Are You For Real? Surprising Pitcher Starts from Week 5

Elliott Baas looks at starting pitchers who turned in surprising starts recently. These SP could emerge as waiver wire targets and sleepers for Week 5, 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.

This week we're looking at two former first round right-handers from the AL West, breaking down the much hyped debut of Seattle's George Kirby, and the less hyped but still impressive start to the season for Texas's Dane Dunning.

Roster percentages are taken from Yahoo and are accurate as of 5/9/22.

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Dane Dunning, Texas Rangers – 11% Rostered

2021 Stats: 117.2 IP, 4.51 ERA, 3.94 FIP, 13.9% K-BB%
5/8 @ NYY: 6 IP, 2 H, 1 ER, 3 BB, 5 K

Dunning faced tough competition on Sunday against the Yankees and held his own, allowing just one run over six innings for the quality start. It was Dunning’s second straight one-run performance and second-straight outing of six or more innings. The Rangers have shown a reluctance to let Dunning pitch deep into games, making his last three starts of 5.2, 7, and 6 innings pitched an encouraging sign. Dunning has faked out fantasy owners in the past, but the twice-traded former top prospect could finally be putting things together.

Originally a first-round pick by the Washington Nationals, Dunning was a key piece in the Adam Eaton trade, and again key piece in the Lance Lynn deal. Usually, if a highly regarded prospect is trade more than once it’s a bad sign because two separate organizations felt them expendable despite the long term potential value a touted prospect provides. Dunning was never a top-10 or even top-50 prospect, but he was a solid fixture in the back end of top-100 lists when coming up. Dunning boasts a five-pitch repertoire consisting of a sinker, slider, cutter, curveball, and changeup. Of these pitches there isn’t much of a standout, though his best two offerings are his changeup and slider, both of which he relied on heavily during this start against New York.

Dunning’s changeup usage has been especially interesting this season, as he's gone from roughly 11-12% usage the previous two years to 20.6% this season. He’s also gained about two inches of drop on his changeup compared to last season, and it’s been his best strikeout pitch with a 13.9% swinging strike rate and 39% chase rate. An improved changeup should help Dunning with more than just strikeouts as it will allow him to use his fastball less often and improve his platoon splits against lefties. Lefties hit .279 with a .339 wOBA against Dunning last season, but are hitting just .245 this season, albeit with a .330 wOBA thanks to a concerning 12.5% BB rate for Dunning against left-handed hitters. It’s still a small sample, so both the improvements in batting average and the exorbitant walk rate could regress, but since Dunning’s whole career is a relatively small sample and he’s made a notable change in pitch sequencing we don’t have too clear a picture of what that regression might look like. The 12.5% walk rate will almost certainly drop, which should help him against left-handed opponents even if the batting average rises a bit.

The benefits of increased changeup usage extend beyond platoon splits, as previously mentioned, because mixing in more changeups and sliders should relieve some of the pressure off Dunning’s fastball. That's good because Dunning's fastball isn't. Dunning was throwing about 92 MPH heat when he came up, but his velocity has dipped over each of the past two seasons and he’s only averaging 89.5 MPH with his fastball this year and 89 flat in this most recent start. It’s also a low-spin offering, with an average of 1994 RPM this year. Dunning’s sinker does a decent job at inducing groundballs with a 55.3% groundball rate thus far, but that’s about it’s only positive attribute. He’s been rather fortunate to have a .196 AVG against his fastball, since last season opponents hit .278 with a .425 SLG off the pitch. It would be hard to envision Dunning sustaining a .237 BABIP against his fastball all season, as that number is over 100 points lower than it was last year. The average exit velocity against his fastball has been an astonishingly low 84.8 MPH, where as it was 91.8 MPH last year. The velocity and spin rate are both down, so I’m not quite sure what would cause this. Let’s have a peek at Dunning’s sinker heatmaps from this year compared to last year and see if he’s approaching things differently.

2021:

2022:

Looks like he’s less focused on hammering the bottom of the zone and more interested in keeping things middle and inside to righties. Let’s take the same chart and look at it from an exit velocity perspective.

2021:

2022:

Those mid-level fastballs are tough to square up, especially for righties who are seeing them inside That may contribute to his success, but it would be hard to envision him sustaining such a low average exit velocity even with these changes, nor do I think an individual pitcher can sway their hard-hit rate against to such a dramatic degree. Most pitchers stay within 2-3 MPH of their career norm every season, so 7 MPH represents a huge swing. It may normalize somewhere in the middle, but don’t expect this fastball performance to keep up to this degree.

As for the rest of Dunning’s repertoire, there’s not much to be impressed by. His slider is his main breaking ball, but with a .273 AVG against and a mediocre 12.1% swinging strike rate, it’s not much of a knockout punch on the mound. He only got two whiffs with the pitch in this start, and only nine whiffs in total. His slider has performed better in past seasons so perhaps there’s more room for positive regression here, but fantasy managers should be more concerned with the looming fastball regression than hoping for better outcomes on his slider, especially since his slider velocity is down to 78.6 MPH, an exceptionally slow pitch in today’s game, for a 27-year-old no less. Dunning is sort of a junk-baller who tries to get by with decent command and tons of different pitches. That can be fine in a spot start or to ride a hot streak, but there isn’t huge, game-changing upside here.

Verdict:

Dunning throws a lot of pitches, though none of them stand out in a particular way. The same is true of his command, which is so-so, and his strikeout abilities, which will probably always be around 8-9 K/9. The total package we have is resoundingly blah, although Dunning’s is someone I’d be willing to use in the right matchup or situation. He's a decent arm available in deeper leagues as well, given his 11% roster rate on Yahoo. As it currently lines up his next two starts are home against Boston and at Houston, which is tough sledding for a fringe arm like Dunning. Even though he just shut down the Yankees, it’d be best to avoid him in those starts if possible.

George Kirby, Seattle Mariners – 47% Rostered

2022 Stats (AA): 24.2 IP, 1.82 ERA, 3.60 FIP, 29% K-BB%
5/8 vs. TB: 6 IP, 4 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 7 K

It was an impressive major league debut for Kirby on Sunday, as he shut down the Tampa Bay bats for six scoreless innings with seven strikeouts. Kirby was Seattle’s top pitching prospect after Logan Gilbert graduated to the majors, and Kirby is looking to follow in Gilbert’s footsteps as a potential breakout star in the Emerald City. It’s tempting to spend a large portion of FAB whenever a top prospect performs right away, but will Gilbert hold up his end of the bargain?

A first-round pick out of Elon University (no relation to Musk) in 2019, Kirby won over many scouts and prospect-heads for two reasons, his fastball and his command. Kirby averages mid-90s on his fastball and max out around 97-98 MPH, though some report claim to have clocked him in the triple digits. He’s also an exceptional strike-thrower, with walk rates consistently below 2.5 BB/9 in the minor leagues. Other than the fastball, Kirby also works with a slider, changeup, and curveball, with the slider being his most prominent secondary pitch in this start. That being said, Kirby’s fastball really is the jewel of his repertoire and was on dominant display in this one as he earned 13 of his 15 whiffs with the pitch.

Kirby’s fastball is awesome, but what makes him really special is his command, as he simply refuses to walk anyone and can stuff up the strike zone like no other. He had a 51.2% zone rate in this start, which would far outpace the league leaders in zone rate if Kirby had enough innings to qualify. He might not be able to maintain that zone rate over a full season, but the league leaders are typically around 47-48%, and Kirby could likely hang with any of the game’s other top strike throwers. Kirby’s command has the potential to be elite, and any pitcher capable of doing something on an elite level is worth rostering. The fact that he possesses this control with a plus fastball makes him all the more enticing. Kirby should be a positive contributor in the often-overlooked WHIP category in 5x5. Rarely do we (or at least I don’t) isolate WHIP from ERA and instead look at run prevention and expect the WHIP to fall into place, but Kirby presents a rare waiver wire pickup that could be a reliable source of WHIP help if you find yourself behind early in a Roto league, as it becomes much harder to make up ground later in the season.

Outside of the fastball and command Kirby is still figuring things out. His best breaking ball is probably his slider, which he used 25% of the time in this start, though he only got one measly whiff for a pitiful 10% whiff rate. His slider is thrown hard at 88.6 MPH and has below average movement and spin, so don’t expect too many swings-and-misses out of this pitch quite yet. He has an impressive strikeout rate in Double-A, but it’s much easier to overpower Double-A hitters on velocity alone compared to the major leagues. The good news for Kirby is that his superior control should induce more chasing as the pitch improves, because batters will be expecting a fastball in the zone.

If Kirby can polish his slider or develop another of his secondary offerings he could really be something special. A good comparison and possible career arc for him might be Shane Bieber. Bieber doesn’t throw as hard and has a better breaking ball, but Bieber would pound the zone when he first came up and refused to walk anyone. Bieber really popped when he began trusting his breaking ball more often and became less afraid to throw outside the zone. While I wouldn’t predict him to reach Bieber’s heights, one or two more seasons in the bigs with experience, coaching, and pitch development could put Kirby on the path as a number one or two starter.

Verdict:

There’s a lot to like about Kirby, both from this start and as a budding player. He throws mid-90s heat and has arguably the best command of any prospect. His secondary offerings leave something to be desired, but there’s a lot of developmental road ahead for Kirby and he could be an exceptional starter long term. 2022 might not be the breakout year for Kirby yet, but he’s still worth the add in case he figures things out early. He’s got some tough matchups coming up as he’ll be home against Philadelphia and at Toronto for his next two outings, but this is more of a long term add than a pick up and start right away. I would only start him for those games if you’re in a desperate situation or trying to make up ground in a weekly head-to-head matchup, otherwise I’d be happy to wait and see how he performs before deploying him against tough lineups.

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