If you’re not familiar with the site fangraphs, you should surf over there. One of the fun things about being into dungeons and baseball is getting into the numbers that are available for free on the interwebs.

I was looking at Wandy Rodriguez tonight and I thought I would share my thinking about how I looked at him. If you go to Wandy’s page at fangraphs, look at the first table called “Dashboard.” Look at his K/9 column. You’ll see that from 2008-2010 he had an 8+ K/9, which is attractive at the major league level. In 2011 there was a dip and in 2012 it fell off the table to 6.08. As a fantasy player, what you want to know is will his K rate go back closer to his career levels.

Scroll down his fangraphs page and look at the table called PITCHf/x type. This is a list of what percentage of the time he throws a particular pitch. Look at the column called FT%. FT in fangraphs is a two seam fastball. If you don’t know, a two seam fastball sinks, unlike a four seam which has less movement but more velocity. PITCHf/x is relatively new stats, so it’s hard to know if they were accurately capturing his use of the two seam, but you’ll see it first shows up in his profile in 2009 at 1%. In 2010 it goes to 16%, 18% in 2011 and then a huge spike to 26% in 2012.

Scroll back up to the section called Batted Ball. Look at the columns for GB% and FB%. You’ll notice that as the sinking two seam is introduced, the GB% is trending up, until it hits a career high of 48% last year. As he’s changed his pitch mix, he’s become a pitch to contact guy.

He’s moving to Pitt this year, which is good pitchers park and tends to be tough on right handed hitters, which helps him as a left hander. I think he’ll succeed in the real world this year and he might have the confidence to go back to the four seam in a friendly ballpark. So after you do the research, you ask yourself, is does he go back to being a strike out guy or not. If you think he will, he’ll be useful to your team. If not, he might be Paul Maholm; useful in an only league or a deep league but not much else.

Nice write up man. I have Wandy on a 16 Team H2H Dynasty League and looking for him to be a pretty solid pitcher this year for the Buccos. Plus, I got him way late, way cheap. I think he'll be pretty darn useful.

Yeah, he should be good on your team.

The key to Wandy is his getting batters to chase. In July he gave up 15 BB in 34.1IP (with a corresponding 1W/4L/4.72ERA). In September he cut those nearly in half: 8 BB in 35.2 IP. He NEEDS to get batters to chase out of the zone. His 0-Swing% was a career high 33.3% last year (very good). So, he looks to have the goods to do that. He just had a couple of bad months in the middle of the season last year giving up those BB. Agree, he can be successful--if he can continue to get batters to chase.