RADIO
Why I'm Buying Yovani Gallardo in Very Deep Leagues
While Gallardo has largely been written off by fantasy owners, he is currently enjoying a career revival, following up last season's solid 3.51 ERA with a 5-6, 3.45 performance this season. FIP largely buys him as well, with a 3.62 figure. The success has not been the result of the K per inning he once offered - indeed his 7.02 K/9 is below average - but instead a career high in groundball rate (54.2%). Grounders are a great strategy in Arlington, in part because they mitigate the HR and in part to help erase the batters Gallardo still walks (2.62 BB/9).
In terms of luck, Gallardo has been roughly neutral so far this season. His .276 BABIP seems low even if his career .290 figure is itself lower than league average, driven by a low 17.6% liner rate (career 20.6%). That said, Gallardo did sustain a 17% LD% for the entire 2011 season, so it would not be completely unprecedented if he did so again. Even if it does regress, his 69.7% strand rate could go in the opposite direction, likely evening out in the end. A 10.4% HR/FB completes the luck neutral profile.
Gallardo's stuff is pedestrian at best at this stage of his career, leading him to slightly tinker with his pitch selection. He is currently throwing more fastballs (up 3%) and sliders (up 4.5%) at the expense of his two seamers (down 4%) and curves (down 5.7%). Both of the pitches used less frequently have seen their groundball rates spike as a result, with the two seamer inducing wormkillers at a 67.3% clip while the curve does so 60.7% of the time. Gallardo has also rediscovered his changeup, which has gone up in usage from 0.6% to 4.3% and induces grounders at a 55.6% rate. While it is not clear why it happened, this tinkering seems to have turned Gallardo into a rosterable groundball specialist.
That's good, because Gallardo the strikeout artist is dead and never coming back. Only his slider offers a league average SwStr%, and its 9.7% mark is only barely so. Likewise, the slider is the only pitch that is ever chased out of the zone, and even it is essentially average (32.6%). Gallardo also nibbles the zone instead of attacking it, with only the four seamer a strike even 50% of the time (51.6%). Bearing this data in mind, it seems likely that Gallardo's Ks will decline under 7/9 while the walks remain an issue. If he stops getting grounders regularly, he likely stops pitching in the majors regularly too. Still, his pitch selection tinkering suggests optimism that he can be a poor man's Dallas Keuchel on his best days - and that has a use in deep formats or leagues that do not care about the K.
