BABS May 2018 Update – Pitchers
by Justin Cary
We are a little more than a month in the season and the first BABS scan has arrived. Owners should be reminded that playing time represents less than 20% of the total year’s output. Be careful making assessments about skill sets. Instead, owners should be looking at skills confirmations, or what skill sets have returned in a player profile that could indicate the potential for a bounce back season.
Starters
At first glance, you have the top tier showing no signs of slowing down with Max Scherzer, Corey Kluber, Jacob DeGrom, Chris Sale, Luis Severino, and Noah Syndergaard having elite skill sets. Nothing more to say here. We move on.
Some new names at the top of the list include Gerrit Cole and Charlie Morton. Cole (E+,K+) displayed a high level of pitching effectiveness back in 2015 before his injury. His .247 BABIP is 25% lower than his career level, which might indicate some coming regression, but he could be heading for a career year.
Morton (E+,KK) is off to a strong start with a 4-0 record, 1.79 ERA and 10.4 K/9 rate. Historically, BABS profiles him as a (e,KK) skill set. However, a BABIP of .223 and FIP of 3.86 make one question the pitching effectiveness gains. The strikeouts should remain but expect an ERA regression.
The (e,KK) group has some interesting opportunities. Zack Greinke has an ugly home/away split, but with a FIP of 3.67 and a (ER,k) skill set over multiple years, I’m buying. Dylan Bundy has a 3.76 ERA and a BABIP of .345 (15% higher than his career), which suggests more upside could await.
A starting pitcher rising is Blake Snell (ER,KK). BABS’ (e,k) pre-season rating was an early warning indicator and his underlying metrics in the first month are strong. The 205 ADP looks like a bargain for this young arm. Get on board.
Slow starter Robbie Ray (K+) has produced an elite level strikeout rate, but the number of homers he has given up has exploded his ERA. Is a turnaround coming? Ray went on the DL with a grade 2 oblique strain, which obviously affected his performance. BABS’ pre-season rating was (ER, KK). Given a normalized home run rate, his xFIP is 3.37. With good health, he should rebound.
Relievers
The amount of turnover in Major League bullpens makes it difficult to bid aggressively on them. If you waited on Edwin Diaz, Sean Doolittle, or Brad Hand, you have been rewarded. The relievers in the elite (E+,K+) asset group appear to have the opportunity to put up big numbers going forward. Diaz has an absurd .120 BABIP and 15 K/9, an improvement on his 2017 performance, and could be the closer at the top of the mountain by the end of the season.
What do we do with Kenley Jansen and Ken Giles? Jansen’s metrics do look awful. However, his BABS track record should encourage an owner to be patient. Giles is a different story. His BABS ratings have been inconsistent over the past several years so it is no surprise that you will have bumps along the way with him. He does have a 2.90 FIP, which gives hope, but Houston is cycling through many talented bullpen arms as situations merit. That will continually reduce Giles’ potential save chances. Move on.
First year with BABS, first set of in-season ratings to look at, and having a bit of trouble understanding what they mean. For example, does BABS believe Charlie Morton’s (E+, KK) underlying skills now better than Kershaw’s (ER, KK)? Ratings seem to be just based off YTD stats. If so, pretty useless IMO.
Not completely useless, but marginal at best. As noted above, you should be using these early ratings for “skills confirmations, or what skill sets have returned in a player profile that could indicate the potential for a bounce back season.” It’ll get better as the season progresses, but since these are ratings of current performance, not projections, your best tact is to pull up each player’s historical scan and see if/how their current rating compares to their track record.
Shouldn’t the update be based on season projections? That would answer the question do whether Charlie Morton’s early start means he’ll finish the season as a different skill-type player?
BABS doesn’t do projections. BABS is about skills assessment, not guessing about what’s going to happen after 6 months (or 5). That’s why the best we can do is place current performance within the context of career levels and judge for ourselves. For Morton: 2016: (e,KK), 2017: (e,KK), 2018: (E+,KK). So what’s real? Likely (KK) is real. (E+) not so much. Could he have grown from (e) to (E+)? Perhaps, but given the sample size, I’d more likely to conclude that any growth might bring him to (ER) at best. In any case, his ERA will regress.
Can it be used to confirm a player no longer holds a skill if BABS downgrades them to essentially blank slate?
It can only confirm that he has not demonstrated that skill over the first 7 weeks of the 2018 season. That’s all.
Both the recent update, and the pre-season season skills assessments are based on the algorhythms BABS uses to evaluate skills. Where they differ is in the amount of data BABS has at hand to determine those skills.
With that in mind, I can think of maybe two good reasons to use the updates:
1. As Ron has pointed out, to see if the present portrait fits in with the historically demonstrated skill set. (Schwarber has just stolen 2 bases in one night; that represents a current opportunity in a specific game, not a new set of skills.) If they do not, then time to trade (while the player looks hot), or drop in favor of a better player that an impatient owner dropped—or wait until the player recovers. Look at Contreras this weekend. Boom.
2. To evaluate a prospect who has been called up to see if he might present an opportunity to upgrade at a weak position on your team. Acuna has attracted attention, for example, as has Buehler and Gleyber Torres.
3. I guess a third reason might be to improve the success rate for streaming players, if you want to stream rather than rely on the strategy you spent 4 months devising for draft day. Presumable, if you had wanted Matt Adams, for instance, you would have drafted him rather than Joey Votto. Now you can try to stream him.