Suddenly-Hot Starting Pitchers - Trust or Bust?

Jon Anderson examines starting pitchers who are surprisingly hot to start the 2021 MLB season to see if they are worthy adds or streamers for fantasy baseball.

A lot of the time when you look at a pitcher's full season, you'll notice that the first few starts of the year don't really seem to fit the rest of the season. Pitching is a really tough thing to do and it can often take pitchers a few weeks into the regular season to really feel like they're at their best.

I'm going to take a quick look at pitchers who have shown signs of improvement lately. A lot of these players may have been dropped in your league after a few rough outings to start the year or maybe they have been on the waiver wire all year long. Given where we are at in the season, about five weeks in, I think it makes a lot of sense to assign slightly more weight to recent starts than the first starts of the season, especially after how the 2020 debacle went down.

I'm not just looking at box score results either, the way I located these pitchers is by comparing the most recent swinging-strike rates and CSW rates (the last two weeks) against the season-long numbers. Here are some names that may have turned a corner and could possibly bolster your pitching staff as we get into mid-May.

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Dylan Cease, Chicago White Sox

Cease gave up 18 hits and eight earned runs in his first four starts of the year without reaching five full innings in any of those outings. This led a lot of people with prior high hopes for Cease to lose some hope, but he has bounced back in a major way. In his last two outings, he has fired off 13 innings, giving up four hits, zero runs, and striking out 20.

In his start on April 29th against the Tigers, he threw 91 pitches and piled up a 16.5% SwStr% and 34.1% CSW%. That was easily excused because of the fact that the Tigers are possibly the worst offense in the league, but Cease did not stop there. On May 4th, he threw 98 pitches against the Reds with a 15.3% SwStr% and a 34.7% CSW%. For the second straight outing, he did not allow a single barrel.

That gives Cease a 34.4% CSW% in those last two starts, crushing his season total of 28.2%. The velocity and pitch usage numbers have not looked any different in these last two outings, however, his spin rate has jumped up:

It should be noted that there is no significant correlation between spin rate and swinging-strike rate. Here is a plot showing the relationship using this year's data:

If there was a distinct relationship here, we would see more of the higher swinging-strike rate coming with higher spin rates, which we don't see. My point in talking about Cease's spin rate is to show that not everything has been exactly the same for him these last two starts, and therefore it's possible that some grip or approach change is driving the improvements. You can always feel better about a hot streak if it directly follows a change being made, so hopefully that's the case with Cease.

Our next look at Cease is Tuesday night against the Twins. That's a tougher match-up and early in a fantasy week I can understand not wanting to jump in and start him, but if you have a roster spot and he's available he is a guy that is worthy of a speculative add here (or maybe even try to acquire him via trade on the cheap while his stock is still relatively low).

Robbie Ray, Toronto Blue Jays

For the first in his career as a starting pitcher, Robbie Ray has made three straight starts without allowing a walk. In those three starts, he has struck out 23 while allowing eight runs in 18.2 innings. He has completed quality starts in each outing. The home run ball (he's given up five) has been a bit of an issue, but man is it encouraging to see Ray not walking hitters.

Looking under the hood a bit, Ray's strike percentage has always shot upwards over these last three starts. For the year he's thrown 55.7% of his pitches in the strike zone, the start-by-start progression looks like this:

You can see that Robbie Ray has gone over the 60% mark in each of his last two starts. Only 52 pitchers have had starts with more than 70 pitches and a 60% or greater strike rate. The league leader in strike rate is Julio Urias who is at 58.2% for the year. All of this is to say that Ray has been throwing a crazy amount of strikes in these last three outings, which should give more confidence about his lower walk rate moving forward.

All of this strike-throwing has resulted in seven barrels being surrendered in these last three starts, which makes some sense - the more strikes you throw the more chances you're giving hitters to hit one hard, but I think this is a trade-off that we should gladly accept for Ray. Despite those barrels, Ray has not stopped missing bats since becoming a 60% strike-thrower, he's posted swinging-strike rates of 19.1% (against TBR), 10.5% (ATL), and 22.1% (OAK) in these last three starts. Two of those three are massive, and very encouraging signs. The more important thing a pitcher can do is throw strikes and still get whiffs, and Ray has shown that ability with the best of them in the last two weeks. I'm very encouraged and will be trying to acquire Ray wherever he is available.

Yusei Kikuchi, Seattle Mariners

Kikuchi's season-long CSW% of 31.1% is solid, but over his last two starts, he's taken that to the next level at 34.1%. The results have manifested in a big way as he's given up six hits and three earned runs while striking out 14 in his last two starts (14 innings). When we start looking for some kind of change that has happened recently with Kikuchi, it doesn't take long to find one:

He has shown his best fastball velocity of the year in his last two starts. In addition to the added velocity, he has gotten back to his ground-ball heavy ways:

In these last two starts (against the Astros and Orioles, mind you), he has piled up 15.8% and 18.4% swinging-strike rates, respectively, as well as 77% and 72% ground-ball rates. In 182 pitches across these two outings, he has generated 31 whiffs, 24 ground-balls, and just one barrel. These are elite indicators.

Kikuchi has shown flashes of brilliance in the past without actually becoming a brilliant pitcher, but the guy is still very early on in his Major League career and certainly has the talent to have long-term success. His four-seamer, changeup, and slider all have above-average whiff rates, giving him a deep arsenal to rely on, and I think there will be some really great starts ahead of him.

This week he gets a tough match-up with the Dodgers, but he is lining up for a two-start week starting May 17th, facing the Tigers and Padres. He is also probably one of the more attainable starters in this group because his season numbers aren't too impressive (4.30 ERA) after he got beat up by the Red Sox and Astros in back-to-back starts in mid-April. A lot of smart people liked him heading into 2021, and his last two starts have been phenomenal, so it's a great time to buy Kikuchi.

Corey Kluber, New York Yankees

It has been a long time since Kluber made multiple starts in a row. That should have given us a little bit more patience with him as 2021 began. The guy just had not gone out and thrown 80+ competitive pitches many times over the last few calendar years. The best news for Kluber in 2021 so far has been health. He has made seven starts, all right on schedule. His first four starts were not good, giving up 18 hits and nine earned runs in 15 innings while being unable to make it out of the fifth inning. In addition to these being his first starts of the year, the competition was tough as well as he faced the Blue Jays twice, the Braves once, and the Rays once in that four-start sample.

He has really turned a corner in his last three starts (which have come against a much easier schedule: @BAL, vs. DET, vs. WAS), throwing 20.1 innings in three outings while giving up just three earned runs, 14 hits, and striking out 21. He has gone over 30% CSW% in all three of those starts, which has brought his season total up to a strong 29.8%.

He has also kept the ball off of the barrel of the bat recently, giving up just three barrels in his last four starts after giving up five in his first three starts. He has also reached the 100 pitch mark each of his last two starts, showing that the Yankees are willing to let him get deep into games.

Interestingly, Kluber has scrapped his four-seamer. He threw fewer and fewer of them throughout the year before throwing exactly zero of them in his last outing. He has replaced these four-seamers with changeups and cutters, and that's worked out thus far.

There is still the huge risk that Kluber cannot actually stay healthy here, and even while he's healthy there's no guarantee of stud production. However, you can certainly do a lot worse than this guy right now given his pedigree and command of the baseball. I would be adding Kluber if someone else gave up on him.

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