JA ERA Mid-Season Breakout SPs
Finding SP help for the stretch!
JA ERA is the greatest ERA indicator stat developed in northern Indiana of all time. I’m confident in saying that.
It’s probably no better than SIERA or xFIP, but it’s MINE, and I’m going to use it.
Your pitching staff is probably hurting right now. So I’m here to try to help.
Let’s look at some strong JA ERA marks of the recent weeks and months in MLB.
But put real simple, it takes three inputs:
SwStr%
Ball%
GB%/FB%
And makes them look like an ERA. It’s the same idea as xFIP/SIERA, but it uses the more granular (pitch level) stats for the strikeout and walk part.
The most useful part of the stat is that it just updates on the dashboard with whatever filters or splits you want. You can see it over a time period, with a certain pitch, against a handedness of batter, by park, etc. It’s a live stat on that Tableau dashboard so you can really have some fun with it.
JARED JONES
9 GS
15.8% SwStr%
37.5% Ball%
46.6% GB%
3.29 JA ERA
These are numbers for his full season, we’re not zooming in here because I can make my point without taking any liberties!
We always knew that Jones could get strikeouts. He throws 98-100 and has a 117 Stuff+ slider. That’s a recipe for strikeouts. What we didn’t know about was the command and the home run suppression.
This year he’s throwing a changeup (15%) and a curveball (9%) almost a quarter of the time together. And that has boosted the GB% up.
The one that probably won’t stick is the 45% GB% on his four-seamer. He’s throwing these four-seamers high in the zone:
And that’s where he wants them to go. If you have a big four-seamer, you’re throwing that thing high to get the whiffs, fouls, or pop-outs. It’s really tough to hit a 99mph fastball at the top of the zone for extra bases.
And yes, the vertical location does correlate with launch angle. I wasn’t 100% sure, so I checked it:
The higher the pitch, the higher the launch angle, generally.
So I do have doubts about Jones staying in the mid-40s in GB%. Therefore, he probably won’t quite maintain the 1.1 HR/9 he has. He had 1.3 in 2024. Maybe he’ll keep it around 1.2, but it’s definitely not going to go down below one.
Right now, Jones has a 29% K%, a 7% BB%, and that 1.13 HR/9. Really, really good stuff. And he seems to be getting better and better with 23 strikeouts and three walks in his last three starts while giving up just two runs on five hits.
Jones might be a burgeoning ACE. That might take until next year to fully flesh out, but with the Pirates in the playoff hunt and Jones only still at just 60 innings (minors included) this year, I could see the limits being taken off in August/September as they make their push and want to get an extra innings out of Jones instead of going into that bad bullpen when it really matters.
Jones is 75% owned, which at this point in the season means he’s effectively 100% owned in serious leagues. But you can probably still buy kinda low on him, maybe.
EMMET SHEEHAN
18 GS
15.3% SwStr%
35.7% Ball%
35% GB%
3.30 JA ERA
I don’t write the mail, I just deliver it! NOOOOBODY wants to hear about Sheehan and his 5.13 ERA, 1.27 WHIP, and 1.75 HR/9 from me. Nobody! Except those of you who are on the Sheehan boat with me and refuse to get off.
I’ve got a data table for you. This is every SP with 12+ starts, a SwStr% above 13%, and a Ball% under 36%.
The red isn’t actually bad in this picture, because of all of the SwStr% and Ball% numbers are good. It’s just colored relative to the other numbers in that table.
But what do I want you to look at? Probably that RED 5.13 ERA on Sheehan’s record. The average ERA of this group is 3.19. Sheehan has near the lowest GB% of the group and barely met the Ball% criteria, but everybody other than him is under a 4.25 ERA, but he’s loaded up there in the fives.
The fly balls just keep going into the stands. His 24% HR/FB is one of the highest in baseball. It’s tragic, but it’s very unlikely to maintain. Maybe he’s tipping, maybe he’s missing spots in the zone, I don’t know. It’s not as simple as everybody eventually ends up at a 16% HR/FB, but we can still be pretty confident he’ll do better than 24% the rest of the way home.
The whiffs aren’t a problem, he throws enough strikes, he’s regularly going above 90 pitches, and he has a sharp organization supporting him.
There’s a potential worry about what happens when Snell comes back in a couple of weeks. But Ohtani isn’t pitching right now and Roki Sasaki seems to be destined for a bullpen role come postseason time, so I think Sheehan can stick. If nothing else, they have to like him giving them the innings as they just try to stay healthy and get their best rotation into the postseason (which won’t include Sheehan even if he does get right, but that’s not our problem for the rest of the fantasy season).
I’m BUYING Sheehan. You don’t have to do that in a ten team league, but most leagues are 12-15 teams and most teams at this point are shy of having a roster full of very good SPs. The numbers say to stick with him, so that’s what I’m going to do!
PAYTON TOLLE
16 GS
14.5% SwStr%
31.2% Ball%
35.5% GB%
3.32 JA ERA
This guy’s been doing things few pitchers can do. Getting whiffs while being in the zone all of the time.
Look at him up there in the top right! We love a top-right scatter plot guy!
But he has a 3.51 ERA and a mark of 5.40 this month. Why?
Well it’s a home run issue lately. He’s given up three in his last four starts, and they’ve been timed very poorly. For the season it’s just a 0.9 HR/9, so that’s good.
Seems to me like everything about him is just ver good and he’s just been unfortunate to give up the big hit at the wrong time. And I don’t believe in clutch or anti-clutch (is there a word for that?), so I’m riding the hog on Tolle.
What doesn’t help is that he’s already thrown about as many innings this year (105) as he did last year (108), but there’s growth expected here, right? We have no trouble believing they want him to work up to 140-150, and the Red Sox have lost twice all month to get themselves right into the playoff picture.
They must view Tolle as one of the best starters, so they’ll want to roll with him during this playoff push.
Big rest of the season coming for Tolle!
Plenty more names to cover, and we do get into guys who might actually be available in your leagues, but you’ll have to be a paid sub! You’ll get a bunch of fantasy football in-season content and tools at MLB DW this year with your paid sub, so you’re buying in for more than just two months’ worth of baseball stuff!