Are You For Real? Surprising MLB Pitcher Starts from Week 16

Elliott Baas looks at starting pitchers who turned in surprising starts recently. These SP could emerge as waiver wire targets and sleepers for Week 16, or simply mirages.

Welcome back to "Are You For Real?", 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.

With the trade deadline looming, fantasy managers should be looking to shore up their rotations for the home stretch. That's why we're taking a deep dive on two arms who came out of the All-Star break strong in left-handers Braxton Garrett of Miami and Jose Quintana of Pittsburgh.

Roster percentages are taken from Yahoo and are accurate as of 7/25/22.

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Braxton Garrett, Miami Marlins – 29% Rostered

2022 Stats (before this start): 41.1 IP, 3.70 ERA, 3.47 FIP, 17.1 K-BB%
7/22 @ PIT: 6 IP, 2 H, 1 ER, 1 BB, 7 K

Garrett went into the All-Star break on quite the hot streak, putting up a 1.89 ERA in his final three starts before the break. His strong performance continued on Friday, as Garrett carved up the Pirates for seven strikeouts over six innings of one-run ball en route to his second victory of the season.

Miami has been a pitching factory over the past couple of years, producing some of the most effective and exciting young arms in the game. Could Garrett be the next Marlins find, or will his success flounder?

The seventh overall pick in 2016, Garrett was considered one of the premier pitching prospects of his class. His prospect stock took a dip in Miami’s system as Garrett underwent Tommy John Surgery in 2017 and struggled to produce consistent results at the higher levels of the minors.

He was Miami’s 21^st-ranked prospect heading into this season and profiled as more of a spot starter or long reliever than a true starter. Injuries to several key pieces such as Jesus Luzardo and Edward Cabrera changed Garrett’s trajectory, and he looks like a fixture in the Marlins’ rotation.

Garrett works with five pitches; a slider, four-seam fastball, sinker, changeup, and curveball. It’s a deep repertoire, but the slider has been the primary catalyst for Garrett’s success.

Opposing batters have been stupefied by Garrett’s slider, hitting just .216 with a .277 xwOBA, 21.1% swinging strike rate, and a monster 44.5% chase rate. It shouldn’t be undersold just how outrageously good that chase rate is, and while it’s wholly unsustainable over time, it still indicates a quality offering that batters cannot lay off.

Coming in at around 84.4 MPH, velocity is not the key to Garrett’s slider. What makes it so special is its exceptional vertical movement, as Garrett gets nearly four additional inches of vert on his slider compared to the league average.

He also gets about two extra inches of break compared to the league average. It’s one thing to quote numbers and another to see it in action, so here’s a physics-defying slider from this most recent start.

That type of movement does not come around often, and while he shares little in common with this pitcher otherwise besides both being southpaws, Garrett’s slider is visually reminiscent of Chris Sale’s slider. Garrett is a long way from being Chris Sale, but it’s not a bad place to start.

So, there you have it. Garrett’s slider is a uniquely dominant pitch, therefore he should continue to dominate, right? Not quite. If we take a step out and look at the bigger picture, we'll see why.

Firstly, the issue of luck and competition must be addressed. Over his last four starts, Garrett has a laughably low .143 BABIP against and 94.2% LOB rate. It should also be noted that of his four starts, two came against the anemic Pittsburgh Pirates and one against the equally punchless Washington Nationals.

His only real test came against the Mets, and Garrett surrendered two home runs and only struck out three over 5.2 innings. Garrett has come up short against every top-half offense except the Houston Astros, when he held them to one unearned run over 5.2 innings on June 11. Indeed, you can only play who’s on your schedule, but it’s hard to push all your chips in on someone who appears to be beating up on the league’s cellar dwellers.

Even setting competition aside, one should have serious doubts over the effectiveness of Garrett’s fastball. Opponents are hitting .179 with a .325 SLG against his four-seamer, but that’s despite a 24.2% line drive rate and 90.4 MPH average exit velocity against the pitch.

The .185 BABIP against Garrett’s fastball seems bound to rise, especially since he has a .299 BABIP against the pitch. He hasn’t been quite as lucky with his sinker but still has a .256 AVG against despite a 30.3% line drive rate against the pitch.

One should strongly doubt the sustainability of this performance over time, and since batters are hitting over .330 on both his changeup and curveball, those pitches cannot be relied on for outs either.

Garrett has one incredible pitch, but the rest of his game needs work before he can take the next step. Pitch sequencing will be crucial to monitor for him as he experiments and tries to find an approach that maximizes the value of his slider.

 Verdict:

Garrett’s slider is as advertised, and looks like it has the makings of an elite breaking ball. In a perfect world, he would throw a slider every single time, but that’s not the reality we live in, so he’ll be forced to rely on a myriad of subpar fastballs and secondary offerings until he can develop one into a consistently effective pitch.

While his slider looks good, much of his recent success can be attributed to good fortune and weak competition. He’s still worth an add in 12 team or deeper leagues in this writer’s opinion as he has strong potential and could even tweak something midseason (unlikely given his current success), but don’t expect an ace or even someone to trust every single time he pitches.

Jose Quintana, Pittsburgh Pirates – 14% Rostered

2022 Stats (prior to this start): 90.1 IP, 3.99 ERA, 3.34 FIP, 13.5% K-bB%
7/23 vs. MIA: 7 IP, 4 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 4 K

Quintana has had a quiet bounce-back season thus far, putting up a 3.70 ERA over 19 starts with the Pirates. He turned in one of his best outings all year on Saturday, firing seven scoreless innings while picking up his third victory of the year.

Quintana was once Mr. Reliable during his White Sox days, but his skills seem to have begun eroding the second he was shipped to the north side back in 2017. Between 2012-16 Quintana had a 3.41 ERA in 951 innings, but he has a 4.51 ERA over 607 innings between 2017-21.

Last year was an all-time low for Quintana, who posted a miserable 6.43 ERA between the Angels and Giants. Pittsburgh is usually the last call for any veterans looking for one more shot in the bigs, but does Quintana have what it takes?

Even during his prime, Quintana never blew anyone away on the mound. His fastball typically sat around 91-92 MPH, and he is still averaging 91.1 MPH this season. That’s not a great mark by any means, but relative to his younger days, Quintana hasn’t lost that much on his fastball.

His fastball was never his money pitch anyway, as Quintana’s best offerings were his curveball and changeup, which he used with superb command to limit free passes and generate weak contact. It's been mostly about the curveball and change for Quintana this year as well, and he’s begun featuring the pitches more frequently in his sequencing this year.

2022 has been all about the changeup for Quintana, whose usage rate with the pitch has leaped to a career-high 24.2% compared to a 10.6% career usage rate. His changeup has a microscopically low 1345 RPM spin rate, making it one of the lowest spin pitches thrown by a major league starter in 2022.

Spin rate is less consequential on changeups compared to fastballs and curveballs, but in general lower changeup spin rates lead to increased deceptiveness with the pitch. The changeup has been one of Quintana’s more effective strikeout pitches this season, with a 30.3% chase rate and 10.8% swinging strike rate with the pitch, both better than his career averages.

While these numbers are nice, they certainly aren’t mind-blowing or overly exceptional, and increased changeup usage shouldn’t excite anyone to add Quintana by itself.

One of the hidden benefits of Quintana’s increased changeup usage is decreased reliance on his fastball, a pitch that has caused him quite a bit of trouble over his last few years. Batters demolished his four-seamer to the tune of a .291 AVG and .870 OPS last season, which was merely the continuation of a multi-year negative trend in fastball outcomes for Quintana.

Quintana was never known for his fastball, but it became a liability for him over the past few seasons. He’s at a stage in his career where a fastball-heavy approach may no longer be a viable option. Quintana has thrown a fastball 49.4% of the time this season, which is the lowest fastball usage rate of his career by a considerable margin.

What’s interesting about his fastball is that the outcomes have been much better than expected. Batters are hitting just .227 against Quintana’s four-seamer this season, along with a .390 SLG and .290 wOBA. While one shouldn’t expect him to maintain these results over the long haul, there’s enough in the peripherals to suggest Quintana’s fastball is reentering the realm of usefulness.

The most telling number is the 85.2 MPH average exit velocity, which is about 5 MPH softer than last year and closer to the marks he was getting during his prime. The .293 BABIP against his fastball is not egregiously fortunate, and his .251 xBA suggests that when regression hits it won’t be as catastrophic as last year.

The main thing that’s changed for Quintana is location, as he’s peppering fastballs above the zone to induce weak contact. Here’s a heatmap comparison of Quintana’s fastball usage from this season compared to 2021 and his career.

2022:

2021:

Career:

Whereas he used to be able to decorate the zone with his heater, he now has a narrow focus to attack high, and it’s working for him. He probably won’t be the pitcher he was with the White Sox again, but he looks a lot better than he had over the past couple of seasons.

Verdict:

Subtle changes in approach have allowed Quintana to make the most of an underwhelming repertoire, something he’s been a master at during certain points in his career. His increased changeup usage and shift in fastball location indicate tangible changes that lead to positive results.

Bear in mind, that he’s not that good; he’s still Jose Quintana, a 33-year-old soft-tosser on one of baseball’s weakest clubs. Still, he’s worthy of spot start or streaming consideration, which is more than we could say for him over the past few seasons.

Quintana seems like a prime trade candidate, so his situation could change quite a bit over the coming weeks, but unless he winds up in a really tough hitter's park, he’ll probably put up similar numbers no matter where he is pitching.

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