Breakout Seasons

Mailbag: Signs A Pitcher Can Break Out

We get quite a bit of emails from readers with specific questions about their fantasy teams. Every question is read and appreciated. And if nothing else, we try to address incoming questions in one form or another in future entries. Questions that have universal application will usually be answered more specifically.

Chris asks:

Before going into any drafts this year, I'd like to get your opinion on drafting pitchers. I know you say wait till the 8th round (which I probably will after drafting Smoltz and Kazmir 3rd and 4th last year), but what exactly do you look for in a pitcher? I know that injury risk and potential career years often mean a pitcher should be avoided, but are there any telltale signs that a pitcher is due for a breakout?

One of my favorite aspects of baseball is the amount of data available on any given players career. By the time most players get to the major leagues, they've established a significant data-pool to draw conclusions from.

Unlike other major American sports--baseball is comprised of many micro battles--between individual players, that precisely allow us to quantify their skill set. This bodes well for games like fantasy baseball, where research and knowledge usually separates winners from losers, and luck only plays a marginal role.

To answer Chris' question: the best prognosticators are those that investigate a pitcher's entire track record, and look at their incremental improvements--over time.

Lets look at some areas to keep a close eye on:

Age Relative to Level

Most current and past big leaguers were successful in the minor leagues. But there's more to look at once you crack open the hood. Pitchers that excelled vs older competition throughout their pro careers; Rookie, A, A+, AA, AAA, and then, finally, MLB, are likely to have higher production ceilings, and are a much better bets to have that  "breakout" type season.

Major league pitchers in their early twenties (Gallardo, Gonzalez, Price, Gallagher etc.) can all be the next Danks, Jurjens, Litsch, Billingsley, etc. come this time--next year.

Pitching Peripherals

A pitcher that has a track record inducing many K's, many groundballs, and keeps players off the bases by not giving up the walk, have immense potential. Sometimes a pitcher is successful in these areas, but their ERA and/or WHIP hasn't translated, yet.

xFIP is a fantastic statistic that summarizes a pitchers ability to be successful in these key areas. It's good practice to know what a pitcher's xFIP is--during the season, or what their xFIP was the previous season.  xFIP does a better job predicting future ERA, than ERA itself.

For example: if a pitcher's ERA was 5.0, but their xFIP was 3.50--that year, there's a good chance their ERA will be closer to 3.50 the following season.

Pitch Velocity

Now that we have easy access to any given pitcher's fastball velocity, we can separate hard throwers from soft tossers.

It's no secret, there's a connection between those who throw the ball hard and an increased level of productivity. Ubaldo Jimenez, Felix Hernandez, Ervin Santana, Josh Beckett, A.J. Burnett all lead the league in average Fastball Velocity--last season (starting pitchers that qualified), respectively.

If you go down the sortable list, you can spot some players who might not have honed all their skills yet, but have very good pitch velocity. These players are more likely to have breakout potential than those pitchers who don't throw the ball as hard.

To point out a few in chronological order: Joba Chamberlain (95 MPH), Dustin McGowan (94.8 MPH), David Price (94.2 MPH), Max Scherzer (94.2 MPH), Clayton Kershaw (94 MPH), Edwin Jackson (94 MPH), and so on.

Scouting Reports

Scouting reports reveal things like Size, Instincts, IQ, Athleticism, Pitch Variety, Delivery etc. Pitchers reported to be outstanding in these areas, are likely to sustain heavier workloads, throw harder, have more deceiving pitches, and be smarter players.

Always try to find a good scouting reports from Sickels, Baseball America, Keith Law, Goldstein, etc. and try to incorporate scouting information with performance data. Professional scouting reports can reveal breakout candidates, who haven't materialized into their potential yet. As a shortcut, you can look at top 100 prospect lists--many of the players on these lists have fantastic scouting reports.

Combining all 4 of these *indicators* gives us a solid breakout-forecasting methodology. What are some clues you look at to spot breakout candidates?

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Carlos Quentin Off To Hot Start

25 year-old White Sox left fielder Carlos Quentin is off to a blazing start with a .312/.454/.623 line in 77 at-bats.  Roto-wise, that's .312-6-20-20-2.  Using a complicated projection method  (multiplying everything by six) we get a season line of .312-36-120-120-12.  Fantasy baseball gold!

Seriously though, is the kid for real?  Let's start with the batting average.  He has a respectable 84.4% contact rate and a fantastic 14.4% walk rate.  (And six HBPs to further boost that OBP).  Though he admittedly played in hitters' parks in the minors, he did hit .312 in 379 games.  He can probably hit .280-.290.

Does he have 30 HR power?  I'm thinking more like 22-25 but Baseball America did note above average power in their '06 handbook.  Doesn't hurt that his home ballpark inflates right-handed homers by 26%.  He's batted sixth and seventh, making 100 ribbies a long shot.  Think 85-90 though.  Quentin's not much of a base-stealing threat so be happy if he sniffs double digits.

All in all a quality roto pickup who could put up Jeff Francoeur-like numbers, maybe a few less RBIs. 

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Cliff Lee's Dominance

I picked up Cliff Lee in three of my five leagues, as I liked his early K/BB and soft schedule.  I certainly didn't expect for him to go on a run unmatched in at least the last 50 years.  Let's look at the numbers:

31.2 innings
4 starts
7.92 IP/start
0.28 ERA
0.41 WHIP
8.24 K/9
0.57 BB/9
14.5 K/BB
3.13 H/9
.153 BABIP
0.00 HR/9
45.2% groundball rate

Sure, most of it's not sustainable, but let's just marvel in it for a moment. 

OK, let's talk reality.  Lee was nothing special in spring, but won the fifth starter battle.  Last year he posted an ERA over 6.00 amid an abdominal strain, earning a demotion in July.  Lee's career-best K/9: 8.09.  His best walk rate was 2.32.  It's not unfathomable he could combine those career-best rates into one dominant season.

How about the soft schedule?  For that we can use Baseball Prospectus' Opponent's Quality OPS.  That's the aggregate OPS of all batters faced by a pitcher.  Lee's opponents have the 17th-lowest OPS at .694.  By the way, Adam Wainwright has faced the easiest opponents based on this stat.

Obviously Lee can't keep it up, but if you own him you should probably just enjoy the ride.  If you're overflowing with pitching and you're offered a top-30 type hitter, make the trade.  Otherwise, enjoy what should be Lee's career year.

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Is This The Year For Alex Gordon?

I've ranked Alex Gordon 13th among third basemen, with a .267-18-71-71-16 projection in 522 ABs.  It'd be worth $6.  Gordon's being drafted in the 12th round, 11th among 3Bs.  I don't have a big problem with this (though Kevin Kouzmanoff in the 20th could approximate his value).

This post by Rany Jazayerli explains why Gordon could have something of a breakout this year.  He makes a strong case for Gordon turning doubles into homers as a sophomore.  Suppose Gordon hits .280-25-85-85-16 - that'd put him right up there with Garrett Atkins and Aramis Ramirez!  Ahead of Chipper Jones, Ryan Zimmerman, and Adrian Beltre.  Hopefully Gordon gets off to a decent start and keeps the #3 spot in the order.

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Spring Training Stats

We can all agree that Spring Training statistics are useless.  Right?  Well, not exactly.  Here's a gem from John Dewan via Baseball Forecaster:

A hitter with a positive difference between his spring training slugging percentage and his lifetime slugging percentage of .200 or more correlates to a better than normal season.

How did this hold up in 2006?  I identified 24 players who slugged .200 or more points above their career average in Spring Training of 2006.

14 of the 24 (58%) posted a SLG in the '06 regular season above their career average.   Here they are:

Player	ST SLG	Career SLG	Diff	2006 SLG
Dave Ross	0.833	0.406	0.427	0.579
Michael Cuddyer	0.844	0.428	0.416	0.504
Jose Reyes	0.781	0.395	0.386	0.487
Eric Hinske	0.810	0.430	0.380	0.487
Gregg Zaun	0.750	0.375	0.375	0.462
Adrian Gonzalez	0.750	0.401	0.349	0.500
Edwin Encarnacion	0.771	0.436	0.335	0.473
Jim Thome	0.895	0.562	0.333	0.598
Aramis Ramirez	0.810	0.481	0.329	0.561
Raul Ibanez	0.787	0.460	0.327	0.516
Orlando Hudson	0.727	0.417	0.310	0.454
David Dellucci	0.720	0.438	0.282	0.530
Corey Koskie	0.729	0.455	0.274	0.490
Vernon Wells	0.700	0.481	0.219	0.542

That's a compelling sample of 2006 breakout players.  On the other hand, here are the ten for which the correlation did not hold up:

Player	ST SLG	Career SLG	Diff	2006 SLG
Kevin Mench	0.917	0.484	0.433	0.419
Ron Belliard	0.793	0.412	0.381	0.403
Ken Griffey Jr.	0.864	0.561	0.303	0.486
Steve Finley	0.740	0.447	0.293	0.394
Richie Sexson	0.822	0.530	0.292	0.504
Garret Anderson	0.762	0.473	0.289	0.433
Brad Wilkerson	0.733	0.452	0.281	0.422
Jason Bay	0.824	0.553	0.271	0.532
J.D. Drew	0.762	0.514	0.248	0.498
Adam Dunn	0.750	0.518	0.232	0.490

A lot of these guys were hurt, old, or clearly entrenched in their decline phase.  Mench fizzled after an amazing week in April, while Wilkerson succumbed to a shoulder injury.  Dunn and Belliard also started off relatively strong.

The second chart didn't scare me off.  I am definitely going to be running these numbers at the end of Spring Training this year and using them as another data point.

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