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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Jun 8, 2023 17:45:08 GMT -5
Over the last 8 games, the Sox starters have put up a .275 xwOBA. (That includes two half-starts by Crawford, so it's reall7 7 starts worth of pitching.)
How good is that? Among the 150 SP who have faced the most hitters, that would rank 7th.
Paxton also has two of the starts, and the others are Sale, Whitlock, Houck, and Bello.
(That we went 3-5 in those games is crazy. wOBA allowed was .295.)
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Jun 8, 2023 15:40:24 GMT -5
Kutter last night: .196 xwOBA, .369 wOBA.
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Post by ericmvan on Jun 8, 2023 2:06:08 GMT -5
Nice. That would put him at about 3.2 for a full season. The offensive numbers are amazing for a guy who had to adjust to ML pitching. His wOBA is .389 and xwOBA is .364, and I wonder if that gap is sustainable. It's possible - Bogaerts has maintained that kind of a gap throughout his career. But it's certainly more the exception than the rule. In any case, even by xwOBA he's 31st in the majors, which is pretty darn good.
Just your semi-annual reminder that wOBA is better at predicting future wOBA than xwOBA is. xwOBA is only really good at predicting future xwOBA, and, like, who cares if that doesn't actually translate to real results? That's because pulled fly balls always and opposite-field have grounders a high wOBA - xwOBA, and those are legit hitting skills. (These numbers are through Tuesday...) Masa is 7th on the team in number of pulled fly balls, with 7, and among those with 4 pulled flies, he's 7th in wOBA and 7th in xwOBA. Really! However, he's 3rd in the difference, .592 > .938, behind Wong and Refsnder. I did a study of this and (IIRC!) the better your wxOBA on these balls, the less you benefit from the effect. So most of that is real. Even more so, he leads the team with 19 opposite-field grounders (tied for 7th in MLB), is second to Arroyo in xwOBA, and has a benefit that's just a bit better than average .238 > .420. He's 9/19 (.474).
He's second to Duran on xwOBA on flies to CF, where hard-hit balls go to die, but (unlike Duran, .921 > .644), he hasn't paid the usual penalty, .642 > .651. There's almost certainly some luck there but with his bat control I wouldn't rule out some skill at hitting into the gap.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Jun 7, 2023 2:45:43 GMT -5
Folks in the Murphy thread are saying we need a spot starter for Thursday, but that's not so. Whitlock can go on 4 days rest. Crawford is going on 3 days rest today -- that explains why they had him go only 3 innings last time.
MFY series looks like Houck, Bello, Paxton.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Jun 4, 2023 3:03:39 GMT -5
Of course Jansen will say that! Cora needs to be smarter than that, though. This was just the second time in his career that Jansen pitched in both games of a double-header. He had two one-inning saves om May 19, 2018 against the Nationals. He got the side in order with 1 K in game 2.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Jun 3, 2023 7:24:49 GMT -5
Game PPD....will be played Monday at 4:05pm It never made sense to me that TBD (whoever he is) could start for both teams tomorrow. So now we get a Paxton / McClanahan matchup on Monday instead.
(I guess who starts game 1 and 2 is still up in the air, for both teams.)
Changes that follow. I'm assuming that Crawford will take Sale's rotation spot. Pivetta has been great in his multi role and they really don't need three excellent such guys. (It wouldn't, however, shock me if Pivetta went back to the rotation ... and excelled.)
Guardians:
Paxton > Craword or Kluber Whitlock > ditto Crawfod > Whitlock or Houck
Yankees
Houck > Houck or Whitlock
Bello Paxton
Well, it looks like both Paxton and McLanahan were too far into their between-start regimens to go a day earlier than planned. So the Sox are sticking with the rotation, pushing everyone back one day except the TBD for game 2 today. That means that Houck goes on 6 days rest after only throwing 4 innings in his last outing. Bello (game 4) and Paxton (Guardians 1) go on 5 days rest rather than 4. A different TBD and Whitlock round out the Guardians series and the Yankees series is as originally planned.
Downsides: TBD #1 starts against the Rays, and Paxton against the Guards instead of vice versa; Houck getting 6 then 4 days rest instead of 5 and 5; loses the option of swapping Hock and Whitlock against the Guards and Yanks.
Paxton had 2 great starts on 6 days rest sandwiched around a bad one on 4 days, and now he's getting 5 days rest against Cle and 4 against NY, when it looked like it might be the other way around.
Upside: Bello has pitched on 4 days rest just once, and this gives him another 5 days start before he goes on 4 against the MFY's.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Jun 2, 2023 20:37:44 GMT -5
Game PPD....will be played Monday at 4:05pm It never made sense to me that TBD (whoever he is) could start for both teams tomorrow. So now we get a Paxton / McClanahan matchup on Monday instead.
(I guess who starts game 1 and 2 is still up in the air, for both teams.)
Changes that follow. I'm assuming that Crawford will take Sale's rotation spot. Pivetta has been great in his multi role and they really don't need three excellent such guys. (It wouldn't, however, shock me if Pivetta went back to the rotation ... and excelled.)
Guardians:
Paxton > Craword or Kluber Whitlock > ditto Crawfod > Whitlock or Houck
Yankees
Houck > Houck or Whitlock
Bello Paxton
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on May 31, 2023 17:14:35 GMT -5
Bello's last 4 starts. Days Rest xWOBA Str% BB% Pitc/BF 5 .284 .670 .043 4.3 6 .394 .626 .200 4.3 5 .290 .684 .000 3.6 6 .380 .629 .100 4.9 Gee, anyone see a pattern?
(Yes, those are his only 2 starts on 6 days rest.)
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on May 29, 2023 12:05:56 GMT -5
Pivetta in relief vs. as a starter, xwOBA / wOBA (PA)
.270 / .245 (33) .396 / .378 (183)
For a point of comparison, Winck is .267 / .250.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on May 29, 2023 11:59:46 GMT -5
I wonder about the cause/effect at play here though. It's it that he's choosing not to throw all 3 pitches to LHB or is it that he lacks feel for one or two that outing? Yeah, the confound here is whether he needs all three pitches to be working well in order to succeed past the 3rd inning, or whether he can get a better feel for them by throwing them more often, e.g., in innings 1 to 3 when the worst case result would be a solo homer. That's why I need to compare innings 1 to 3 vs. 4 to 6 pitch use, start by start, and I currently only have the latter.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on May 28, 2023 13:17:53 GMT -5
If this is in fact a pitch selection issue, to whatever extent pitch selection is from the analytics group, somebody should be looking for a new job or perhaps career. I don't think it was an obvious one. Maybe even counter-intuitive, until you think it through. Short version here (as I remember the numbers, rather than trying to find them in a pile of notes)
Against righties Houck remains a two-pitch pitcher. More than 80% sinkers and sliders, and given the tremendous quality of both, why not? Innings 4 though 6 swap the two, with sliders outnumbering sinkers.
He's been a 3-pitch pitcher against lefties, but it took him a bunch of starts to figure out which 3. He settled on:
The cutter instead of the sinker, for a hard pitch with downward movement that will bore in on hitters
The splitter, for an offspeed pitch that will run away from hitters, like the slider does to righties
The slider, because it's his slider.
He's had two good starts in innings 4 through 6 and what they had in common was a relatively even distribution of the three main pitches. In his other starts, he was going with one pitch (which one, varying from start to start) much more predominately. The latter is the very common "identify your best pitch in this outing and challenge guys to hit it" method.
Mixing the pitchers up instead makes sense two ways. That hitters cannot guess is the obvious one. But one of the most fundamental truths of pitching is that the more you throw a pitch, the better you command it. And yes, the opposite is true, but the improvement of command from repetition is much stronger than you'd expect if guys were simply throwing their better-commanded pitches more often. *
Mixing the pitches more evenly may be a tool for preventing the mistake that kills you.
All of this is very tentative. I wouldn't commit to a word of it. But it's a nice working hypothesis.
(What I haven't yet done is break down pitch use vs. LHB in innings 1 to 3).
* IIRC, I discovered this by creating two different models to project changeup effectiveness from pitch movement and velocity relative to FB -- one including pitch frequency and one without. That was a dozen years ago, though!
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on May 28, 2023 12:40:00 GMT -5
In 57 games, the Red Sox have gotten just 12 Quality Statcast starts from their projected 1 through 4 starters. (Which is to say, a start with better-than-average xwOBA). That's pretty dire, right?
It breaks down this way (with the % of starts made by the top 4 relative to 4/5 of the games)
First 15 games: 4 starts, 1 quality (33%, 25%)
Next 22 games: 10 starts, 4 quality (56%, 40%) Last 15 games: 10 starts, 7 quality (83%, 70%)
Details:
Sale 1/3, Whitlock 0/1 Sale 3/4, Whitlock 1/2, Bello 0/4 Sale 3/3, Bello 2/3, Whitlock 1/2, Paxton 1/3
There's every reason to believe that Paxton will return to his old form on a regular basis, and within the next few starts.
You'll note that the 2 through 4 starters had 1 good start in the first 37 games. One! That's trending up, to say the least. Bello and Whitlock are coming off outstanding starts as expected.
I've lost count of how many nationally-known sportswriters have more or less stated that the necessary rotation improvement is a crap shoot going forward. (It's either 2 or 3 guys ... that I know of.)
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on May 24, 2023 18:43:16 GMT -5
First, I go back and forth about how good an idea it is to have multiple multi-inning relievers. Is it a good idea? Or a great one?
There is always a place on the roster for a low-leverage long man. There is not a place for two.
So the key here is Pivetta. He has to be a guy you more or less trust to go 1 - 5 innings in medium or even high leverage, when you don't want to use Winck or Crawford. With his stuff, that seems very possible.
And Kluber gets a chance to recover his ability to throw strikes, but without the burden of needing to succeed immediately.
And it makes no sense to cut him. You have 8 starters on the roster and no one at AAA at all, so you would have to replace him on the roster with an up-and-down guy, a guy who's 9th or 10th on the depth chart of a team that is loaded in AAA (you know, like we thought we would be right now!). If you don't do that, the 8th man on your depth chart, the guy who starts if 3 of the 7 guys are hurt, is Desperation Acquisition.
So you'd be paying Kluber's salary and trading away a prospect ... with no guarantee that you've made the team better.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on May 24, 2023 18:15:01 GMT -5
It's a 5-game skid, in a team streak of five straight games with bad karma. That could be luck, or opposing defenses.
That the skid = West Coast trip may not be a coincidence. Game 1 (at least) was partially played when he might ordinarily be in bed. You might acquire a swing error that persists even after the body clock has adjusted.
The first game of the Padres series he had a .300 xwOBA, but the team (including him) was .445. That certainly didn't look like anything at the time but in retrospect, it's the skid start. He then put up (with team in ()):
.230 (.309) .215 (.258) .051 (.146) .145 (.267)
Expected and actual batting lines for the trip, with xwOBA / wOBA at the end:
TEAM .222 / .281 / .384 = .292 .175 / .237 / .269 = .229
Duran .199 / .199 / .250 = .196 .053 / .053 / .053 = .047
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on May 24, 2023 3:24:54 GMT -5
I'm hopeful, but the same thing that's plagued him his whole career continues to skew his results: Left-handed hitting. In fact, this year, even with a new pitch, he's .259 AVE/.323 OBP/.482 SLG with a .344 wOBA vs. lefties. Until he fixes that, he's going to be a 5/6 or a pen guy. Guiadas had the fact I missed: the platoon splits. So I looked them up (xwOBA).
Through inning 3 he had no split at all.
In 4 through 6 he was a bit worse against righties, about as expected, but he got killed by lefties ... until his last start.
After discovering that I did a 20-way breakdown -- R vs.L, by 1-3 innings vs. 4 through 6, for each of his 5 pitches.
What I found suggested that pitch selection against LHB was contributing to the problem. I though he needed to simplify things. That was close, but not quite right.
After the great last start I realized I had to look at LHB in innings 4-6 start-by-start.
And I found something really cool. In fact, I found, for innings 4 through 6, a correlation between pitch selection pattern and success vs. LHP in a given start that had p =.01 -- hugely significant.
More tomorrow.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on May 24, 2023 3:01:06 GMT -5
Kiké has some concerning offensive numbers which may be signs of diminished skills (due to age): - ISO: .110; this is after a .116 ISO in 2022 which was his previous career low (career: .174) - Average Exit Velocity: 87.6; set his previous career low of 87.8 in 2022 (career: 89) - Hard Hit%: 32.8; this would be a career low, after 35% in 2022, the second lowest of his career (career: 37.8%) - Barrel%: 2.5: another career low after 2022 5.8%, which was the second lowest of his career (career: 6.3%) - Oppo%: 27.9; highest of career aside from truncated rookie season (career: 23.5%) Along with diminished arm strength and speed (26.5 ft/sec sprint speed; lowest of career) and it seems that he has gotten old. He still works solid at-bats and can play multiple positions, and is therefore viable as a utility player, but I don't think he should be looked at as a starter, or super-utility guy, any longer. (he's been getting under pitches at an extreme career high of 39.3%; not sure if that's age related or a correctable issue) Fatse said within the last weak that Kiké was still messed up from his injuries last year and they were working hard to fix him. I read that is acquiring one or more swing flaws from compensating for the injuries and having it stick in "muscle memory."
Keep in mind that he worked on his swing from the start of 2021 and didn't get it right until early June -- after which he was terrific.
They'll give him at least that long before they conclude he's toast.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on May 23, 2023 23:26:33 GMT -5
You can't convince me that Bello's fate is to be anything less than a #2 starter. Cora sticking with his guy, and got rewarded with a great effort. Thought he had more K's, but what a start. You don't really need a lot of K's when you coax 13 balls in play (in 27 PA!) with a median EV of 83.3 and an expected total of 1.6 hits (allowing just 1). That is a whole lot of insanely weak contact.
There were only 2 other legit hard hits other than the two homers, and neither were exactly smoked -- Neto in the 5th, 97.2, and Urshela in the 7th, 96.0. Both had .680 xBA.
First thing I do when I get up tomorrow: look up Bello's xwOBA for this game.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on May 23, 2023 3:35:27 GMT -5
I mean the guy only has had 60 career AB's. Isn't it a little early to say he's just a really good up and down guy? He's 24 years old and he's improving. Why cant we give every prospect the respect we give Casas? I didn't make it clear, but I was just trying to describe the likeliest outcome. I thought it went without saying (although clearly it didn't!) that if he makes a significant improvement in plate discipline, he'll be better than that-- in fact, that's how he would reach his 5 (average regular) ceiling that he is listed at here. I believe he's already lifttd his floor from 3 to 3.5.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on May 22, 2023 15:11:56 GMT -5
I'm not fully getting on board the Valdez hype train until the league makes its adjustments and he adjusts back, but I was looking at Dan Uggla as a possible comp and that guy had 23 fWAR in basically 9 seasons with only a 109 wRC+ - lower than I expected - and a -4.4 UZR/150. Or 18 bWAR with a cumulative -64 DRS. The offensive bar is really not that high at 2B.
Basically if Valdez is merely good rather than great as a hitter, and merely bad rather than terrible as a fielder, he's comfortably a 2 WAR/year player. ("Bad as a fielder" might be optimistic though.)
Statcast paints a somewhat different picture which may actually be more promising.
He has a .319 xwOBA and .361 wOBA, and the difference sure seems to be luck. His 8 LD are .637 / .849, and his 19 grounders (excluding 4 oppo) are .171 / .280. He has 4 oppo grounders, which always have good karma, but not as good as his .247 / .444. His luck on fly balls has actually been poor.
So he's been a below average MLB hitter, and a bit below average for a 2B (which is .323).
However ... among 38 players who have 50+ PA at 2B, he ranks 28th in K% and 22nd in BB%. There are only four guys who are worse at both. That's what's dragging his xwOBA down.
Of 37 second baseman with 40+ balls in play, he ranks 6th in xwOBA (and 1st in wOBA). The ball jumping off his bat is not a mirage. Among all hitters with 40+ balls in play, he ranks 132 of 357 in contact xwOBA -- 63rd percentile. Impressive for a middle-infielder, and I don't think it changes much as pitchers see him more. it's an innate skill. Whereas the lousy plate discipline is something he can work on, and quite possibly will improve as he sees pitchers multiple times.
He was dead list in Success Rate Added at 2B maybe 10 days ago and is now tied for 50th out of 54. For some bizarre reason, they don't include sample size (number of opportunities) in the Outs Above Average rankings, so we can't monitor his improvement any better than by (hopefully) watching his SRA improve. Right now it's at -5%.
I do believe he can be merely subpar defensively -- say, -6 runs per per 150 G -- and with some small improvement in K/BB, you get a second-division starter, or a really good up-and-down guy until his options run out. He's good org depth now and should remain so through 2025, and there's a chance be becomes someone another team will want to trade for.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on May 22, 2023 5:20:30 GMT -5
A day previously the Sox were in a 3-way tie for 5th in b-Ref's SRS metric, and second in the AL East. Today they're 9th and 4th.
Ordinarily, being the 9th best team in MLB would give you rosy post-season feelings. But the 11 best teams in MLB now breaks down:
5 AL East 3 AL other
3 NL
The AL is 104-97 in interleague play, but the AL East clubs have played just 60 games while the Central and West have played 70 and 71.
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Post by ericmvan on May 20, 2023 4:08:48 GMT -5
AL East goes 3-0 outside the division, and is now 101-51 (.664).
Sox now in sole possession of 2nd in the AL East and 6th in MLB in b-Ref's adjusted standings.
Breakdown of the 12 best teams in MLB, by that metric:
5 AL East 4 entire NL 3 Rest of AL
Rays have gone 6-7, with 6 of the 7 losses by 1 run, including games where they had 91.5, 82.3, 96.4, and 97.7 Win Probabilities. I kind of missed the fact that the Yankees won 3 of those (while losing a 97.4).
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on May 20, 2023 2:42:27 GMT -5
Unless Xander picks it up, he won't fit the descriptor of RHH all-star at SS this year, or perhaps ever again. He is first among all shortstops in OBP and second in fWAR to Wander Franco. Coming into the game ...
He was 5th in wRC+ among the 31 SS with 100+ PA.
He was 22nd among all SS in Win Probability Added. He had 39 PA in high leverage and was .129 / .308 / .161.
I feared he would put too much pressure on himself (again) and have a fourth straight awful season situationally even when it looked like he would re-sign here. When the Padres overpaid for him (while they actually already had 2 SS!, and were pretty much explicitly committed to winning a WS, and soon) I couldn't see how he could avoid that.
I take no pleasure in this, and if Machado could only be hurt all year I'd root for the Padres to get to the WS (in part because I love the ballpark and city). Maybe the Padres can find someone to help him loosen up.
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Post by ericmvan on May 20, 2023 1:49:38 GMT -5
And comes down heavily on the side of stamina, with graphs showing the decay in pitch quality.
I can tell that he wrote the story as he did the research (I do the same thing usually) and when he discovered that it was likely stamina-driven, he of course didn't label the already-written data based on familiarity as probably not relevant.
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Post by ericmvan on May 20, 2023 0:11:43 GMT -5
Honestly, if it is stamina, there is something wrong with this guy. He came to camp as a starter, so presumably his whole off-season was geared towards it. No starter… not even in high school… should be tired at pitch 50. If he is, he either has underlying physiological issues, far too taxing a delivery (or he is so maxed out that his stuff requires short outings), or is so amped up he’s blowing energy unnecessarily. There is no reason to be tired that fast. It's true that he hardly needs to be the second best pitcher in MLB (for three innings), so it may well be true that he needs to pace himself more. But most SP's go more or less all all out until they run out of steam. If we see him beginning to have really good opening innings (instead of insanely great) while fading in the 5th and 6th to a normal degree, we'll know he's made a pacing adjustment -- and was one of the rare guys who needed to make one.
As far as offseason work to get into better shape, it's pretty much a universal human truth that when people are told "it's going to take a lot of hard work to achieve your dream" they later report that they had no idea just how much work it would actually take. It's credible to me that the team (and Houck) are just now recognizing the disparity between how much the F.O. wanted him to work on stamina and how much Houck actually did.
Houck learned a splitter in the off-season and it's become his #3 pitch (after the slider and sinker) and far and away his most effective; it's at 92.1, just 2 mph slower than his four-seamer. Again, it's credible to me that this was his primary focus this winter.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on May 19, 2023 15:33:27 GMT -5
As promised ... the rankings are as of 2 days ago
(I don't expect this to spawn a lot of discussion, but I wanted it to be easy to find in the future.)
His xwOBA the firs three innings: .214. That ranks 3rd among the 162 starters who have faced 40+ hitter, behind de Grom (.165) and Max Fried (.203). But Fried has faced just 57 hitters versus Houck's 88. If you regress Fried by adding 54% more action, is there any projection for him that doesn't add .011 xwOBA or more? I think Houck is really second here.
He leads everyone in wOBA, .167.
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From the 4th inning on he's .405. That ranks 127th out of 149 starters with 30+ PA. (He is tied for 32nd in most batters faced, so his hook may be slow.) He's 136th in wOBA, with .441.
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So what's causing this? There are two possible factors: lack of stamina and increasing hitter familiarity. Splits by pitch count give you the former. Splits by times around the order give you both combined. I think that some people miss that.
There's some reason to believe that the hitter-familiarity effect is real, and that the larger a pitcher's arsenal is, the less of a factor it is. Houck now has a large arsenal: two fastballs that are as different from one another as any pitcher in MLB has, a slider, splitter, and cutter.
So our starting point is to blame stamina. We have an eyeballs case that suggests that, the Jays game where he couldn't get the last out in the 5th, gave up the three-run bomb on pitch 24 of the inning, had a nice rest (23 pitches, all but the first 4 with runners on, and a pitching change) and was much better in the 6th. So let's see if there's data to supports this.
Alas, there's no easy way to get either times-around-order or pitch count splits in Statcast. Furthermore, the b-Ref pitch count splits are warped by all the relief appearances, where all the best guys rarely go past 25 pitches.
However, we do have the pitches 51 to 75 OPS+ for MLB, and those are almost all by starters. MLB average is a .768 OPS allowed ... Houck is 1.112. This is an astounding decline from his 1-25 numbers.
.113 / .200 / .156 (1-25) .205 / .314 / .227 (26-50). At this point Houck is on average 1 out into the 4th.
.423 / .429 / .692 (51-75)
Note that on average, the first line is against 1 through 6 hitters while the second line is against 7 through 9 and 1 through 3. So the decline -- from a 2 OPS+ to 56 -- is despite facing weaker hitters (7 through 9 instead of 4 through 6). It looks like he's already starting to tire.
Now, here's a tiny sample size that will still be helpful: in 6 of his 8 starts he has faced, in the 5th inning, the 8 and 9 hitters a second time, and then the leadoff hitter a third time. The #1 hitters are much better than the 8 and 9, so we already expect them to hit Houck harder. To make us consider a familiarity effect, you'd need a honking big difference.
In fact, the 8 and 9 hitters have a .515 xwOBA while the subsequent leadoff guys managed just .315. That sure looks like he bears down extra against the leadoff guy ... using energy he saved facing the apparent easy outs. This may well be unconscious -- increasing fatigue, then a shot of adrenaline.
So, yeah, this is a stamina problem.
I'm pretty sure that there's a way to improve it via off-season training, because Josh Beckett seems to have done it after every off-year and skipped it after every good one. ERA's of 5.01, 4.03, and 5.78 in his even-numbered years withe the Sox, and 3.27, 3.86, and 2.89 in the odd ones. There was no difference at all in pitches 1 to 25 and then in the bad years there's a big decline as he goes deeper, while in the good years the splits stay much flatter.
Is there a way to build this stamina during the season? I'm skeptical. I don't think they could be unaware of this, so we can look for improvement if they keep him in the rotation.
It should also be possible, with all the data they have, to build a model that tells you not when he's toast, but when the toaster-oven has just been turned on. It's worth noting that the infamous pull of Blake Snell in the 6th inning of Game 6 of the 2020 WS was data-driven, and someone at Fangraphs found a bunch of danger signs in just the public data. I find the whole "yeah, but they were so relieved to see him out of there" criticism to be inane ... as if they wouldn't have been equally as relieved if Snell started missing over the middle, and with reduced velo to boot.
If they could add an inning of stamina, and used a data model to pull him before he gets hit hard ... that might make him more valuable as a starter than as a reliever.
In any case, there's no reason why he shouldn't add a good deal of stamina this winter, which will make him a CY contender. Seriously.
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