Starting Pitcher K-BB% Fallers: Who to Worry About

Jon Anderson examines starting pitchers whose K-BB% (strikeout - walk rate) fell most in 2020 to determine their draft value in 2021 fantasy baseball drafts.

In part one of this mini-series, Sam Chinitz covered K-BB% risers from 2021. You can check that post out here. This article will take a look at the pitchers that went in the wrong direction.

Strikeout to walk rate is so important to be mindful of when evaluating pitchers. No matter how you slice it, strikeouts and walks are the most consistent and predictive statistic out there for pitchers, as those two events are fully in the control of the pitcher.

Spotting trends in this category is a great way to spot potential breakouts and busts. Here's the data.

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Top K-BB% Fallers Between 2019 and 2020

A few names were left off this list because they are irrelevant for fantasy purposes in most leagues. 

A particular name being on this list is not reason enough to erase them from your list of targets when the 2021 draft rolls around. It is important to examine each instance fairly. Here is the breakdown of how I would handle each player.

Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid

Robbie Ray: 2020 may have been Ray's last gasp for fantasy relevancy. He was electric in Spring Training and had a lot of fantasy players investing in him with a later round draft pick hoping for him to finally put his control issues to bed and really turn that electric stuff into a great season line. To say the least, that did not happen. Ray saw his strikeouts come down from an elite 32% to just a good 27%, but the walk issue reached a new level as that rate came up to a gargantuan 17.9%.

Of course, we have to keep in mind that this was just a 51 inning sample, but 18% is still just a stunning number that should inspire much running for the hills. Ray is a full fade in 2021.

Madison Bumgarner: It was thought that the ballpark shift was going to be the main problem for Bum in 2020, but that proved to be a complete after-thought after he posted a career-low (by far) 15.8% strikeout rate. The more granular stats back this up as well, as he allowed a 73.9% overall contact rate (+7.3% from his career average), a 91.5% in-zone contact rate (+4.4%), and a 73.9% out-of-zone contact rate (+10.7%).

The walks are a secondary problem, coming up less than 2% from 2019. Bum fooled nobody last year, and that is enough to take away all interest this analyst has in him even with it coming in a tiny 41 inning sample.

Matthew Boyd: The home run ball has always been a problem for Boyd, but there was always a way for him to still be pretty dominant with the big-time swing and miss stuff he had. This disappeared in 2020, as he posted just a 22% strikeout rate (down from 30.2% in 2019). The walks also came up from 6.3% to 8.1%. Anything close to a 22%-8% K-BB% for a flyball pitcher is not worth investing in with any significant draft capital.

Patrick Corbin: The walks actually came down to a really strong 6.1% for Corbin in 2020, but the elusiveness, well, eluded him. He had posted two really strong strikeout rates in 2018 (30.8%) and 2019 (28.5) despite not having overpowering stuff, but something went very wrong in 2020 and that fell to a 20.3% rate. It is usually best practice to take the two full seasons of data over the one short season, but in this case, I think the 65 innings in 2020 might be a little more indicative of the truth, just because Corbin's high strikeout rate never made a ton of sense given his lack of a good fastball. It is probably not wise to completely write off Corbin like the other guys we have already mentioned, but it is going to take a pretty darn cheap price tag to inspire confidence in him for 2021.

Green Lights

Gerrit Cole: Bold call alert, you should draft Cole with confidence in 2021. The K-BB% decrease was more a testament to how ridiculously good he was in 2019 rather than anything to say about 2020. A 32.6% strikeout rate with a 5.9% walk rate is elite, elite, elite. The only negative thing to say is that maybe he's not the number pitcher on the board this year, but he is still an easy top three guy.

Max Scherzer: He will be turning 37 in July, so the fact that his strikeouts dropped (from 35.1% to 31.2%) and his walks climbed (from 4.8% to 7.8%) is a little more alarming than they would be if he were still 32 or so, however, this is no ordinary man we are talking about. A 31%-8% ratio is still amazing and all of the underlying metrics still made Scherzer look like an ace in 2020. There are enough question marks surrounding the age and health to push him out of tier one, but having Scherzer as a top-two member of your pitching staff should work out pretty nicely for you in 2021.

The Rest

Mike Clevinger: The offseason Tommy John surgery puts Clevinger out of the 2021 discussion.

Jon Gray / German Marquez: As long as these guys are still wearing Rockies uniforms, they really are not worth your attention outside of streaming roles or really deep leagues, and this should be especially true given that they both declined in strikeouts and increased in walks.

Zack Wheeler: An 18% strikeout rate in 71 innings in 2020 almost put him in the "be afraid" section, but I could not quite pull the trigger. He brought his walks down to a really strong 5.6%, and that had previously been a pretty big issue for him - so that offsets a bit of the punch-out loss. His contact rate metrics all look very normal in 2020, so it is a pretty good bet that the strikeouts will come back up over 20% next year, making him a guy worth considering depending on the draft price.

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