Up today is the 2nd edition of the leaders and laggards of pitcher LOB%. If you missed the first article looking at this metric, check it out here.

 
Popular pre-season sleeper Zack Greinke is causing his owners to pat themselves on the back for so intelligently making the decision to draft him. However, looking more closely, his ERA so far is a mirage. A high LOB%, low BABIP, and low HR/F means every luck metric is pointing to a large increase in ERA. Also cause for concern is the big drop in K/9. I keep reading about how Greinke “isn’t a strikeout pitcher”, so the K rate isn’t a problem. That’s just wrong. Although not a big strikeout guy, his K/9 was over 7 the last 2 years and is at 6.3 for his career, so anyway you look at it, his strikeouts are down, and that’s always a concern no matter how you want to classify a pitcher. His xFIP is 4.59, with the 1 positive stemming from an improved GB rate to over 45%, which is out of line with the rest of his career and might just be a small sample size issue. I own him in 2 leagues and have been trying to sell high on him with no luck. Hopefully tonight’s outing against the Jays gives me and fellow owners another chance.

As a Felix lover, it pains me to write anything negative on him. He’s one of the rare breed of pitchers who possesses the highly desired skills trifecta I always refer to. However, his surface ERA has caused many owners and non-owners alike to believe that THIS might finally be the year Felix puts it all together and has the season we’ve all been expecting. I’m here to tell you that this indeed could be the case. But the reason is because his xERA the last couple of years has been in the mid-3’s so he only needed to see his luck improve, rather than “pitch better”. BUT, his early season success isn’t providing any further evidence that this is the breakout year. He’s simply just not experiencing the poor luck he has been in the past. His skills are actually down from the last 2 years. His K/9 has fallen again for the 2nd straight year, and his BB/9 is back up to a career worst rate, after an improvement last year. Most concerning though is that his GB% has taken a dive, from 61% last year to just 49% this year. So contrary to popular opinion, his start actually has me more concerned for his success this year than before the season began.

Last is John Maine, one of my favorite pitchers to bash. How he has managed a 3.57 ERA with the skills he’s shown this season is beyond me. Strikeouts down, walks way up, more fly balls allowed- he has had a train wreck of a season so far, but you’d have no idea by just looking at that ERA. His xFIP of 5.68 tells the story. He was lucky last year with mediocre skills, and now he’s even luckier this year with terrible skills. Sell, sell, sell!!

 
Not much excitement in this week’s LOB% Laggards. The list is filled with 2 pitchers discussed ad nauseam (Verlander, Sabathia) and a bunch of crappy pitchers with awful skills. So my choices for commentary were tough to decide on.

I figured I’d say a little something about Redding since I own him in Razzball. I think it’s funny he’s still been able to post a good ERA with such a poor LOB%. In fact, he’s only really been lucky in BABIP, so could he be for real? Uhh no, his xFIP is 4.64, so don’t even think about adding him in your league!

I talked about Arroyo in yesterday’s Leaders and Laggards: HR/F article, but I just wanted to point out how he’s experiencing bad luck all over the place. Of course since his velocity is apparently down, he could be injured and so it isn’t technically bad luck because these luck metrics only apply to “major league caliber pitchers”, and a less than 100% Bronson Arroyo probably isn’t major league quality.

Tom Gorzelanny is NOT healthy. Gil Meche’s breakthrough last year may have just been a 1 season kind of thing after all. The same goes for Ted Lilly. Barry Zito is bad, for all 2 of you who hadn’t yet accepted this fact just yet.

Questions, comments, criticisms, praise, expert league invitations? Email me at FBGeneralsMike@gmail.com.