July 4, 2016

Alex Chamberlain identifies two overvalued/overrated MLB starting pitchers and suggests two undervalued/underrated replacements for Week 14.

If you're playing in a full-season league, you just crossed the halfway point; in a playoff format, maybe closer to the two-thirds mark, depending on how the duration of your playoffs. And if you're in the top half of the standings or even just outside it, you have a great chance of contending until the very end. There comes a time when you need to cut bait on proven guys who are underperforming. It hurts to cut them loose -- you burned an early or middle round pick on them, or you dedicated a decent chunk of change to them in an auction -- but ripping the bandage off hurts less than suffering the consequences of their poor performance for the remainder of the season.

Starting pitching performance can be volatile. Worthwhile options tend to emerge from nowhere for a month or two only to disappear into irrelevance once again. Still, some household names remain undervalued while some of their contemporaries remain overvalued. Two of each will be presented below, all in the 60%-owned range.

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Overrated

Yordano Ventura, Kansas City Royals
62% owned, via Fleaflicker

Sunday's right ankle sprain shouldn't have been the beginning of your concerns with Ventura. He's suffering from a bit of bad luck -- the 69.2% strand rate is on the low side (unlucky) side -- but it can't shoulder all the blame for his poor performance.

Ventura's strikeouts have been way down (and his walks, way up) all season. He owns the 6th-worst xFIP and 16th-worst FIP among all qualified starters. In other words, he's barely startable in AL-only formats, and that's saying a lot. He's throwing fewer first-pitch strikes, thus failing to get ahead in the count. But hitters aren't chasing pitches, which tends to have a compounding effect on both strikeouts and walks because of the tradeoff between balls and strikes.

Chalk it up to a misbehaving fastball. Despite sustaining his plus velocity, hitters have absolutely teed off on Ventura's heater, posting a 1.024 OPS (on-base plus slugging percentage) on just a .255 BABIP (batting average on balls in play). Until he works out the kinks, Ventura, with his lack of strikeouts and atrocious ERA, is almost completely unstartable and should certainly not be owned in more than 60% of leagues.

Francisco Liriano, Pittsburgh Pirates
60% owned, via Fleaflicker

This year's Liriano is vintage, pre-Pittsburgh Pirates Liriano. Historically inconsistent, Liriano reminds us why he has never been a true fantasy stalwart despite awesome strikeout stuff. Ironically, he's suffering from the same fits as Ventura: hitters simply won't chase his stuff outside the zone, leading to a huge spike in walks and a moderate dip in strikeouts.

Like Ventura, Liriano is also enduring some bad luck as well -- on HR/FB (home runs per fly ball) rather than BABIP. However, Liriano is allowing considerable hard contact and, as indicated by his elevated 43.8% pull rate, allowing hitters to turn on his offerings. Hard-hit and pull rates correlate positively with ISO (isolated power), so it's no surprise Liriano has performed humiliatingly thus far.

He's in Ventura territory: Liriano owns Major League Baseball's 4th-worst FIP and 16th-worst xFIP among qualified starters. And he, like Ventura, should absolutely not be owned in 60% of leagues. Unlike Ventura, he's not young; there's little defense of holding onto him not only in redraft leagues but also keeper/dynasty formats. Let him go. You'll feel a weight off your shoulders.

Underrated

Taijuan Walker, Seattle Mariners
62% owned, via Fleaflicker

Walker is not yet elite and may never live up to his former top-prospect hype. At only 23 years old, however, he still has plenty of time and room to grow, and he's already showing he can hang with the best. Already exhibiting a solid K/BB (strikeout-to-walk) ratio, Walker took it a step further this season by pounding the zone more, thereby reducing his walks without damaging his K-rate.

The fielding independent pitching statistics (FIP, xFIP) don't drool over Walker, but they underrate his contact management skills. It's only 300(ish) innings so far, but Walker has limited opponents to a .279 BABIP thanks to plenty of soft contact and an above-average number of pop-ups. Pitchers who excel in contact management (think Jake Arrieta) typically outperform their peripheral statistics. It's less suprising, then, that Walker's ERA outpaces his xFIP by about three-fourths of a run.

The recent issues with Walker's foot are slightly concerning. It's more worthwhile, though, to own Walker, even if it means he skips a start or two to heal up. His performance for the rest of the season will obliterate whatever Liriano and Ventura can string together. Walker probably deserves to be closer to the top-30 or top-40 starters conversation than barely scraping the top-50.

Aaron Sanchez, Toronto Blue Jays
60% owned, via Fleaflicker

Looking at Sanchez's 2015 ERA, you'd never know there were considerable question marks coming into 2016 about how the 24-year-old might perform. He walked almost as many hitters as he struck out. That's a bad thing to say about any pitcher, regardless of his strikeout rate, and Sanchez's strikeout rate was also bad. Most of his appearances came in relief, as well, where his skill set should have played up in short bursts.

It must have been a brief case of the jitters, then, because Sanchez shaped up, and shaped up nicely. He induces ground balls at an elite rate and cut down on his walk rate by getting ahead in the count and pounding the zone more often. His secondary stuff hasn't proven to be especially effective, and his lowly 8.1% swinging strike rate suggests the strikeout rate should fall a bit. Most of his gains have happened in the zone, and zone contact rate (Z-Contact%) is something that may fluctuate year to year but tends to converge toward a common mean for a particular pitcher.

With that said, we may be seeing a better-than-expected Sanchez and should not necessarily expect this kind of success next year. But who cares about next year? Use Sanchez's 10th-best xFIP and 21st-best FIP to contend now. He's a legitimate top-30 (or better) option the rest of the way and, like Walker, is being treated like a barely-top-50 option. Some people fret about innings caps; you shouldn't, and it sounds like the Blue Jays won't shut down Sanchez anyway. Even if they did, who cares? Eat up those deliciously excellent innings and find a replacement for September. Better than relying on a full-time Liriano or Ventura the rest of the way.

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