Are You For Real? Surprising Fantasy Baseball Pitcher Starts From Luis L. Ortiz and Andre Pallante

September 24, 2024

Elliott Baas looks at starting pitchers who turned in surprising starts recently. These SPs could emerge as fantasy baseball waiver wire targets and sleepers for Week 27, or simply mirages.

Welcome back to the "Are You For Real?" series as we dive into Week 27 of the 2024 fantasy baseball season. This week, we're looking at two NL Central arms that transitioned from reliever to starter this season. First, we'll break down a strong start from Luis L. Ortiz in Pittsburgh. Then, we'll deep dive into groundball specialist Andre Pallante's start against Cleveland.

For those who are not familiar, this is a weekly column where we take starting pitchers who had surprisingly good starts over the past week and put them under the microscope to determine whether they're legit or just smoke and mirrors.

Roster percentages are taken from Yahoo! and are accurate as of Sept. 23.

Luis L. Ortiz, Pittsburgh Pirates – 22% Rostered

2024 Stats (prior to this start): 122.2 IP, 3.45 ERA, 4.38 FIP, 11.1% K-BB%
9/19 @ STL: 6 IP, 5 H, 2 ER, 2 BB, 7 K

Ortiz was excellent Thursday, and while he didn’t get the win, he put up a quality start and tied a career-high with seven strikeouts against the Cardinals. Ortiz has spent time in both the bullpen and rotation this season and has a solid 3.43 ERA to show for his efforts. Can we trust him as the season winds down, or should we steer clear of this Bucco?

Originally an international free agent signing out of the Dominican Republic, Ortiz became a highly-ranked prospect in the Pirates system. He ranked as high as the 77^th prospect in all of baseball by Fangraphs ahead of the 2023 season. Things went sideways for him that season as Ortiz stumbled to a 4.78 ERA and 5.57 FIP in 86.2 innings last season.

He’s been much better this year, posting a 3.43 ERA and 2.49 K:BB ratio in 128.2 innings. Ortiz works with a five-pitch mix consisting of a slider, four-seam fastball, sinker, cutter, and changeup. His most used pitch this season has been the slider, but that wasn’t the case on Thursday. Instead, Ortiz leaned heavily on his sinker against St. Louis.

A 94.9 mpg offering, Ortiz’s sinker has been an excellent groundball pitch this season. Batters are hitting .237 against the pitch with a .359 SLG and .307 wOBA. The expected stats on the pitch are a little concerning, with Ortiz posting a .281 xBA, .471 xSLG, and .367 xwOBA with his sinker this season.

Still, Ortiz has a -1-degree average launch angle against and a 59% groundball rate with his sinker, so it looks like the pitch is doing its job and could be a solid offering for Ortiz.

The sinker may’ve been his most used pitch on Thursday, but it wasn’t his most impressive. That honor goes to the slider, which Ortiz threw 20% of the time. He also earned seven of his 10 whiffs with the pitch, good for a dominant 58% whiff rate.

Overall, the strikeout numbers on Ortiz’s slider are less impressive. He has a 14.8% swinging strike rate with the pitch, along with a 33% chase rate. Those aren’t bad numbers necessarily, but they aren’t special either, and their substandard nature is reflected in Ortiz’s overall strikeout rate of just 7.13 K/9.

Strikeouts aren’t really Ortiz’s game, and while he has an exceptional groundball rate with his sinker, Ortiz isn’t a groundball pitcher either. He has a 39.4% groundball rate this season. His slider and four-seamer both have flyball tendencies, with each pitch having a launch angle of 20 degrees or higher and a flyball rate above 47%.

One can get away with flyball tendencies playing in spacious PNC Park, but interestingly, Ortiz has been much worse at home this season. He has a 3.97 ERA, 5.33 FIP, and 1.51 HR/9 at home this season, compared to a 2.86 ERA, 3.15 FIP, and 0.57 HR/9 on the road this season. Should the Pirates trade him for his own good?

Seriously, these are strange splits that might just be a product of a relatively small sample size. Pitchers normally perform better at home, especially young pitchers like Ortiz. The split I’m more concerned about is between Ortiz as a reliever and a starter.

Ortiz has a 3.49 ERA, 3.68 FIP, and 0.55 HR/9 as a reliever this season but has a 3.39 ERA, 4.62 FIP, and 1.36 HR/9 as a starter this season. The ERA might be slightly better, but the peripheral stats suggest that Ortiz has overperformed as a starter this season.

Ortiz has been quite lucky when pitching out of the rotation this season. He has a .217 BABIP against and a 75.5% LOB rate as a starter.

Interestingly, Ortiz’s xFIP as a starter and reliever are almost identical, with a 4.57 xFIP as a starter and a 4.74 xFIP as a reliever. xFIP normalizes HR/FB rate, meaning that if a pitcher has a much lower FIP compared to xFIP, that pitcher is likely benefiting from good luck in the home run department.

That seems to be the case for Ortiz, who had a 0.55 HR/9 as a reliever but a 1.36 HR/9 as a starter. Which one is the real Ortiz? It’s likely somewhere in the middle, but I’m inclined to lean towards the higher number. Ortiz had a 1.35 HR/9 working primarily as a starter last year, and he has a 12% HR/FB ratio as a starter compared to an unsustainable 5% HR/FB ratio as a reliever.

Ultimately, Ortiz seems to have benefited from some good fortune on the mound, and there’s a reason his 3.43 ERA doesn’t align with any of the ERA estimators such as FIP (4.27), xFIP (4.65), and SIERA (4.40). All those predictors suggest that his ERA should be north of four, and after a breakdown I’d have to agree, his ERA belongs in the mid-fours, not sub-3.5.

Verdict:

Ortiz has flown under the radar in the shadow of Paul Skenes and Jared Jones, and maybe it should stay that way. Ortiz isn’t a bad pitcher by any means, but his stuff doesn't stand out except for above-average velocity. His strikeout potential is quite low, as his slider is the only thing in his repertoire resembling a strikeout weapon.

He also struggles with the long ball at times despite pitching in PNC Park and has a subpar groundball rate despite a solid sinker at his disposal. Ortiz looks like a JAG who one could stream in a pinch, but I wouldn’t be too excited about it. His final start is slated for Wednesday at home against the Brewers, and given his awful home splits and Milwaukee’s .322 team wOBA against right-handed pitching, I’d stay away.

Andre Pallante, St. Louis Cardinals – 20% Rostered

2024 Stats (prior to this start): 3.87 ERA, 3.86 FIP, 8.6% K-BB%
9/22 vs. CLE: 7 IP, 1 H, 1 ER, 2 BB, 4 K

Pallante was excellent on Sunday, holding the first-place Guardians to just one run on one hit over seven strong innings. Pallante lowered his ERA to 3.71 and picked up his eighth victory of the season in this one as well. Pallante has seemingly made a successful transition from the bullpen to the rotation, but can we trust him for the final week?

Originally a fourth-round pick by St. Louis back in 2019, Pallante wasn’t much of a prospect coming up through the Cardinals’ system. He was ranked as the Cardinals' 25^th-best prospect by Fangraphs in 2021 ahead of his debut. Pallante works with a four-pitch mix consisting of a four-seam fastball, sinker, slider, and knuckle curveball.

Pallante is a fastball-heavy pitcher, throwing his four-seamer and sinker a combined 70.2% of the time this season. Pallante is also a groundball-heavy pitcher, with an impressive 62% groundball rate this season. Usually, we think of sinkers as the groundball pitch, but that’s not the case for Pallante.

A 94.5 mph offering, Pallante has gotten some exceptional groundball numbers with his four-seamer this season. Batters have really struggled to square the four-seamer up, hitting just .229 against the pitch with a .299 SLG and .297 wOBA.

The expected stats suggest that Pallante has overperformed to some degree with a .261 xBA, .363 xSLG, and .332 xwOBA. Still, these are strong results on the pitch, and the batted ball numbers indicate that the results are sustainable.

Pallante has an incredible -6-degree average launch angle against his four-seamer this season, along with an 89.6 mph average exit velocity and an unreal 72.5% groundball rate. He is in the 99^th percentile in groundball rate (61.8%) and 98^th percentile in barrel rate (3.4%). Let’s have a look at Pallante’s four-seam fastball heatmap this season because it’s quite unique.

These days, it’s all about the high fastball and chasing strikeouts, but Pallante is an old-school pitcher who focuses on keeping the ball down. When it comes to fringy pitchers like Pallante, I prefer ones with exceptional skills, and Pallante’s groundball prowess is certainly exceptional.

Pallante throws his four-seamer 51.1% of the time, so it’s by far his primary pitch, and that was the case on Sunday as he threw the pitch 69% of the time. His next most used pitch in this start was practically a tie between his slider and knuckle curve. Pallante threw the slider 13% of the time and his knuckle curve 14% of the time.

Pallante's slider leaves something to be desired in the strikeout department. He notched just two whiffs with his slider against Cleveland and has an underwhelming 11.6% swinging strike rate and 29.7% chase rate with the pitch this season.

With average break and spin, Pallante’s slider is nothing special and the biggest positive it has is an 85.7 mph average exit velocity against. Pallante is in the 85^th percentile in average exit velocity against overall, so while the pitch does induce weak contact, so do the rest of his pitches.

Pallante will likely never be a strikeout king, but there may be room for improvement in that department. His least used pitch is the knuckle curve, which he throws just 12.6% of the time, but digging into the numbers, it seems like the pitch has the potential to be an excellent complement to his fastballs.

Batters have really struggled against Pallante’s knuckle curve, hitting just .167 against the pitch, along with a .273 SLG and .188 wOBA. Somehow, the expected numbers are even better, with Pallante posting a .158 xBA, .248 xSLG, and .173 xwOBA with the pitch this season.

Again, batters can’t seem to square Pallante up; he has an 85.2 mph average exit velocity against his curveball and a 51.4% groundball rate against.

It’s also his best strikeout pitch, as Pallante has a 14.5% swinging strike rate and a 31.7% chase rate with the pitch, which are solid marks for a curveball. It would be nice to see Pallante make the pitch a bigger part of his game, but that won’t happen this season, if it happens at all.

So Pallante is good at getting groundballs and inducing weak contact, but what is his fantasy appeal? His 16.1% strikeout rate is pitiful in today’s game, and he has a bloated 9.7% walk rate as well. Given his wildness and pitch-to-contact nature, Pallante will likely be a high WHIP pitcher throughout his career.

He has a 1.40 WHIP for his career, and while it’s slightly improved to 1.30 this season, that’s still higher than we’d like to see. He could likely maintain a sub-four ERA, but with minimal strikeouts, a high WHIP, and so-so win potential on a .500 club, there’s not that much to like here.

Verdict:

Pallante is an exceptional groundball pitcher who consistently induces weak contact. That alone could make him a viable big league starter, however his fantasy upside is limited. He doesn’t get many strikeouts, he issues far too many walks, and he relies too much on his four-seamer.

He reminds me a little of ex-Cardinal and current Rockie Dakota Hudson. That may seem like a damning comparison now, but Hudson was a solid pitcher for a few years before undergoing Tommy John surgery.

Pallante is streamable in a pinch, but definitely not a first choice. His final start comes Saturday at San Francisco, a club with just a .298 wOBA against right-handed pitching this season. I think he is worth considering in that matchup if you need him, but I wouldn’t be excited about starting him.

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