Collette Calls: Better Days Ahead for These Pitchers?

We are roughly a third into the season and some owners are getting antsy. They have lost patience with players they drafted who have started slowly.  This is particularly true for pitchers because we are all too familiar with pitchers who get stuck in ruts that severely impact our ratios. We are seeing much more of it this year with the helium baseballs in play as Noah Syndergaard has a 4.45 ERA, J.A. Happ is up to 4.48, Aaron Nola is at 4.58, Zack Wheeler is at 4.61, Carlos Carrasco is 4.98, and Eduardo Rodriguez is an even 5.00.

Each of these guys were highly drafted coming into the season; some have earned it while others have pitched better than their actual outcomes. Let's look at a few guys who show up on the StatCast leaderboard that shows large differences between a pitcher's weighted on-base average (wOBA) and his expected wOBA (xwOBA) based on the quality of contact they have allowed plus their strikeouts and walks. There are pitchers below for both single-league owners as well as mixed-league owners. 

Matt Andriese has worked exclusively in relief this season and has a career-high 25 percent strikeout rate as well as a career-low .252 batting average against. As you can see from the table above, his batting average should be much lower based on the quality of the contact he is allowing. The problem for him remains the long ball, and while the 20 percent HR/FB rate is nearly identical to last year, the expected contact says there is hidden upside in Andriese. His 4.63 ERA, 1.37 WHIP, and swingman role almost guarantee he will cost you nothing in a NL-only FAAB this weekend. He may still end up being nothing, but a 101-point gap between his actual and expected SLG is tough to overlook.

Freddy Peralta has a 27 percent strikeout rate and a 20 percent K-BB%. Those are near-elite figures, but he also has a 5.81 ERA and a 1.52 WHIP this season. The expected stats are very much in his favor, and the BABIP/LOB% lords are doing him zero favors at the moment. His outing earlier this week against Houston was a predictable disaster as he allowed nine baserunners in four innings, but did have a 7:1 strikeout to walk ratio. Prior to that outing, he had been on a nice run of sorts. The ratios should deflate his potential value to your league-mates, but he is one of just 21 pitchers (min 40 IP) who owns both a strikeout rate of at least 27 percent and a K-BB% of at least 20 percent. I can't quit him just yet.

Robert Gsellman, like Andriese, has spent the entire season in relief. He has thus far tied his 2016 strikeout rate at 23 percent, but his ERA is pushing 5.00 thanks to nearly 1.5 baserunners per nine innings. His xwOBA of .287 should get your attention because that is an excellent rate for a guy in his role, and the fact he is allowing less hard contact than last year and his average exit velocity is in the top six percent league-wide means he has some hidden potential being hidden by his bad ratios. Like Andriese, he should be sitting out there for the taking in single-league formats and could be helpful the rest of the way if the actual results regress to the expected ones. 

Rich Hill is back and pitching well this season with three wins and a 2.40 ERA and a 1.16 WHIP.  His FIP looks bad, but don't let it fool you. The expected stats say Hill could have done even better than he has to date, and has excelled in limiting hard contact. His hard hit percentage is in the top four percent of the league and his average exit velocity is in the top two percent of the league. Ride out Hill until the next blister or hip injury comes up.

Noah Syndergaard is suffering while the Mets "Met," limited to a 4-4 record with a 4.45 ERA and a 1.20 WHIP. The strikeout rate and walk rate are where they were last season, but the home run rate has doubled as Thor is still struggling to adjust to the new baseball flight patterns this season.  His actual wOBA is still rather good, but xwOBA says he could be even better based on the quality of his contact plus his strikeouts and walks. It is worth your time to check in on the Syndergaard owner to see how they feel, but the recent one-hitter over seven innings may have slammed that window of opportunity shut.

CC Sabathia has gone 3-3 over 10 starts in his final season with a 3.96 ERA and a 1.28 WHIP. The FIP comes in at an attention-getting 5.92, but the strikeout is the highest it has been in the last five seasons. The problem for him has been an inflated 2.4 HR/9, and he has allowed at least one home run in each of his last eight starts. The expected stats say his slugging percentage should be much lower, and his 20 percent HR/FB ratio is his worst since 2014. That should get better, and should help offset the ERA damage that will come as his 86 percent LOB% comes down. The big guy has more offense on its way back with Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton likely back by next weekend. 

Josh James has been stuck in the Houston bullpen all season, piling up strikeouts and baserunners galore over 35.1 innings. Fifty-five strikeouts in that time is fantastic to own, but a 4.84 ERA and a 1.33 WHIP has not been fun thanks to a 16 percent walk rate offsetting the .183 opponents' batting average. He has seven appearances in which he has allowed multiple runs in his relief appearance, which is also the same number of times he has struck out at least four batters in an appearance. The upside is incredibly tantalizing, but the command of his stuff varies from outing to outing and he is unlikely to join the rotation this season without the improvement in command. He could still strike out 130-plus out of the pen.

Eduardo Rodriguez has a 26 percent strikeout rate, a 19 percent K-BB%, but a 1.39 WHIP and a 5.00 ERA is not what anyone signed up for. The issue for him this season has been the absolute beating he has taken the third time through the order:

Yet, Alex Cora has left Rodriguez out there to face at least 22 batters in every outing this season. Rodriguez is getting more groundballs, and the expected stats are in his corner, so there could be better days ahead. He was my preseason bold prediction for Boston, but I  was not able to draft him in any league. I did, however, just trade for him in AL Tout Wars, so I am on the rebound train because Rodriguez is getting the strikeouts my team sorely needs, and I am hopeful the expected contact overtakes the actual contact.

Lastly, Martin Perez has been a nice find with a 7-2 record and a 3.97 ERA on the year, but the 1.45 WHIP has been tough to roster. Perez has top-10 rates for both average exit velocity and hard hit percentage, so soft contact has been turning into hits. The expected results are in his corner as his xwOBA is more like a SP3 whereas his results are SP5-ish despite the wins total and the by-far career-high 22 percent strikeout rate.