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So who's worried about Noah Syndergaard today?
I'd venture to say no one. Seems like that particular thread reached its natural conclusion Thursday with a complete-game shutout in which he struck out 10.
Which goes to show how quickly minds can be changed for an ace-caliber pitcher.
Every year, it's the same. "He had a bad start! Maybe he's bad now. Look, another one! Oh, cursed fate! One more, and I'm out. You hear me? Done!"
A hitter has a bad day — shoot, a bad five days — and it's quickly forgotten, swallowed by the incoming deluge of days. A pitcher has a bad day — or certainly a bad three days — and the stink can stick for weeks.
That's partly just a statistical reality — fewer drops go into a pitcher's bucket — but it's partly the mental hurdle of having to make a side-by-side assessment for incongruous parts with disparate opportunities.
Advanced stats haven't made it much better. They specialize in identifying degrees of luck, whether good or bad, but the insight they provide brings with it a false feeling of assurance. A good pitcher can pitch poorly, whether for a game or a multi-start stretch, and it can have little to do with luck. So any evaluation of performance is still only a guess — a more educated guess, but a guess nonetheless.
And when the honest answer is "who knows?" it's human nature to assume the worst. We take it to DEFCON 1 for someone like Syndergaard, bemoaning how we should have known better and will never again be suckered into his 99 mph fastball.
Then, boom! Nine innings, no runs, 10 strikeouts.
What about Jacob deGrom? His elbow was barking that one day, remember? Sure, throngs of doctors have examined it since and given him the all clear, but why else would he have three consecutive starts unlike any we saw during his historically dominant 2018? Damaged goods, I tell you!
Then, boom! Seven innings, three hits, no runs.
So who's still worried?
The rush to judgment would seem to make for good buy-low opportunities, but I have my doubts anyone is looking for an escape hatch with this particular class of player. I think the reason we're so fearful of losing our ace pitchers is we recognize how critical they are to our team's success in this era of max effort, tight pitch counts and offense, offense, offense. They're the most irreplaceable assets — you're never going to find anything like them on the waiver wire. Maybe you could make that same argument for a prolific base-stealer or a high-end catcher, but the impact that those types of players can make is never as great as that of a pitcher who consistently delivers big inning and strikeout totals.
So nobody's trading them, in all likelihood, no matter how bad it gets.
As a matter of due diligence, though, we can discuss the buy-low prospects of some of the most worrisome aces. This list would feel more complete if Syndergaard or deGrom still qualified (or if Corey Kluber hadn't gotten hurt), but the re-affirmation of the Mets' co-aces is instructive in its own way. Truth is I would buy low on any of the pitchers highlighted below. With offense so readily available, I'd take any opportunity I could to stockpile the few arms with the potential to make a real difference, and a slow start might present such an opportunity.
Still, my confidence is a little more shaken for some than for others, so here they are ranked by most likely to rebound to least likely to rebound.
It's 2019, so is anyone really thinking of trading Max Scherzer because he has a 1-4 record or an ERA on the wrong side of four? Obviously not if you play with a bunch of baseball dorks, but those aren't the kind of leagues where you can expect to pull off a buy-low trade anyway.
Clearly, Scherzer is still awesome and, yes, still the safe bet to be the top starting pitcher in Fantasy. He's on pace for more than 220 innings and 300 strikeouts. He leads the majors with a 2.14 FIP. People sometimes have odd ways of processing things, though. The Scherzer owner may not even be looking so closely at the numbers. He may be guided more by vague feelings of disappointment that tell him he could have had Christian Yelich instead. Scherzer has been only the 27th-best starting pitcher in points leagues so far, because of those statistical quirks, so in terms of pure impact, he has underwhelmed. An offer of Yoan Moncada and Michael Brantley might be a welcome opportunity to "switch things up."
I mean, you could totally see your dad playing it that way, right? Whatever, it's why Scherzer is first on this list. My case basically boils down to "people are weird." I guess we can move on.
I've included Carlos Carrasco here because the season stats are still damning. The bad starts, all two of them, really were that bad. But he's getting dangerously close to the Syndergaard/deGrom level of "whoops, too late."
Carrasco has made three starts since the worst of those bad starts. The first was seven shutout innings, 12 strikeouts. He was cruising through four in the second but tweaked his knee covering first base and had to come out. The third was technically less than a quality start, but come on, four earned runs vs. eight strikeouts in 6 2/3 innings isn't a great disappointment.
The velocity is normal. The swinging strike rate is normal. The FIP is 2.90 and the BABIP .420. My concerns are virtually non-existent, which is why Carrasco is behind only Scherzer on this list.
Here's the first case of there being an actual case against the guy. Blake Snell was cruising along without a care in the world when he toppled a bathroom sculpture (how the other half lives, amirite?) onto his toe, fracturing it. He spent a little time on the IL, but not enough to heal an actual broken bone, and he has returned with two outings of less than four innings, allowing a combined nine earned runs. Yup, the sky is falling.
He hasn't blamed the injury for either of the performances, saying after the most recent one that he's confident with the way he feels, but the connection is a natural one to make. Even if the discomfort is impacting his mechanics in a small, almost imperceptible way, it'll be fully healed soon enough, and by the way, there could be any number of other reasons why he's failing to hit his spots like before.
I'm reminded of how quickly things turned around for him after his first start of the season, when he allowed five earned runs and three home runs while striking out just three in six innings. The level of concern peaked then, too, especially since we hardly saw any of him in spring training, but then over his next three starts, he struck out 33 while allowing 11 total baserunners. He still leads the majors in swinging strike rate and, lest you forget, had a 1.89 ERA last year. Yeah, I trust he'll get back on track.
Chris Sale has been a burning ball of concern since the first day of the season, with more words written about him than probably any other singular player. It's pretty clear by now the Red Sox screwed up in how they built him up for 2019, forcing him to play catch-up, but I feel like the progress has been evident over his past three starts.
I'm also fairly confident saying he's not hurt, which was a common theory early on after the way he finished last season. Yes, there were reports of him stifling velocity by design, but it was compromising his effectiveness in a way past fluctuations in velocity (and he has had several over the course of his career) hadn't. He cut it loose in his fourth start, though, averaging 96 mph and peaking at 98, which was enough to convince me that, yes, it's still there if he needs it. In two starts since, he has allowed four earned runs while striking out 18 in 12 innings.
No, he hasn't totally been himself. The pitch selection is a little off, as is the command. He has also been giving up harder contact than usual, which was especially true early in his last start. It turned out to be his best, though, after he made a small mechanical tweak in about the third or fourth inning.
The point is he's getting closer, offering enough encouraging signs that the opportunity to buy low on him has probably already passed.
Here's the point in these rankings where I begin to have real doubts about the pitcher's ability to live up to his ace potential, but my concerns for Walker Buehler are mostly the same ones I had coming in.
Like the Red Sox with Sale, the Dodgers probably played it a little too cautiously with Buehler this spring, forcing him to get a feel for his command and secondary pitches on the fly. It hasn't gone well. He's throwing his fastball as hard as he did last year, so I don't suspect it's a loss of stuff or skill. He's just had to throw it a lot more in order to survive, limiting his ability to miss bats.
Things should improve incrementally — not as quickly as if he was pitching in the low-risk environment of spring training, but quick enough that there will be moments when you'll be proud you drafted him. I just wonder how hard the Dodgers are going to push him when he's finally back up to speed.
They rode him harder than they probably would have liked last season, increasing his innings by about 80 between the minors, majors and postseason, which is probably why they tried to limit his workload this spring. But seeing as they have their sights set on a deep postseason run again, his bullets for the regular season are limited, and he's using up some of them just finding himself.
Yes, Aaron Nola is last on this list. No, I'm predicting disaster for him. Again, if I had to put money on it, I'd bet on all of these pitchers bouncing back with something close to ace-level production. But Nola's start to the season is giving me the most pause because there are signs of a loss of skill.
I'm not even talking about the walks so much, which seem pretty fluky given his track record. It's more that his velocity and pitch selection are basically the same as last year, and yet his swinging strike rate is back where it was when he first broke into the league — i.e., not good.
Maybe it's simply another case of faulty command. We already know the control is off, and Nola is yet another example of a pitcher who was handled delicately this spring, officially throwing just 8 2/3 innings. He has been incorporating his secondary pitches more as the season has progressed and may be on the verge of turning the corner. We just haven't seen much evidence of it yet.