2014 SP Sleepers: Scoring Repertoires And Late Round Goodies

Be sure to check out my first post in this series (No If’s, And’s, or But’s, These Kid’s Got Stuff) where I discussed the approach to SP sleepers by Pitch Scores. Here, I’m going to score full repertoires for some high impact 2^nd year pitchers and some late round sleepers.

In order of how I have them projected– The impact 2^nd years: Jose Fernandez, Michael Wacha, Sonny Gray, Danny Salazar & Gerrit Cole… no messing around here. The late round values: Erasmo Ramirez, Jaime Garcia & Josh Beckett.

Let’s take a look at the high impact:

Jose Fernandez – In 2013, he has relied primarily on his Fourseam Fastball (95mph) and Curve (82mph), also mixing in a Change (87mph) and Sinker (93mph). He also rarely throws a Slow Curve (65mph).

Michael Wacha – In 2013, he has relied primarily on his Fourseam Fastball (94mph) and Change (86mph), also mixing in a Curve (76mph). He also rarely throws a Cutter(89mph).

Sonny Gray – In 2013, he has relied primarily on his Fourseam Fastball (93mph) and Curve (80mph), also mixing in a Sinker (93mph) and Change (87mph). He also rarely throws a Cutter (87mph) and Slider (84mph).

Danny Salazar – 2013, he has relied primarily on his Fourseam Fastball (96mph), also mixing in a Splitter (86mph) and Slider (87mph). He also rarely throws a Sinker(94mph).

Gerrit Cole – In 2013, he has relied primarily on his Fourseam Fastball (96mph) and Sinker (96mph), also mixing in a Slider (89mph), Curve(83mph) and Change (88mph).

Just how dominating was Danny Salazar last year on the pitch level? Adding up the pitch scores (weighed by usage), per my previous post, we come up with the following matrix (Rep = Repertoire Score):

Boom! (On just the pitch-level) Salazar is beyond quadruple the dominance of Fernandez, Cole & Wacha. Quadruple! Grey thinks he’s a sexy beast and will go 10/3.40/1.19/180 and I’ll one-up that and call him our 2014 Matt Harvey. But keeping things rational, I have him at an almost identical 12/3.38/1.18/181. Screw rational! Don’t be baffled if he goes 2.75/1.15/200 with health and some of the best swing-and-miss stuff in the game.

Just to note, the following pitches weren’t used enough for our analysis: Wacha’s curveball and cutter; Gray’s cutter, changeup and slider; and Salazar’s sinker. Only Gray’s cutter and Salazar’s sinker were relatively dominant further adding value to them.

I already pointed out Burch Smith in the first part of this series. Here are 3 others with a top-10 Fastball that can be sneaky late round value:

Josh Beckett – still valid? Sho-is. While he’s provided hideous ERA’s the past 2 years – backed up by ugly FIP’s, his more reliable expected ERA’s (xFIP & SIERA) still come in under 4.00 and he was hit hard by three relatively unlucky rates: 16.3% HR/FB, 65.7% LOB rate and a .323 BABIP – all well beyond his career rates. Feel free to stream him at home when healthy. Here are his pitch scores: Fastball = #2/218; Sinker = #33/174; Changeup = #64/141; Curveball = 88/149; Cutter = #4/69… well above average throughout his repertoire

Erasmo Ramirez – a relatively deep 5-pitch repertoire, his curveball (#68) and changeup (#44) were well above average but his fastball was dominating – induced enough grounders but had a top-10 whiff/swing rate. He’s known for his changeup, but his slider was also devastating in 2012.  I think he can take a big step forward if 3-of-his-4 pitches can baffle in 2014.

Jaime Garcia – All we have to do is look at his pitch score rankings here: 9^th best fastball, 74^th best sinker, 13^th best changeup, 61^st best slider.  He’s not dominating, but he induces a ton of grounders and consistently approaches a 3.00 K/BB ratio.  He won’t win you your WHIP or K categories, but he’s a solid late-draft contributor IF he’s healthy.

And their repertoire scores:

These three pitchers can still be assets with some luck (BABIP, HR/FB and LOB%). They just get hit a bit harder than the previous five:

Keep an eye on Brandon Workman and Hector Santiago as well.

As I offered in the first post, feel free to request the full matrix. Again, here are the top-30 (updated) Fastballs from 2013 from a Whiff/Swing, GB/FB & LD/BIP perspective:

You can follow Dano on Twitter @Rotobanter or you can send him requests through Rotobanter.