Life’s full of the unexpected; that weather event like a tornado or hurricane that upends your life, that car accident, the medical diagnosis. On the flip (or less grim) side, the unexpected good deed from a stranger paying it forward, that gesture from a friend or loved one that changes the direction of your day, or that acquaintance of mine that just won $1 million from a $20 scratch-off lottery ticket. Life is filled with blessings and pains we can never see coming.
Far more inconsequentially (though try telling that to some of us!), fantasy baseball is the same way. The consensus top overall draft pick coming off of a historic 2023 was pretty much mid this year until a torn ACL ended this season and probably half of 2025 as well (I miss you already, RAJ). The consensus top-5 pick coming off of a 25-50 rookie season who is barely hitting Triston McKenzie’s weight (though you’re coming around, Corbin!) Those two high picks have brought unexpected pain to your teams. It’s not all doom and gloom, though; we all saw Ranger Suarez and Luis Gil as the anchors of our “first in four categories” pitching staffs, right? Many of us passed on Julio Rodriguez for Jurickson Profar and Brenton Doyle, right? Didn’t we? *crickets*
Of course not. If John Steinbeck (well, Robert Burns) taught us anything it’s that even the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry. And if they didn’t teach us that, fantasy sports certainly should. So when do we look at somebody and say, “Hold the line; they should be doing such-and-such,” versus “It’s time to cash out on this stock before it crashes”? That’s a little bit where expected stats (xStats) come in.
I’ve focused solely on hitters in my biweekly columns, so today I will switch it up a little and focus on the hurlers (the pitchers, though if I started a rock band, The Hurlers might be a fantastically appropriate name). Which guys do some of my cherry-picked stats say we should see if we can get a discount on acquiring, and which guys should we try to cash out on if possible? For this exercise, I also looked at O-Swing% (getting hitters to swing at bad pitches), Z-Contact% (getting hitters to miss your good pitches), and HardHit% (when they do hit it, they hit it weakly). I’ll also use some other metrics to support (principally, K%-BB%, my favorite pitching stat). Let’s light this candle with a pretty fun little Pitcher Challenge.
In the boss’s preseason pitcher rankings, Grey had Pablo Lopez ranked 8th and Logan Webb ranked 10th; that’s a toss-up for most of us (yes, we all have our preferences, but that’s pretty much ranked equally). Webb has a shiny 2.74 ERA and a top-25 walk rate. On the other hand, Lopez has a career-worst 5.25 ERA. Give me the Webb! Said only if you’re Mary Jane Watson. Webb has the third-highest difference between his actual ERA and his xERA (and not in a good way–his xERA says Webb is a 4.65 ERA guy so far this year, and there’s a lot to support this. My go-to stat when I first want to look at pitchers is K%-BB%, and Webb is pretty bad there at only 14%. He has a terrific walk rate in general (even though it’s not great for him specifically this year), but his K rate is just so low you don’t really get the buff from his fantastic command. Webb is worst among qualified starters in HardHit% at 52.1% and 8th worst at Z-Contact% at 92%. Hitters aren’t missing it when he’s in the strike zone, and when they hit it (which is often), they’re straight stroking it. On the other hand, Lopez has the 2nd-highest xERA/ERA differential (to the good side), as his xERA says Lopez should be at 3.26; that’s almost a full two-run differential! Further, his K%-BB% is 23% (my baseline is above 20% is what you want from a SP), and his Z-Contact% is only 81% (that’s top-tier for SPs). His HardHit% is average, and that’s fine; you don’t need to be elite at everything across the board to be extremely valuable. Lopez’s biggest issue this year has been a career-high HR/9 issue, as he’s at 1.65 right now, which is more than a half-homer per 9 innings higher than it’s ever been. His HardHit% isn’t bad, the HR/9 is an extreme outlier for him, and I expect that to normalize. When it does, everything else will start falling into place for Pab-Lo. If I’m the Webb owner and could make this direct 1-for-1 swap right now, I’d do it in a heartbeat. There’s a chance somebody could value Webb higher due to the ugly ERA difference, and you may even be able to add in a second piece on each end where you’re like, “Look, to even it out more, I’ll add in this hitter, and you throw me back a little more on the hitting end,” and win both ends of the trade.
If you read Grey’s Thursday daily roundup (and you’d have to be an absolute fool not to) (can I have a raise, boss?), you’d know that he and I are ready to cash out our Seth Lugo stock. How can you sell a dude with a 1.72 ERA over almost 80 IP? Razzball readers are the smartest fantasy readers in the fantasy baseball sphere, so you’ll appreciate that almost every underlying metric I’m using here is a flashing red light to sell. Lugo’s xERA is 3.68–which is still good! But it’s also almost a full two runs worse than what he’s pitched to so far, so when the regression fairies hit (and they *will* hit), you will have another 80-100 IP of the Regression Fairy Remix ERA. Lugo’s K%-BB% is barely better than Webb’s (which is a low bar to clear), he’s bad at getting hitters to chase out of the zone (only 30% O-Swing%), and hitters hit a ton of what he throws in-zone (a Z-Contact% of 90.9%, one-tenth of a percent less than Webb’s bad to-date performance). Let’s top it off with a HR/FB% that’s remarkably 50% better than he’s had since 2019, a corresponding HR/9 rate that’s twice as good as he’s had since 2019, and a K/9 that’s his worst since 2017, and I bet you could trade for a guy like….
…his teammate, Michael Wacha, who you could try to do the same trick I suggested in the Webb/Pab-Lo blurb and win both ends of the trade. His current ERA is 4.31, but his xERA is almost a full run better at 3.38. His HardHit% is top-10 among SPs, and his O-Swing% and Z-Contact% are both better than Lugo’s. His other underlying metrics are all in line (with minimal variance either way) with his career norms, and I don’t think it’s risky to suggest that he will be better than Lugo from June through September.
A few quick-hitters:
- I was going to sound the alarm on Andrew Abbott, but Wednesday’s 6 IP, 6 ER start beat me to it. His low K%, coupled with his low O-Swing% and high Z-Contact%, tripled with his *really* low K%-BB% (is tripled with a thing?) makes me see a summer of negative regression in Great American Smallpark.
- You can’t spell Peptic Ulcer Disease without Reid (Detmers), and he’s Detmersing all over your fantasy teams this season. However, I’m recommending buying Detmers. His xERA is 3.55, more than two runs better than his 5.76 actual ERA. His K%-BB% is 17% (just under my 20% threshold but better than Webb/Lugo above), and Detmers does a good job of getting hitters to chase, limits contact in-zone, and limits hard contact. I kind of hate myself for this blurb and readily admit that I may deserve a few solid dong-punches for it in August, but I’m just going where my cherry-picked data takes me here.
- One more fun one where you may want to attempt the Webb/Pab-Lo trick above–Jose Berrios and Brandon Pfaadt. Pfaadt’s pitching to a mediocre 4.16 ERA, but his xERA is under 3.00 (!), and his ability to induce swing-and-miss in the zone while limiting hard contact are solidly in the green (good). Meanwhile, Berrios’s actual sub-3.00 ERA should be 4.50, with a K%-BB% that’s so bad it would even make Webb feel sorry for him, and his Z-Contact% and HardHit% is redder than OJ’s sidewalk.
- When I’ve suggested possible “this for that” trades above, feel free to mix and match however you’d like. If you aren’t a fan of Wacha and think Lugo for Pfaadt is more your style, go for it. The point wasn’t to be specific with *only* those two players, but just the idea that here are guys who the numbers say may be overperforming, and here are guys the numbers may say is underperforming–can you make some magic happen here? I don’t have any more answers than any of you, so if you make some offers or deals, drop them in the comments, and let’s see what you come up with.
