Ok, I took some creative liberty with the actual adage to fit the two headliners into the, uhh, headline. I appreciate Grey and Truss giving me the (very wide) leeway to use that headline to segue into an article thesis (I swear there is one).
Ray Charles once sang “If It Wasn’t For Bad Luck” on the Ed Sullivan Show, and I’m sure some of you are holding some pitchers where it feels like they’re just a lucky turn away from making their seasons look much more like you expected them to. It’s like that relationship where you’re kind of in a fixer-upper, and you have to decide whether you continue to invest the time because you think the payoff is worth it, or you decide there’s just not enough fixin’ available to get her to the upper. You drafted or picked up these guys thinking your pitching coach had the juju to make these guys staffers you can ascend the standings with, but instead, these ratio anchors have been heavier than Pink Floyd lyrics.
With all of the stats out there, it’s hard to determine which ones are signal and which ones are noise. For this exercise, I’m looking at ones that many ‘perts consider “luck” stats–BABIP and Left On Base percentage (LOB%) while buffering things with indicators that I like to go to when judging pitching (K-BB%, limiting hard contact with HardHit%, and Stuff+). If we can find guys that are seemingly unlucky with BABIP and LOB%, then match them with positive indicators, I think we can find a few guys that without even improving anything with their actual pitch skills can give us some pretty good return by just having some positive luck regression.
Let’s start with somebody I think can give us a borderline top-20 SP performance rest-of-season (ROS)–Mackenzie Gore. The wins may be limited by pitching for the Gnats, but everything else looks like it’s ready to be terrific. He’s currently ranked 89th overall on the Player Rater just for pitchers, and as I said above, I think ROS he could push top-20, and top-30 seems entirely realistic. Mack G is currently carrying the worst BABIP in the majors, sitting at .363. That’s only *50 points higher* than he’s ever run in the bigs. When they get on, they’re scoring, too, as he’s 24th-worst in LOB% at just under 73%. In 2023, he was just under 79%. My go-to SP stat is K-BB%, and he’s top-20 there, and he’s even better in Stuff+–top 10, ahead of guys having terrific years like Luis Gil, Bryce Miller, Freddy KBB, Houck, Sale, and Kutter. He’s 27th in HardHit% so it’s not like he’s just getting battered out there, which would lead to a high BABIP. Gore is clearly getting unlucky this year, and when that BABIP normalizes for him, his K ability, control, and stuff is going to reward you for sticking with him through the lean times. Carlos Rodon is 14th overall on the Player Rater, 4th overall in Stuff+ and is besting Gore by quite a bit in all of the luck categories, but Gore has a much better K-BB% and HardHit% than Rodon. ROS, I think I’d rather have Gore (and I’m a Rodon owner in a dynasty league). Rodon’s BABIP is absurdly low (it’s a career low for him) and his LOB% is a career high.
For the other half of the headline, Brandon Pfaadt is in a very similar position as Gore–he’s top-20 (20th, but still!) in Stuff+ (ahead of Skubal, Wheeler, Castillo, and Yamamoto, to put his company there in perspective) but 171st on the Player Rater as he’s getting weighed down by some bad luck. Pfaadt has the 2nd-worst LOB% in the league, and the 26th-worst BABIP. Now, the good news–his K-BB% is 23rd, just a smidge behind Gore, and he’s a top-20 SP in HardHit%. We looked at Pfaadt two weeks ago in my xStats article and he’d be there again if I were writing it this week–his xERA is a run and a half better than his actual right now. When you look at his player page, nearly every indicator is at or better than career bests, outside of LOB% which would need a telescope to see his previous worsts, majors or minors. Pfaadt is a top-30 SP ROS waiting to happen.
Here are some quick-hitters on guys that I don’t think can give you the kind of ROS that the above two can, but there may be some signal to the noise here:
- If Grey reads this, he’s going to block my IP from accessing Razzball.com, and I cannot even believe I’m bullet-pointing this, but did you know that Ryan Feltner has a league-worst LOB%, the third-worst BABIP while being 36th-best in HardHit% and league average in Stuff+? His K-BB% is rotten, but…is he a team-streamer for road starts? I’m certainly not recommending him to be picked up and an every-start kind of guy, but as a churn-and-burn for road starts? Yeah…I could see it. His control has been great, his xERA is 3.69 (damn you fine!), hitters are chasing out of zone almost 30% of the time, and making in-zone contact at a league average rate. *I* don’t have the clackers to do this, but I kinda want to so that I can see how the road-streamer idea works out with him. Not sure I’d be interested in 12-teamers, but 15? I think he’s completely viable.
- Insert everything I said above for Patrick Sandoval. Sandy has the 7th-worst BABIP and the 3rd-worst LOB%. His K-BB%, and HardHit%, and Stuff+ are nearly identical to Feltner’s, and Sandoval doesn’t have to make half of his starts in Coors Field. The Irish Panda is probably a better bet for ROS just because of where he *doesn’t* pitch. I could see him working out in 12-teamers ROS.
- Chris Paddack and Aaron Civale are back-to-back in K-BB% (32nd and 33rd overall) while sharing some luck indicators that say they could be useful 5th starters for your teams. Civale has the 12th-worst LOB% and 14th-worst BABIP, while Paddack is 5th-worst in BABIP and 26th-worst in LOB%. Neither of these guys have been good at limiting hard contact this year, but Civale’s Stuff+ is 40th. I’m not saying either of these guys are “go get ‘em!” targets, but they may be freebies that could give you positive use in 15-teamers, and Civale having 12-team potential for his positive regression.
