-handed batters.

When it comes to Marquez’s positive road performance, this is not a Tyler Chatwood situation. Chatwood may have had a 3.49 ERA away from Coors last season, but he was still struggling with walks, not missing bats, and allowing home runs. On the road Marquez’s strikeout rate is 6% higher compared to at home at 26%, he has a 3.64 K/BB ratio, and has allowed three fewer home runs on the road despite pitching seven more innings away from Coors. Marquez isn’t only usable on the road, he’s been quite good away from Coors Field. Maybe it’s overly simplistic to conclude that a Rockies’ pitcher should only be used on the road, but that seems to be the case here with Marquez.

Verdict:

Marquez has three solid pitches and has been extremely effective on the road, allowing more than two earned runs just once this season away from Coors. He is unusable at home in any matchup, in fact the Marlins hammered Marquez for five runs in 3.1 innings in his last start at home. He might not hold down a roster spot permanently in mixed leagues, but is a pitcher to consider streaming on the road.

 
Brad Keller, Kansas City Royals

2018 Stats (Prior to this week): 41 IP, 2.63 ERA, 3.50 FIP, 1.5 K/BB ratio

06/25 vs. LAA: 7 IP, 2 H, 0 ER, 2 BB, 6 K
07/01 @ SEA: 8 IP, 6 H, 1 ER, 0 BB, 3 K

Keller isn’t the type of pitcher that gets us super excited to add, or makes us gawk at pitching GIFs on Twitter, but a two-start week like this against two quality opponents should make us take notice. Keller is mainly a fastball and slider pitcher, throwing both a four-seamer and two-seamer and using the slider as his primary breaking ball. A rule-5 pick from Arizona’s system, Keller is only 22 years old and just recently joined the Royals’ rotation at the end of May. He was great out of the bullpenm posting a 2.01 ERA in 21 appearances, and that success has continued as he has a 2.14 ERA in six starts.

What makes Keller intriguing is that he possesses an elite skill. He may not have triple-digit velocity or a gaudy swinging strike rate, but Keller gets it done with a 59.4% groundball rate. That is the second-best groundball rate in the majors among pitchers with at least 50 innings pitched. All three of Keller’s pitches have groundball rates above 54%, but his sinker induces groundballs 67% of the time. This has allowed Keller to limit power in his time in the majors, a skill that has carried over from his time in the minor leagues. This season Keller has allowed just one home run and seven extra-base hits in 56 innings pitched. His .350 xSLG is 15th best in the majors among pitchers that have faced at least 200 batters this season, and all the starters ranking above him are in the midst of amazing seasons. Chris Sale, Max Scherzer, and Justin Verlander are the best examples, but the type of pitchers that excel in this category have been owned and started without hesitation in standard mixed leagues.

Keller’s biggest flaw is obvious, his lack of strikeouts. He has a meager 5.3 K/9 which gives him a mediocre 1.8 K/BB ratio. That makes his six strikeout explosion against the Angels the more interesting game to look at when trying to forecast a ceiling for Keller. He got twelve swinging strikes in that game and eight with his slider. Keller got more whiffs with his slider in that one start than in all of his other starts combined. Some of that is because he threw the slider 43 times in that game and hasn’t thrown it more than 25 times in any other game, but it was the best he’s ever done with the pitch. In that game his slider also had more horizontal and vertical movement compared to his season average. At just 22 years old he could definitely improve on the pitch and make gains in strikeouts. Keller’s 8.5% swinging strike rate, while below average, isn’t so bad that it’s alarming or that we can’t expect future growth. He’ll probably always be a below average strikeout pitcher, but he was striking out about seven batters per nine in the minors and may reach that level in the majors with experience and improvement. Coupled with an elite groundball rate and that would be a fine, if unexciting starting pitcher.

Verdict:

Keller is a great groundball pitcher and that should help him find success despite a lack of strikeouts. His strikeout rate is so low (14.7%) that it is actively detrimental in 5x5 roto or categories leagues, but he’s a relatively safe streaming option or someone that can help with ratios. His pitch-to-contact style will allow him to go deep into games, and on Sunday it only took him 102 pitches to get through eight innings. The problem with a pitcher like Keller is that he will hurt you in two categories (strikeouts and wins) and only provide value with ERA and WHIP.

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