My preseason rookie of the year pick is turning it around after a terrible April. Is the turnaround for real?

Thankfully for many of my fantasy teams, Manny Parra has begun to turn it around. After a terrible April and a somewhat less terrible May he has hit his stride in June.  The problem was his control; his strikeout rate in each month has been between 7.2 to 7.3 so that is obviously very consistent. His walk rate is quite another matter, with 4.9 in April, 4.8 in May but only 2.8 in June.

The improvement is reflected in his xERA and his actual ERA:

April: 4.94 ERA 5.27 xERA

May: 4.55 ERA 4.91 xERA

June 2.79 ERA 3.97 xERA

What we have here is the perfect example of the maxim that most pitchers could be at least very good if they could decrease their walk rate by one per nine innings. That is exactly what is going on here. Since his other skills are consistent (K rate, groundball rate etc) it appears that Parra’s season will live or die with his control.

Baseball HQ has his walk rate at a projected 3.3 per nine innings going forward, somewhere between his May and June results. In conjunction with his other skills, that translates into an ERA in the 4.00 to 4.10 range. Baseball Prospectus’ projection in PECOTA was a 60th percentile projection of 3.6 BB/9 and a 75th percentile projection of 3.3.  So the 3.3 range, with its appurtenant ERA in the low 4’s, seems patently reasonable.

Has he been lucky to get where he is? Not really. His BABIP is in excess of .330 so he has clearly not been lucky there, he has been a bit unlucky. His strand rate, or left on base percentage, is 76% which is a bit on the high side but  within normal limits.

The overall outlook to me is very bullish, even in mixed leagues. That ROY prediction is not looking as bad as it was last month. If only I could take back the prediction on one site that the Mets would win the World Series….