Just the Worst: Starting Pitchers

May 27, 2021

Nicklaus Gaut looks at some of the most disappointing fantasy baseball starting pitchers from the early rounds to see if they are getting any closer to meeting their preseason expectations.

After living through the bouncy-ball, home run-a-palooza for the last few seasons, 2021 has brought with it pitching dominance not seen since guys named Noodle Hahn and Snake Wiltse were pitching dead balls for 300+ innings.

However, not every pitcher has seen great results with the new baseball that 2021 has wrought, and you don't have to go down the spring's ADP too far before tripping over some deadweight that may be anchoring your team to the bottom of the standings.

Early round players falling flat are always a disappointment but it's a real stomach punch when it's one of your aces doing the tripping. That's obviously because of what their performance does to your stats but early pitchers failing is even worse considering that those picks will generally define the flow of your draft. IE. If you went with a "pocket aces" strategy (let's say Lucas Giolito and Aaron Nola, for argument's sake) and then loaded up on a long string of bats, there is even more pressure on those aces to carry the weight of your pitching staff's freight.

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The Bad

I'm not exactly mad, just disappointed. Isn't that worse, though? These are the starters who haven't broken your team, returning positive, or nearly positive value so far in 2021. It's just that they were drafted to be so much more. And now that we're almost a third of the way into the season, fantasy managers need to make decisions about how to fix their pitching woes if their pocket aces have played more like a deuce.

Lucas Giolito, CHW ($6.2, SP 46)

2021: 55.2 IP - 4 W - 66 SO - 4.04 ERA - 1.17 WHIP

I mean, Lucas Giolito hasn't been a disaster, save for a couple of blowups but his $6.2 in value through 10 starts (SP 46) isn't exactly inspiring from someone who, on average, was the sixth pitcher being drafted.

Giolito's changeup is still magical and his fastball, while not as good as last season (-0.9 RV per 100 pitches), is still a positive pitch (-0.3 RV/100), getting elite rise (1.7 inches more than the average four-seamer thrown at similar velocity and movement) and above-average break (0.7 inches more than average). The big disappointment has been his slider.

It's not that the slider was great before but it was at least an average offering to go with the plus combo of his fastball and changeup, posting a +0.2 RV/100 in 2020 and -0.1 RV/100 in 2019. However, it's down to a +2.0 RV/100 in 2021 and may be contributing to his ongoing home run problem (1.46 HR/9 in 2021, up from 1.00 HR/9 in 2020 and 1.22 HR/9 in 2019). Giolito's nine home runs allowed in 2021 have been evenly split across his pitch mix, with three each coming off of his fastball, changeup, and slider. But he only uses the slider 17.3% of the time, while using his fastball and changeup a combined 82.7%. That works out to one home run per 116 changeups and one per 145 fastballs...And one for every 54 sliders.

The slider is the least-used of Giolito's repertoire but it used to be a bigger put-away pitch, with a 26.8% PutAway% in 2019. However, that dropped to 19.2% in 2020 and currently sits at 15.4% in 2021. He's not using it more for a good reason, as batters fear it less and are making more contact. Its 18.9% SwStr% in 2021 is virtually the same as in 2020 but is down from 22.3% in 2020, while his 35.2% Whiff% is also an all-time low, down from 52.6% Whiff% in 2020, and 41.8% Whiff% in 2019.  And the swing rate against his slider is also an all-time high; it has a 53.7% Swing% in 2021, up from 42.5% in 2020, and 46.9% in 2019.

A change in shape might be making Giolito's slidepiece go rusty, the velocity is up a tick from previous seasons (86 mph in 2021, 84.9 mph in 2020, 84.6 mph in 2019), with the faster pitch getting three fewer inches of drop and 1.3 fewer inches of break. Thrown primarily to right-handers, these changes are leaving a lot more sliders in the middle of the plate.

Here it was in 2020:

And in 2021:

Once again, here he was in 2020, with the slider in yellow, the changeup in green, and the four-seamer in red:

And 2021:

The slider needs some tweaking but that might already be happening. In his last two starts (MIN, STL), Giolito has pitched a combined 14 innings, allowing just two earned runs while striking out 16, with a season-high 20.7% slider usage. Batters posted a 26.2% SwStr% and 47.8% Whiff% against it in those two starts, garnering just two hits and a .137 xwOBA, with locations that were a lot less meaty. Remember his heat map from earlier?

Here it is from those two starts:

Those rostering Giolito probably only need to bury their disappointment for a little while longer, as the ace is already turning things around and will face two of the worst teams in baseball for his next two starts, lined up to face Baltimore and Detroit at home.

Aaron Nola, PHI ($5.8, SP 48)

2021: 59.1 IP - 3 W - 70 SO - 3.94 ERA - 1.13 WHIP 

A lot of fantasy players entered 2021 with Aaron Nola as their presumed SP 1 or as the second bullet in their pocket-aces strategy. Things have been ho-hum, at best but perhaps that ho-hum designation has less to do with talent and is more simply a problem of misplaced expectations.

Nola's 3.94 ERA isn't exactly terrible and is backed by evaluators that speak both to more success in the future and a bit of unluckiness in the past, with a 2.98 FIP, 3.32 xFIP, and 3.18 SIERA. And a 1.13 WHIP and 28.5% K% aren't anything to sneeze at but they aren't the 33.2% K% and 1.08 WHIP from 2020.

I'm not saying the elevated strikeout rate from 2020 was an illusion but it is the outlier when looking at Nola's career:

Batters are missing less, with a 28.1% Whiff% that's down three points from 2020, and a 12.5% SwStr% that's down a point (but still up from 11.0% in 2019). They're also swinging more overall, evidenced by Nola's career-high 49.3% Swing %, but most directly on pitches in the zone, with his 66.4% Zone Swing% (up from 60.6% in 2020 and 58.8% in 2019) and 73.2% Meatball Swing% (up from 66.1% in 2020 and 67.7% in 2019) both tracking at new career highs. But they're also not chasing the cheese; Nola's 30.2% Chase% may not be a career-low but it's the lowest since 2018 and is down from 36.5% in 2020.

Translation? Batters are being fooled less and are more than content to wait for Nola to come back over the plate before they pounce. And he's giving them plenty of opportunities to do so; his 52.7 Zone% (44.0% in 2020, 46.2% in 2019) is a career-high, and his 7.6% Meatball% (5.4% in 2020, 5.8% in 2019) is the highest since 2018.

Looking at his individual pitches, Nola has a couple of culprits in terms of his decrease in whiffery. His changeup has dropped from a 19.7% SwStr% and 36.0% Whiff% in 2020, to a 16.2% SwStr% and 25.7% Whiff% in 2021, while his vaunted curveball has seen even bigger drops. It had a 22.5% SwStr% and 41.8% Whiff% in 2020 but is down to a 15.5% SwStr% and 33.6% Whiff% in 2021. Remember that SwStr% is the number of whiffs divided by the number of pitches thrown, while Whiff% takes out the batter's decision to offer at the pitch,  measuring just the number of whiffs divided by the number of swings. Drops in either aren't great but I find decreases in SwStr% to be more troubling, as it is telling you not only how much batters whiff but how often they're enticed to swing in the first place.

The changeup may not have seen as big of a whiff drop as his curveball but going back to batters being willing to wait for something over the plate, it might be a big part of the problem. Its run value per 100 pitches has gone from a -0.7 RV/100 in 2019 and 2020, to a 1.9 RV/100 in 2021, rising from a .249 wOBA and .331 wOBAcon in 2020 to a .293 wOBA and .442 wOBAcon in 2021.

Care to guess which of the following heat maps is from 2020, and which is from 2021?

A?

Or B?

The final trouble lurking is that Nola is apparently a fly-ball pitcher now? At least, all of the career-highs and lows in his batted-ball data below is showing hitters having an easier time elevating:

Even with the troubles in his changeup and curveball, I'm still not that down on Nola. But I also wasn't just that high on him in the first place, at least relative to his draft price, with Nola having a 23 ADP in NFBC heading into 2021, on average coming in as the 8th pitcher being taken. It goes back to the bigger problem with expectations. I'll happily slot Nola in as a yearly top-20 pitcher, with his excellent strikeout rate and propensity to pile up innings making him a safe bet for a high floor; the problem is letting last year's 33% K% trick you into thinking he's a top-10 starter. He's not. And that's okay! I have zero exposure to him this year but you best believe I'm starting to sniff around the unhappy managers who drafted him as their SP 1 and are ready to make a change.

And The Ugly

These are the team breakers, as their combination of staff-anchoring draft capital and numbers that look like they've pitched every game in Colorado have made them totally unbeatable. And by unbeatable, I mean your opponents.

Let's first fulfill my legal obligation to start any list of bad pitchers with Luis Castillo, who was drafted as a top-10 pitcher but is quite literally the least valuable pitcher, according to the FanGraphs auction calculator, with his -$26.4 earned in a 12-team league coming in dead last. You might as well have been starting Mitch Keller.

Things are so bad that the fantasy crowd went wild after he only allowed three runs in five innings versus the Giants on May 18, striking out a season-high 11 batters. He's back!... Until he allowed five earned runs in five innings versus the Brewers in his last start, striking out five and walking four.

Castillo's evaluators say he hasn't been as bad as his no-good, rotten 7.61 ERA says he's been, with a 4.77 FIP and 4.44 xERA, while his 4.08 xFIP and 4.36 SIERA point to better times ahead. The most troubling thing, however, is how his elite strikeout rate (28.9% K% in 2019, 30.5% in 2020) has up and disappeared, posting just a 19.9% K% over his first 10 starts, with an 11.3% SwStr% that's down from 15.4% in 2020. And his once showpiece changeup, formerly adept at getting whiffs and poor contact, is now pairing with his sinker to form one of the worst combos in baseball.

Given his current status of being a high-level hot mess, I have no desire to go out of my way to buy low on Castillo; I'm only in the game if I know his owner is someone is sick and tired of the scourge of Luis Castillo being on their team. If you're in a league with this person, you know exactly what I'm talking about. If I can get him for a big bargain, say as the stapler onto a deal with bigger principles, I'm in. But I'm not getting near him without the big discount because until Castillo gets his changeup ironed out (+2.1 RV/100 in 2021, up from -0.7 RV/100 in 2020, and -2.7 RV/100 in 2019), there's no guarantee he'll turn it around.

Kenta Maeda has made a lot of problems for himself, with a 4.98 xERA and 5.10 FIP that say he's deserved every bit of his 5.26 ERA over his first starts, pitching just 37 innings, with a 1.57 WHIP (down from 0.75 WHIP in 2020), and his 19.4% K% is down 13-points from last season. And now he's back to the IL, with his groin continuing to cause him issues.

Maeda has many issues but let's focus on the slider, a former whiff machine, posting a 25.2% SwStr% in 2018, 22.3% SwStr% in 2019, and 19.7% SwStr% in 2020. The usage is at an all-time high but the whiffs have dropped again, with a career-low 15.2% SwStr% and 27.5% Whiff% (also a career-low), while batters have posted a .408 wOBA and .330 xwOBA against it - both are also career-worst marks.

I'll take any deal if it's good enough but I'm certainly not targeting Maeda. He'll be better than the pile he's been so far but he's on a bad team, is older than you think (33-years-old), and doesn't have a long track record as a full-time starter. That and a lingering groin issue just make too many variables for me to want to mess around with.

Welcome to my personal nightmare, as I finally decided to buy into Kyle Hendricks and am just getting smacked around by a guy who was supposed to be boring but safe. And yet, here we are. According to the auction calculator, Hendricks has been the SP 115, with four wins, a 4.74 ERA, and a 1.50 WHIP over his first 49.1 IP. Just like we all imagined.

The good news is that Hendricks has pitched much better since allowing seven earned runs to Atlanta on April 28 - which was his second seven-run outing versus Atlanta in as many weeks - allowing just one earned run in three of his last four starts, allowing 4 ER to the Pirates in the other. And while his line versus Pittsburgh was bad, most of the damage was done by a bevy of weak singles. He'll get a chance for revenge in his next start, lined up to face the Pirates on the road before heading home for a matchup versus the Padres.

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