Are You For Real? Surprising SP Starts (Week 18)

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.

The Texas Rangers took it to the Houston Astros this weekend, becoming the first team to sweep the Astros this season. That series produced a lot of suprising performances, especially from some pitchers. We also got another pitcher shutting a team down in Coors Field.

Both Ariel Jurado and Mike Minor shut down the high-powered Astros offense on Saturday and Sunday, while Antonio Senzatela admirably kept the Athletics in check in Colorado.

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Real Deal or Mirage?

Antonio Senzatela, Colorado Rockies

2018 Stats (prior to this start): 35.2 IP, 5.55 ERA, 3.89 FIP, 2.4 K/BB ratio

07/28 vs. OAK: 5.2 IP, 5 H, 1 ER, 4 BB, 6 K

Senzatela got knocked around in the bullpen early this season to the tune of a 6.23 ERA before being sent to the minors in late April. He returned in July to take Jon Gray’s rotation spot and pitched to a 4.13 ERA and 3.46 FIP in four starts this month. He doesn’t exactly rack up the strikeouts with a 6.8 K/9 during that span, but the young right-hander has only allowed one run in two starts at Coors Field (though he has allowed 10 earned runs in two road starts). When it comes to repertoire Senzatela’s is limited. His best pitch is his fastball, a 94 MPH four-seamer that Senzatela throws 67.8% of the time. He also throws an 83.5 MPH slider about 22% of the time, and throws a show-me curveball and changeup a combined 10.2% of the time. Senzatela is basically a two-pitch pitcher between his fastball and slider, which he throws a combined 90% of the time. This is a slight improvement upon last season, when he threw these two pitches 93% of the time.

Senzatela’s fastball has been his most regarded pitch as a prospect, and that is mainly because of the heat. The fastball averages 94.2 MPH and can max out at 98 MPH. At times Senzatela can have the Nathan Eovaldi problem. Plenty of velocity but with laser-like straightness. Here are two examples from Saturday.

That’s a meatball. It’s a fast meatball, but still a meatball. He can’t expect to blow 95-96 MPH by major league hitters with regularity, especially when the pitches have little movement and he throws his fastball more than two-thirds of the time. At times it can look better with a little deceptive movement. Here are a few examples from Saturday’s game.

It has some decent movement there, but the inconsistencies of Senzatela’s fastball on a pitch-by-pitch basis leads to general inconsistency. No pitcher executes with ideal movement and location every time, but Senzatela’s fastball can look like a different pitch at times. Batters are hitting .252 with a .122 ISO against Senzatela’s fastball this season, and those middle of the road results reflect the pitch quality.

Part of the problem with a two-pitch pitcher like Senzatela is that his two pitches aren’t good enough to sustain a major league starter. Two-pitch pitchers that have been successful in recent history include Chris Archer, Rich Hill, and Patrick Corbin. What do those three have in common that Senzatela doesn’t have? An elite breaking ball. Archer, Hill, and Corbin boast some of the best breaking balls in the major leagues. Senzatela’s slider has a .308 AVG and .282 ISO against as well as a meager 13.77% whiff rate. Since his return on July 3 batters are hitting .211 against the slider but still have a .316 ISO, though he does have a 19% whiff rate in that span. Either way, neither Senzatela’s fastball or slider are good enough to sustain regular success as a two-pitch pitcher.

The other obvious deterrent to Senzatela is his home ballpark. He has been much better at home this season with a 3.00 ERA and 3.17 FIP, compared to a 7.08 ERA and 4.44 FIP on the road. He only has two road starts and two home starts, so this wide discrepancy can be chalked up to small sample size, but this doesn’t leave fantasy owners with many answers. We don’t want to start him at home because it’s Coors Field, but we don’t want to start him on the road because he’s given up 10 earned runs in 11.1 innings in two road starts. His low dominance (6.97 K/9, 7.3 SwStr) make him simply not worth the risk given the ballpark. If we’re gambling on Rockies’ starters let’s at least go after Jon Gray, German Marquez, or Tyler Anderson. Those pitchers have at least shown some strikeout upside to balance out the considerable downside.

Verdict:

Pitching in Colorado is an uphill battle for anyone, but Senzatela is doing it with weights strapped to his back because of a two-pitch approach. Neither his fastball or slider are good enough to sustain a two-pitch repertoire, as evidenced by a 6.97 K/9 this season. There is too much risk to make the upside worth in it most situations.

Mike Minor, Texas Rangers

2018 Stats (prior to this start): 104.1 IP, 4.83 ERA, 4.69 FIP, 3.4 K/BB ratio

07/29 @ HOU: 6 IP, 4 H, 2 ER, 1 BB, 8 K

Minor outdueled Lance McCullers on Sunday in Houston, taking down one of the best lineups in baseball for the victory. The Astros have dominated left-handed pitching this season with a 117 wRC+ and 20% strikeout rate versus southpaws, though their lineup was weakened by the absences of Jose Altuve and Carlos Correa. It’s been an odd career path for Minor to get to this point. He was a number three or four starter in the early 2010s with Atlanta, but shoulder injuries cost him three major league seasons and he went between 2014 and 2017 without throwing a pitch in the majors. Then he became a dominant reliever with Kansas City last year, only for Texas to ink him to a three-year deal as a starter. Now Minor is ostensibly in his worst season in the bigs, with a career high 4.61 FIP and 4.29 SIERA. But occasionally he’ll show us a gem, like in this outing against Houston.

Minor got it done primarily with a three pitch mix between his 93.5 MPH four-seamer, a changeup, and a curveball. He had 11 swinging strikes in this start, and five came from his changeup. The changeup has been Minor’s best swing-and-miss pitch throughout his career and he has an 18.65% whiff rate with the pitch this season. He only threw six sliders in this start, which is divergent from his season-long pitch mix. He’s thrown the pitch 22% of the time this year but only 6% of the time in this start. The slider was something Minor started incorporating heavily last season with the Royals, but has used it less as a starter as of late. This is the second straight start where Minor has shied away from the slider and he has only allowed two runs in each of those starts.

The slider was a big reason in Minor’s success as a reliever with Kansas City, when he had a 2.55 ERA and 10.2 K/9 in 77.2 IP. That season batters hit .158 with an .080 ISO against the pitcher, but a slight decrease in velocity and horizontal movement has led to poorer performance. This season batters are hitting .250 with a .260 ISO with a weak 9.29% whiff rate. There are pitchers that get better whiff rates on their fastball. It’ll be a good thing if Minor starts using this pitch less, because when he was an effective starter it wasn’t because of the slider. What he did in the bullpen for Kansas City hasn’t translated as a starter. This is only a two game trend, but it could lead to much better results for Minor going forward.

There are still reasons to be skeptical of Minor. He is allowing a lot of power and hard contact, two things that can lead to disaster given him home ballpark. Globe Life Park has rated as the most favorable park for runs and home runs this season per ESPN park factors, above even Coors Field. Quality of pitching and hitting has played into that somewhat, but Texas is probably among the worst places to be a major league pitcher along with Colorado and Baltimore. Minor has also allowed a career high 1.55 HR/9 this season and his 12.8% HR/FB rate is around league average. Minor has always struggled with the long ball, and he posted a 1.3 HR/9 in three separate seasons in the early 2010s, when home runs weren’t as prevalent. A 12.8% barrel rate and .539 xSLG suggests that Minor will be susceptible to home runs and hard hit balls all season. With Minor we need to watch the trends on pitch mix and power allowed before buying into his performances. There is too much risk associated with Texas pitchers that give up home runs.

Verdict:

What worked in the bullpen last year hasn’t worked as a starter this year, and Minor is trying to turn things around by throwing his slider less and using his changeup and curveball more. This has only been a two start trend, but it’s something to watch going forward. He still surrenders far too much power to be trustworthy on an every start basis. He is more of a streamer, but it’s worthy paying attention to these pitch mix trends. This change is a little more subtle with Minor compared to a pitcher like Patrick Corbin, since Corbin just decided to throw his best pitch as a primary pitch, while Minor is trying to abandon his slider as his go-to secondary pitch. He’s a good streaming option this week against Baltimore at home.

Ariel Jurado, Texas Rangers

2018 Stats (Double-A): 101.2 IP, 3.28 ERA, 4.50 FIP, 3.41 K/BB ratio

07/28 @ HOU: 6 IP, 2 H, 1 ER, 1 BB, 2 K

Rangers pitchers took advantage of a weakened Astros lineup this weekend in a three-game sweep, and 22-year-old rookie Ariel got his first career win in the process. Jurado was the Rangers’ ninth ranked prospect in 2017, but a 4.59 ERA at Double-A in 2017 dropped him off their top 30 prospect list completely. From a results perspective he has pitched much better this season, but his 4.50 FIP at Double-A is higher than his 2017 FIP, which was 4.33. His strikeout rate has also plummeted as he advanced levels. He was over 21% in the lower minors, but at Double-A Jurado’s strikeout rate has been under 15%. This strikeout rate decline has held true to the trend in the majors, as Jurado has a 9.3% strikeout rate in two starts. Strikeouts aren’t what makes him a strong pitcher, however.

Jurado doesn’t get strikeouts because he throws one pitch two-thirds of the time, his sinker. Out of 157 pitches thrown by Jurado in these two starts 109 have been sinkers. This pitch averages 91.8 MPH and tops around 94.5 MPH. Here is an example of one from this start.

It’s got some late side to side movement that should allow him to induce groundballs. Jurado was a groundball machine in the minors, with a groundball rate always above 50%, and around 60% at the lower level of the minors. This allowed him to suppress home runs well and 2017 was the only season that he had a HR/FB rate above 10%. This ability to induce groundballs will serve him well in Texas, where the ball flies out of the park.

Jurado is sort of a poor man’s Brad Keller. Keller at least uses two fastballs and a slider regularly instead of just the sinker, and does an even better job at limiting home runs. Keller also hasn’t gotten pounded as hard as Jurado has in the majors. Granted it’s only been two starts, but batters are sending his sinker back harder than Jurado throws it. Batters have a 92 MPH average exit velocity against Jurado’s two-seamer. His slider has a comically high 106.5 MPH average exit velocity against. To put that in perspective, Aaron Judge has the highest average exit velocity among qualified hitters at 95.8 MPH, and batters are hitting Jurado’s slider over 10 MPH harder. He’s only thrown 20 sliders so this is a pretty small sample size, but that number is frightening when considering Jurado as a fantasy option.

From a results perspective it’s easy to compare Jurado to Brad Keller, but a less flattering and perhaps more accurate comparison would be to Jurado’s own teammate, Bartolo Colon. Both throw a sinker over 60% of the time and it gets crushed with an average exit velocity over 90 MPH and harder than the respective pitcher throws it. Both have an xBA over .300, an xSLG over .530, and an xwOBA over .360. Since Jurado only has 10.2 major league innings under his belt these Statcast metrics have hardly begun to normalize for him. That being said, there is no way he can be trusted even in an easy matchup, such as his next start against the Orioles at home. What is the ultimate payoff anyway? Maybe a quality start with two or three strikeouts? Don’t put your ratios on the line for that.

Verdict:

As an unabashed sinkerballer Jurado is pitching in the wrong era. Low strikeout pitchers that give up hard contact really aren’t fantasy material in 2018. He’s like a younger, skinnier version of Bartolo Colon. Like stripping the fun aspects away from Colon and leaving us with a boring, subpar arm. It would be a better fantasy move to stack hitters against Jurado than use him in a start.

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