2014 SP Sleepers: No If’s, And’s or But’s, These Kid’s Got STUFF!

There are sleepers. And then there are chubby husbands that get woken up by their wives when they snore uncontrollably. We’re going to take the latter approach to this series of three posts. This first post of the series will present a unique process of how I pinpoint out SP sleepers, explained after the jump.

Next up in the series, I’ll score some repertoires (weighing each “Pitch Score” by usage) to see how I should rank my Top-5 second year pitchers– Jose Fernandez, Michael Wacha, Sonny Gray, Danny Salazar and Gerrit Cole. And to wrap up the seires, I’ll highlight a some general sleepers based on their pitch repertoires.

The approach in a nut-shell:

We’re going to look at a pitcher’s stuff through Baseball Prospectus’ Pitch F/X leaderboard, and then focus on the outcome level (i.e. each pitch):

1) Whiff per swing rate. (How dominating the pitch is.)

2) Groundball/Flyball ratio. (Balls-in-play mix.)

3) Line Drive per Ball in play. (We know line drives fall for hits about 70% of the time vs. ground balls and fly balls which hover around 20% of the time.)

Let me preface the post to say that I wish infield flyball% and home run-per-flyball were also included in Baseball Prospectus’ Pitch F/X leaderboard for a slightly more comprehensive view, but this approach still has a ton of value. We’re not looking at pitch features (velocity, movement, release points, etc.) – I’m only focusing on the outcomes. Why not just Fangraphs pitch type linear weights (PTLW)? Because I want a more predictive way to look at a pitch’s value. The PTLW’s aren’t the end-all-be-all, but they are utterly descriptive vs. predictive and take into account the full context (run values before and after a pitch, what it did to the hitter’s count, who was on base and how that pitch prevented the run, etc. etc.).

Whiff rates and the GB/FB ratio actually have great year-to-year correlations (the two highest between 2002-2012, per Matt Klaassen): GB/FB = .871 Y2Y correlation; SwStr% = .804 Y2Y correlation

*The Pitch Score = I won’t get into the nitty-gritty details, but in short, I found z-scores for each outcome in the Pitch F/X leaderboard and then weighed each outcome by their correlation to an average of xFIP, SIERA and actual ERA from 2010-2013. I summed the weighted z-scores which gives us each “Pitch Score.” Comment away if you want to further discuss. Results: You can scroll all the way to the bottom for the full Top-25 Fastball Pitch Scores.

Here are the top 25 Fastballs, Sinkers, Changeups, Sliders, Curveballs, Cutters and Splitters. I can email you the full Pitch Score matrix if you provide your email below:

Hey there, Burch Smith! Burch got shellacked last year in the majors, but still duplicated his minor league-dominating ways with a strikeout rate that approached 28%, validated by a swinging strike rate of 13% (both the 3^rd best MLB SP rates > 30 IP). This matrix backs that up 100%. The problem is that the Padres have a slew of starters: Ian Kennedy, Andrew Cashner, Eric Stults and Tyson Ross basically locked in; Josh Johnson and Cory Luebke so long as they’re healthy + Robbie Erlin and Casey Kelly should be MLB ready. In all likelihood this might send Burch to the bullpen, but there’s enough question marks to keep Burchy on your radar because of the elite fastball and changeup combination. His flyball tendancies killed his value last year, but moving forward he could be an asset in San Diego. Keep him in mind for your Dynasty drafts. He was drafted in the 6th round of my 20-team dynasty league… I was freaken’ eyeing him a round later.

Post II of the series:

Again, this post focused on the approach. Next I’ll score some full repertoires (weighing each Pitch Score by usage) to see how we should rank the Top 5 High Impact 2^nd Years:  Jose Fernandez, Michael Wacha, Sonny Gray, Danny Salazar and Gerrit Cole. FYI, I think Grey loves Danny Salazar and Sonny Gray and all of these mentioned players in his rankings.)

Post III of the series:

Lastly, I’ll highlight a slew of chubby, snoring sleepers based on their pitch repertoires.

 *Here is the full Pitch Score Matrix:

 *Here is the full Pitch Score Matrix:

Dano owns RotoBanter.com.  You can follow him on Twitter @Rotobanter.