Intro
This offseason the Tigers signed Japanese veteran pitcher Kenta Maeda to a 2-year contract worth $24 million. The Tigers see him as a stable presence in their rotation who can mentor the younger pitchers like Skubal and Manning still developing their craft. The backdrop to this is that Maeda missed the entirety of the 2022 season due to Tommy John surgery.
Most pitchers nowadays take between half to a full season to regain their form and velocity after returning from TJ surgery. Despite this fact, Maeda had a pretty solid showing for his rebound season. Since his strikeout prowess always relied on his offspeed pitches, he didn’t need overpowering zip on his fastball.
2023 Season in Context
| Season | IP | K/9 | BB/9 | HR/9 | ERA | SIERA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Career | 866.1 | 9.88 | 2.58 | 1.24 | 3.92 | 3.71 |
| 2023 | 104.1 | 10.09 | 2.42 | 1.47 | 4.23 | 3.76 |
Maeda has pitched in the Major Leagues for nearly 900 innings now, we know the type of pitcher he is. As I said before, he doesn’t have an overpowering fastball like Ohtani, so he instead fools opposing hitters with his offspeed pitches. And in his return last year, he was essentially the same guy we always knew. Everything looked to align pretty close to his career numbers… but one terrible start early against the Yankees as he was trying to find his footing skewed the results.
2023 Season After May 1st
| Time | IP | K-BB% | BABIP | K/9 | BB/9 | HR/9 | ERA | SIERA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MAY–SEPT | 88.1 | 22% | .271 | 10.49 | 2.55 | 1.43 | 3.36 | 3.61 |
I believe what the Tigers saw is what you can see above. After May 1st, Maeda settled into the season and went on to pitch like a strong number two. He was able to maintain a 22% K-BB ratio right in line with his career norm and performed a bit better than he had over the last couple of seasons in Minnesota before his injury. There’s potential there backed up by a cavernous outfield in Detroit for the Tigers to get an above-average return on that $12M AAV that they are paying him.
The Good News
Maeda’s two best pitches still neutralized batters as they always have. His splitter (.182 AVG) and slider (.237 AVG) were very effective last year especially after he found his rhythm. It’s been the talk of the baseball world lately, and if I may toot my own horn a bit, I’ve been saying this for nearly 3 years now… the splitter (and split-change variant) is the best and most effective pitch in the major leagues. If you have a decent one, you can be successful.
Due to the current batting environment here in America, the splitter is uniquely adept at getting swings and misses because it looks so much like a fastball and even begins moving like one before disappearing off the table. Launch angle, max-swing hitters will almost always swing over the top of it… I might just draft all pitchers with decent splitters this year.
Something in the Air
Everything wasn’t all rainbows, butterflies, and unicorns for Kenta Maeda last year though. Despite the overall line consistent with his career, he did allow a lot of flyballs. Opposing hitters hit a career-high 47.5% flyballs; that’s roughly 10% higher than his career average of 38.1%. This is best understood as a conversion of 10% of his soft contact rate from 21.3% down to 10. Is this his new normal? Hard to say at this point, but I’m leaning toward chalking it up to his first season back from TJ, especially if he gains another 1/2 mph back on his fastball this spring.
He’s always been a flyball pitcher; but a shift this large, despite his other successes, seems to be part of shaking off the rust. I have hope that his pitches will be a bit crisper this season and calling Comerica Park home will certainly help turn some of those flyballs into outs.
Conclusion
Right now with an average ADP of 262, Kenta Maeda represents a low-cost, high-upside pitcher with good ratios and decent Ks late in your draft after you have secured the core of your starting pitchers. There is some risk that the flyballs and hard contact will stick around but it’s worth the price to see if he channels the same results at the end of last season. It could very well be that going to Detroit is the right move for his pitching profile. Right now I am giving him the projection of 134 IP with a 3.80 ERA, 1.16 WHIP, 9.9 K/9, and 2.5 BB/9 with a shot at a few more Ks and outperforming ERA. Happy drafting!
If you want more Coolwhip to top off your baseball experience, fantasy or otherwise, you can follow me on Twitter: @CoolwhipRB.
