Exploring Hard Contact for Pitchers - Fantasy Baseball Starting Pitchers to Upgrade in 2023

This is a follow-up post to another one I've written recently. In that post, I did all the heavy lifting of setting the framework for what I was doing and why it made some statistical sense. You should check that out here before reading this post.

The crux of the argument is this. For starting pitchers:

• K-BB% is reliable year-over-year
• Contact-allowed metrics are not

That means we should invest more in K-BB% than in stats like expected wOBA on contact allowed (xwOBACON). The trouble is that in a given season, allowing a bunch of hard contact does have a significant effect on a pitcher's ERA. It's a good descriptive stat, but a weak predictive stat.

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Taking this into account, in the first post, I located pitchers that limited hard contact and benefited from it - because they are pretty unlikely to be able to replicate that next year. Today, I do the inverse. We will find some pitchers with good K-BB% marks that gave up a bunch of hard contact last year and had bad performances because of it.

Things to Consider

We don't want to just pick out any pitcher that got rocked last year and be like "they'll probably get rocked less next year, let's draft them!" There are pitchers that consistently reduce hard contact, but in the same manner, there are pitchers who consistently... cannot.

For this reason, we're sticking to a 16%+ K-BB%. That isn't to say a 16.1% K-BB% is a great number, but it's a decent place to start looking. I exported all pitchers with seasons since 2019 with 100+ IP and a 16%+ K-BB% to see how their ERAs all lined up, here's a scatter plot to show that relationship:

An ERA is a finicky thing, so there's no guarantee of success in that category even if you do push upwards into the twenties with your K-BB%. But you can see the trend line there showing that the higher your K-BB%, the lower you should expect your ERA to be. There are as many bad ERAs as good ERAs below 18%, so we should definitely be looking for pitchers who we think can get above 20% - but a pitcher at 17% is obviously more likely to increase to 20% as compared to someone who went for a 14% mark last year.

We'll keep all of this in mind and more as we get into some names. On another helpful note, the league average xwOBACON last year was .357.

The Potential Breakouts or Bounce-Backs

Before I proceed, I want to interject and say that I found two names that interested me here when looking at the data that don't fit this category. They are Gerrit Cole and Kevin Gausman. They are already being drafted as aces, as they should be, but it's interesting to note that they both got hit really hard last year when allowing balls to be put in play. Cole gave up a .387 xwOBACON and Gausman was at .379. Improvement on those marks in 2023 is likely, and it would do even more to solidify their ace-ness.

Now, onward!

Andrew Heaney, Texas Rangers

You could say that Heaney had his "breakout" last season, but you also could say he didn't given he fell short of even 75 innings. While he was on the hill, though, he was fantastic. His 35.5% K% and 6.1% BB% put him among the league's best pitchers in K-BB%, and his ERA and WHIP were pretty great because of it. They could have been even better if not for the high 11% barrel rate he allowed and the xwOBACON you see above.

This has been an issue basically every year of Heaney's career - so maybe we shouldn't expect any improvement in 2023, but if he would happen to luck into a better number while maintaining an elite K-BB% (and staying healthy) - watch out!

Hunter Greene, Cincinnati Reds

We have only seen these 125.2 innings from Greene as far as time in the Majors goes. He has a limited pitch mix, throwing a ton of four-seamers with almost every other pitch being a slider. That makes him pretty predictable, so maybe that lends itself to him being hit hard when contact is made. That said, there's no guarantee of this. Greene could very well sport a league-average .360 xwOBACON next year, and with his sick strikeout ability, that's going to result in a superb season for the young righty.

Nathan Eovaldi, Texas Rangers

He was clearly not healthy in the second half of the 2022 season.

Any time a player plays through injury, there will be a buy-low opportunity the next year. The ADP will fall because of the decreased performance, but the player will (in theory, at least) get healthy and return to form in the future.

I think that's true with Eovaldi. The Rangers also gave us a signal of approval by signing him; they must think he's healthy enough to succeed in the rotation - and while that's no guarantee, it is something. Eovaldi has long been great at limiting walks, and he has the strikeout stuff.

Bailey Falter, Philadelphia Phillies

We are just barely over 16% with the K-BB% here, and Falter was pretty unimpressive with the swing and miss last year (21.2%, 11.7% SwStr%), but Falter does a great job limiting walks (4.9%) and showed better strikeout stuff in 2021 (24.5% K%). He throws a ton of sinkers, which helps him keep the ball on the ground, but it does result in way fewer whiffs.

Falter will likely improve in the xwOBACON in 2023, and with a few more strikeouts (maybe lower sinker usage?), we could see him take a big step forward and solidify himself a spot in the Phillies rotation.

Lucas Giolito, Chicago White Sox

It was a pretty big disaster for Giolito in 2022, and it has us really questioning whether or not he still has anything close to ace-level pitching in his future. From 2019 through 2021, he kept his K-BB% firmly above 20%, so the 16.8% mark here was surprising. The things working in his favor were a strong SwStr% of 13.5%, and a still "fine" 25.4% strikeout rate. It won't be hard for him to improve on this 4.90 ERA, but with a little bit of actual skill improvement and pitch refinements - we could see him drop that by more than a full run, which would make him a steal at his newfound low ADP.

Jameson Taillon, Chicago Cubs

Another guy that just barely qualifies here at 16.3%. Taillon has never been a high strikeout rate pitcher, but his 20.8% mark in 2022 was significantly lower than the 23.3% we saw in 2021. He took the walk rate to a new level at just 4.4% - one of the lowest rates in the league. If he can tick up that strikeout rate to 24% or so and get some better luck in the quality of contact arena, we could see Taillon really flourish with his new team.

Logan Gilbert, Seattle Mariners

Gilbert put up a 20.4% K-BB% in his rookie year but saw that fall to 16.6% last year. His SwStr% did fall from 13.8% to 12.2%, and that brought the strikeout rate down three points. There's little doubt about Gilbert's talent, he has a great arsenal of pitches and has not had any sort of problem with the walk in his Major League career (6%). I could see Gilbert really taking a step forward into fantasy acehood here in his third year. He certainly has the tools.

Carlos Carrasco, New York Mets

We have been drafting Carrasco in fantasy baseball for more than a decade now, and his 23.6% K% in 2022 was a far cry from the upper twenties we got used to seeing from him prior to 2020. He's no ace anymore, but clearly, he still has some stuff in the tank as he posted yet another great SwStr% of 14.4% last season. That came with a strong walk rate of 6.1%. You could see him bringing that K% up a couple of points to get him near a 20% K-BB% again, and he's likely to get hit a bit less hard next year given that high .375 xwOBACON from 2022. I don't think it's time to abandon the ship on Carrasco.

There you have it! Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed this mini-series!

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