Following up on my article on Cano, AJ Burnett is another guy that superficially looks bad but there is reason for optimism. I sure hope so since he is on a few of my teams.

AJ Burnett is another guy that looks superficially bad. Unlike Cano, divining his future has an additional confounding factor; his profile is not as immediately obvious as Cano, whose virtues are found merely by looking at his splits. We will always attempt to divorce skill and process from results on this site, to the general gainsay of Todd Farino, who fought me tooth and nail on this topic on last week’s Fantasy Baseball Guru’s Show, which was a great listen if you really want to hear us go at it.

Burnett had a terrible April, like Cano, with a 6.07 ERA.  Unlike Cano though we have the additional confounding factor of the fact that pitchers can be unlucky in not just BABIP but also in LOB% or strand rate. Burnett had a 63% LOB% in April. This resulted in an xERA of 5.33, below his actual ERA of 6.07. The real problem in April was an atrocious strikeout rate of less than 6 per nine innings, keeping his expected ERA unusually high.

Things turned around in May on all fronts. His LOB% shot up to 73% and his strikeout rate ballooned to 10.5 per nine. This resulted in an actual ERA for May 3.43 and an xERA of 3.50.

Once again Burnett has been bitten by the bad luck bug in June. He has maintained the terrific strikeout rate of May with another 10.5 rate. However his LOB% rate dropped to 65%. However, because of the K rate his expected ERA for June is only 3.80, in line with May’s results. The actual ERA for June is a depressing 5.06. Not too good for my $16 investment in my high stakes league.

To me the overall picture is one that fantasy owners should not be worried about at all. Burnett’s skill set is fine, he had a slow start and his overall season numbers in the skill department are weighted down by his terrible strikeout rate in in April. Forget the actual results and look at the process; if you are a Burnett owner just be patient and the results will soon follow. Good times are ahead.