Pitchers with Bad Fastballs
Identifying pitcher sells based on their bad four-seamers
This will essentially be a Max Meyer hate post. But his example sets us up nicely, because he is the inspiration for this.
It’s very hard to be an ace in the Major Leagues without a big fastball. You don’t have to throw it 100mph. You can get by at 94-95 if it has good command other characteristics. But if you can’t get strikes and outs with the heater, you’re pitching at least half naked.
Max Meyer is doing his level best to debunk me. He has a 2.53 ERA and 1.11 WHIP this year through 18 starts (this is prior to his start on July 7th). And that is all despite having horrible numbers on his four-seamer.
The thing that Meyer has learned in his time here at the highest level is some self-awareness. He knows the fastball isn’t going to get it done, so he’s doing a good job “hiding” it. Here’s the pitch mix table from his Pitcher Profile page:
This is one of the best resources around for evaluating pitchers, in my biased opinion.
What you’ll notice there is how ridiculously good his slider has been. It’s nearly unhittable and has one of the highest strike rates (called + foul + whiffs) that I’ve ever seen for a breaking ball. Most sliders aren’t thrown as confidently in the zone as this one. And that helps him out a bunch. He’s more or less using itl ike a fastball since he can throw it in the zone so much and command it so well.
But I can’t help but think this is his about his career high point right now. A .388 xwOBA, a 45% Strike% on the four-seamer. Those are very bad numbers. For context, the league average table shown here:
The average four-seamer gets a 50% Strike%. That’s the pitcher’s main weapons for getting strikes. The sinker has the highest zone rate (56%), but the four-seamer is second. It’s a pitch that pitchers thrown for strikes.
Not so with Meyer, whose 58% Strike% is an astounding 11 points clear of the average slider.
But can that go on? I don’t think so. Soon he will have uncorked 1,000 sliders + sweepers. He threw 65 innings last year and 115 the year prior (between minors an Majors). So there’s a volume question here. Not only about how many innings the Marlins will want him throw, but also if he can maintain this level of performance on those breakers for 5+ months.
So that’s the case study here. I’d be selling Meyer urgently in fantasy leagues. It’ll be hard to go wrong there if you get current “market value”. He could get hurt, as is true with everybody, he could just have his innings throttled, or he could just lose some of this special slider talent as the year goes on, and he’ll have basically nothing to fall back on if that happens.
So who are some other guys having good seasons despite having bad numbers on the fastball? We can simply use MLB DW PITCH GRADES to find out.
I developed these last fall, read about the system here:
Let’s find some names. First, let’s just look at the worst in the league to continue to make my point. Here are the bottom six four-seamers with a minimum of 250 thrown on there:
You don’t want any of these guys on a fantasy team this year. Aaron Nola’s curveball is still elite and that’s turned into some good starts, but mostly he’s been terrible because of the lack of a reliable heater.
WALKER BUEHLER
I doubt too many people are buying in on Buehler. Injuries have really ruined his career, and he’s been awful for a couple of seasons now. He was on a decent run before the last two where he gave up 16 earned runs. So that bad fastball has already caught up to him. But just in case you still believe; I’m here to tell you it’s not going to happen.
TATSUYA IMAI
Another name that nobody is hitching their wagon to in fantasy leagues. But he has had some stellar outings with the wrong-way slider thing he has going. He just struck out 21 with one walk in a two-start stretch before having another blow-up in his last start against the Twins (July 1st). He’ll have some more big ones. Sometimes the slider is just going where he wants it and carrying him. But there’s no start-to-start consistency with sliders for anybody, and certainly not from what we’ve seen so far from Imai.
His fastball:
6.8% SwStr%, 46% Strike%, 41% Ball%, .421 xwOBA, 89.5 MLB DW Grade
JOEY CANTILLO
These pitchers are all going to be similar. They’ll be guys who are owned in fantasy leagues because at some point they’ve gone a short stretch of dominating. Cantillo’s had those big starts with this changeup (19.8% SwStr%, .277 xwOBA) and curveball (16.5% SwStr%, .230 xwOBA). He’s been throwing the curveball more often lately, and that might be a good thing since the hitters will less be able to identify the sick changeup when it’s coming.
But at the end of the day, when he’s behind in the count and has to come across with a fastball, it’s going to be ugly.
His fastball:
5.7% SwStr%, 45% Strike%, 39% Ball%, .383 xwOBA
TANNER BIBEE
The Guardians haven’t had many good fastballs in their rotation lately. Gavin Williams has a good one, and they had a fun time with that Clevinger + Bieber + Bauer trio for a couple of years. But Bibee isn’t in that conversation.
He’s really trying to hide it. He’s developed this cutter that he’s thrown 25% of the time to lead his arsenal. It has a good 17.3% SwStr%, but he misses the location with it a lot and it’s been hit very hard for nine homers and a .372 xwOBA.
And then there’s a sinker and just 16% usage on his changeup. So he doesn’t even really use the change/slider very much anymore. That leaves 22% usage for his bad four-seamer that we’re talking about here.
7.0% SwStr%, 41% Strike%, 39% Ball%, .332 xwOBA
The cutter and the three-fastball mix can work at times and keep his floor half-decent. But there are going to continue to be bad starts and the numbers over long stretches won’t be very good.
KYLE BRADISH
The other guy I think of involving this topic is Bradish. We’ve already seen the troubles it can cause. Bradish has had some big starts and good stretches, but overall it’s been a disappointing year.
And you should learn a good lesson from Bradish for future drafts. Don’t draft anybody as your SP1-SP3 that doesn’t have a proven good heater.
When the slider and curve are cooking, he’s great. But he doesn’t have that every time and you see how bad the four-seamer and sinker are. It’s so bad with the four-seamer that he’s buried it at 17.5% usage. Maybe the sinker can improve a little bit. A .284 xwOBA is fine, and it gets ground balls. But he can’t get whiffs or put guys away with it. So he’s very easy to hit when you figure a slider/curve aren’t coming.
FOSTER GRIFFIN
Griffin is one guy who might be able to survive it, because his four-seamer is just 17.3% in usage. And in his case, he’s not having to dedicate the other 83% to just a couple of pitches. He has seven pitches in his repertoire, so that keeps hitters unable to sit on any one pitch.
I’d still consider him a sell. Unlike the other guys on the list, he doesn’t have one dominant pitch. The cutter is in that conversation at a 118 grade, but at 88mph and a 40% GB%, I think hitters will eventually figure it out. And he’ll have very little to trust in if that happens.
SHANE BAZ
We haven’t seen much good for long from Baz, but he’s been beter lately with a 3.08 ERA in his last eight. And with him, his bad four-seamer is his most commonly thrown pitch. He has the good curveball, but at a 45% Strike%, it’s not a pitch you can make your primary.
The four-seamer sits with a 94 grade on its 7.4% SwStr%, 40% Ball%, and .349 xwOBA.
It’s just the case that it’s easy to identify and easy to hit. And it will continue to be a problem for the guy the Orioles gave up a lot to get their hands on.
NOAH CAMERON
ANDREW ABBOTT
These two are basically the same pitcher. Lefties with good command but just not very good stuff and a FB% problem. Here’s Cameron:
A 94 grade on the four-seamer with that .398 xwOBA at 28.5% usage. The changeup would be very good if he had a fastball to set it up with, but we’ve mostly seen the problems manifested for Cameron as he’s struggled a lot more often than he’s been good.
At least he pitches in a decent ballpark, which you can’t say about Andrew Abbott. His high fly ball rate is playing with fire in Cincinnati.
He’s had to throw the four-seamer nearly half of the time, and that’s a bad thing. A 5.7% SwStr%, a 47% Strike%, and a .396 xwOBA on that 46% usage pitch.
Rough stuff, and Abbott has been hurting your ratios all year with a 3.79 ERA and 1.43 WHIP. I think he’s just a big league SP4-SP5 from here on, and that shouldn’t be good enough for your standard fantasy league rotations.
SONNY GRAY
Throwing him on here because his fastball is, indeed, bad with a 5.6% SwStr% and .352 xwOBA.
But Gray can live with it, and he’s done that for a long time. He’s having another strong year with a 2.61 ERA and 1.10 WHIP on a 16.4% K-BB%.
He has pretty much everything you need to survive a bad four-seamer. A six pitch mix with a really good sweper and other fastball variations to tunnel the four-seamer with.
He’s not sub-three ERA good, but you probably already knew that. He’s a good sell-high. It doesn’t look like the Red Sox lineup is getting any better to help these guys out. But Gray will probably be fine and you can start him pretty confidently if you’re holding on.
BRYCE ELDER
Elder has hit a rough patch already, which we were predicting before it happened. 19 earned runs in his last three as he’s given up five walks and five homers.
This is the kind of rough patch I expect Max Meyer to go through. Elder is trying to make due by throwing a slider 27% of the time and a sinker 27% of the time to mask the four-seamer. But his breaker isn’t nearly as good as Meyer, and it’s spotty start-to-start.
Just a 7.2% SwStr% on the four-seamer. At least it hasn’t been hit super hard. That probably has to do with the good tunneling going on with the sinker. But at the end of the day, he just can’t go out there and get outs with those two fastballs when the slider is having an off day.
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