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One way to search for potential breakout starting pitchers is to identify those who are just one skill away from putting it all together. If they already possess two above average skills, some improvement in the third one might be all that is needed to produce a breakthrough season. I filtered my projections for starting pitchers projected for ERAs over 4.00 who possess exactly two of the three primary skills, which are measured by strikeout rate, walk rate and ground ball rate. I also narrowed down the list by focusing on just young pitchers. That left eight pitchers to analyze. Before even delving into the players, I could tell you immediately that the third group of players below (those with poor BB/9 rates) are the best breakout candidates, based on the idea that a pitcher's control is the easiest to improve upon. Stat lines for each pitcher are 2009 projections. Good BB/9 & GB%, Missing K/9 Paul Maholm
As a groundball pitcher, Maholm suffers from Pittsburgh's poor defense; however, he did manage to post a BABIP of .289 last year, which was well below the team average. He probably will not be as fortunate this season. Maholm is a soft tosser, as his average fastball velocity was just 89.6 MPH last year, and that has led to mediocre K/9 rates ranging between 5.3 and last season's 6.1. It is difficult to believe that there is much additional upside in his strikeout rate, so he appears to simply be a solid, but unspectacular pitcher who is likely to be undervalued in most leagues. Mike Pelfrey
Pelfrey had somewhat of a breakout year last season as he posted a 3.72 ERA after two straight seasons of ERAs over 5.00, but the skills did not support such a performance. The primary driver of his success was a low 6.3% HR/FB ratio that no pitcher could maintain. The mystery with Pelfrey is where all his strikeouts went. In 2006, over three levels of minor league ball, Pelfrey struck out 109 batters in just 96.1 innings, yet his strikeout rate has been nearly cut in half in the majors with just 168 career K's in 294.2 innings. His skill set and pitch selection look very similar to another New York pitcher, Chien-Ming Wang, however Wang typically induces ground balls at a 60% clip, which is 20% greater than Pelfrey's rate. If Pelfrey could maintain the improved control from last season and remember how to strike hitters out, he will quiet his doubters, but until then, he will be much better in real baseball than fantasy, and yet still be not much better than league average. Zach Duke
Remember when Duke took the league by storm in 2005 when he posted a 1.81 ERA in 84.2 innings? No? Good, because I don't either, as it is impossible to remind myself that Duke was ever a good pitcher. His strikeout rate, which was a decent 6.2 in 2005, has plunged into unacceptable territory, never rising above 4.9 since and hitting a laughably low 3.4 in 2007. Was it injuries that caused him to lose all ability to make batters swing and miss? Possibly, but his average fastball velocity in 2008 was within 0.4 MPH of his 2005 speed and his control has remained very good each year, so there are no obvious signs. All in all, it is best to steer clear of Duke for now, but if his K/9 rebounds near 2005 levels early on, he could surprise and provide some value in NL-Only leagues. Good BB/9 & K/9, Missing GB% Scott Baker
It figures that the one year I don't have him on my team, he finally has the breakout year I had been expecting. If anyone ever doubted the value of looking at the three luck metrics to find breakouts, Baker is a prime example of its utility. High BABIPs in both 2006 and 2007 and a high HR/FB ratio and low strand rate in 2006 plagued him, but eventually the skill set won out, as it almost always does. Luck works in funny ways though as Baker actually benefited from good fortune for a change, which means that his ERA is likely headed back toward 4.00 in 2009. In four major league seasons, his GB% has never been above 34.6%, so it is tough to expect him to suddenly improve it. This is going to limit his ultimate upside since Baker has only a solid, but not great, strikeout rate and he does not have the stuff or track record to make one think more strikeouts are coming. Sean Marshall
Marshall will be the Cubs' fifth starter to open the season and he does not have near the fly ball tendencies that Baker suffers from. In 2006 and 2007, Marshall's GB% was in the upper 40's, so he actually has some upside to the projection. He saw a nice spike in his K/9 in 2008, which was likely driven by pitch selection changes including nearly tripling the number of cutters thrown, almost 40% more curve balls, and less sliders and change ups. Amazingly, Marshall only threw his fastball 38% of the time, which appears to be the right plan of attack as his fastball fails to reach 88 MPH on average. Of all the pitchers on this list so far, he probably has the most upside. Good K/9 & GB%, Missing BB/9 Ubaldo Jimenez
Ubaldo has been discussed a lot on the World Wide Web, and when you possess the highest average fastball velocity among starting pitchers and combine an above average strikeout rate with a high ground ball percentage, there is good reason. However, Ubaldo has posted some awful walk rates over the last couple of years and unfortunately there is absolutely nothing to indicate that he is ready to take a step forward with his control. The good news is that even with a projected 4.4 BB/9, he still could manage an ERA around 4.00, but if he somehow improved that walk rate to 3.0, his projected ERA drops to a sterling 3.55. Only blind optimism and the assumption that every young pitcher with control problems gets better each and every year could possibly lead one to believe that this is the year for Jimenez. He could have a huge breakout if it does happen, but it seems highly unlikely. Dana Eveland
Eveland has never shown good control at the major league level, but he has been better in the minors, albeit not that much better. Encouraging though is that he did post a 9.4 K/9 rate at Triple-A, but that was back in 2006. It does indicate that maybe he has some upside here and the potential to nudge his strikeout rate to around 7.0. Adjusting his K/9 projection to 7.0 and his BB/9 to 3.5 drops Eveland's ERA projection right down to exactly 4.00. Apparently Eveland corrected his vision this off-season which gives one hope that this will lead to some control improvements and make me look good by including his name on this list. Andrew Miller
I used to love Andrew Miller, but my enthusiasm has really waned in the last year. We knew his control would be problematic early in his career, but expected he would offset that with a good strikeout rate. However, the real mystery is what happened to all the ground balls. He consistently induced at least 60% of batted balls on the ground while in the minors, yet his GB% fell to just 46% last season, which is only slightly above the league average. More scary is that his average fastball velocity is down to 91.5, when it was 94.3 just two years ago when he was still pitching for the Tigers. Miller has been victimized by a poor Fish defense that led to an inflated .346 BABIP last year and also suffered from a ridiculous 60% strand rate which has got to rebound. As a result, he was nowhere near as bad as his 5.87 ERA would seem to indicate. There are lots of question marks for Andrew Miller, but his current and past skill set gives me hope that one of these years everything will magically come together. Trackback(0)
Comments (2)
  written by MikePodhorzer, April 05, 2009
Exactly, usually a pitcher's "stuff" can't improve all that much, so it comes down to better pitch selection, "pitchability" or simply learning a new pitch to up that K rate. I keep reading about how Scott Baker and Kevin Slowey just need to improve their GB% to move into the elite, but that's just not very likely.
written by Derek Carty, April 05, 2009
Good article, Mike. Should be noted that GB% is the toughest to budge, since it's reliant - in large part - on the types of pitches a guy throws. Unless a guy has added a new pitch (like John Danks's cutter last year), we shouldn't expect a pitcher's GB% to magically spike. K% can spike by a pitcher improving his current offerings, but no matter how good Chris Young's fastball gets, it's not going to induce many GBs.
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Tags: Paul Maholm Mike Pelfrey Zach Duke Scott Baker Sean Marshall Ubaldo Jimenez Dana Eveland Andrew Miller chien-ming wang pitchers fantasy baseball breakout candidates projections
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