Pitchers: What Went Right?

ERA SAVIORS

Everyone knows the stars, so I won’t spend much time talking about them.

Carlos Martinez ended the year on a down note – performance-wise and shoulder issues mussed things up a bit – but a 3.01 ERA in his first full season stull impresses.

The Cardinals had three hurlers in the top 15. The 14^th guy, Shelby Miller, was a Cardinal a year ago.

Drop the innings down to 140 and Noah Syndergaard comes in 20^th at 3.24.

Drop it down to 120 and Jaime Garcia comes in fourth with his 2.43 mark.

Chris Young was 17^th – 3.06.

Lance McCullers was 21^st at 3.22.

WHIP SAVERS

Three men under 0.90… wow.

Marco Estrada was ninth in the game at 1.04. Did you know that?

Danny Salazar was at 1.13. Turns out he’s not as wild as many think.

Dan Haren has his faults, but he can still avoid the walk (1.83 per nine) helping to keep the WHIP in check.

Erasmo Ramirez was an under the radar stud in WHIP. His mark was better than that of a guy like Chris Archer.

Drop the innings mark to 120… Masahiro Tanaka comes in at sixth with a 0.99 mark. Hisashi Iwakuma was at 1.06. Justin Verlander was at 1.09. Stephen Strasburg 1.11. 

BABIP MONSTERS

Estrada led baseball at .216, that’s insanely low. The mark, for his career, is a still extremely impressive .261.

For the second time in three years the mark was under .250 for Jake Arrieta. This just in, he’s tough to hit.

Squarely up the knuckle ball is never easy. R.A. Dickey has been under .270 each of the past three years.

Ramirez was at .300 and .307 in 2013-14. Improved substantially in 2015 did he.

After an insane .343 mark in 2014 Salazar saw the expected regression down to .278. His career mark is .302.

Clayton Kershaw was at .281… just above his .272 career mark.

Cole Hamels was at .294 this season. The previous two years the mark was .295 and .295.

Drop the innings pitched mark to 120 and the league leader becomes… Chris Young (.209). 

NO ONE SCORED – LOB% WONDERS

Zack Greinke’s 86.5 percent mark is huge. His career rate is 74.9 percent.

John Lackey was at 82.6. That was his second season of 80 percent, back in 2008 was the other effort, but his career mark is 72.9 percent.

Chris Young was very fortunate in 2015. Amazingly, that nearly 81 percent mark is the second season in a row above 80 percent. Guys really don’t do that, but there it is. Doom could happen at any time.

Wei-Yen Chen has been over 76 percent each of the past three seasons. Pretty impressive stuff.

Arrieta was at 80 percent. His career mark prior to this season was 69 percent.

Hector Santiago added nine percentage points to his 2014 mark.

Lynn has been in the 78 percent rage in back-to-back seasons.

Jose Quintana was at 76.6 percent in 2013. He dropped down to 69.2 percent in 2014. He bounced back in 2015 with a 76.3 percent rate.

Drop the innings down to 120 and Chris Young ends up third in baseball with a 80.7 percent mark. Nate Karns comes in 14^th at 78.7 percent while Josh Collmenter was 17^th at 78.4 percent. Even with a 75.8 percent rate Danny Duffy still had a 4.08 ERA. 

CONTROL & POWER – K/BB

Max Scherzer was historically good at the top. Kershaw in third place makes sense, but Michael Pineda second? The Yankees' arm only walked 1.18 batters per nine.

The only man with a rate in the walk under one per nine on the season was Hughes at 0.93. He finished seventh despite a mere 5.45 K/9 rate. Bartolo Colon walked just 1.11 and almost caught Hughes.

Hisashi Iwakuma had a couple rough outings, but overall he was once again boss. His 5.29 mark was nearly a full batter above his 4.34 career rate.

Jon Lester has been at 4.40 each of the past two seasons. His career mark is 2.81. He’s just not walking anyone anymore.

Carlos Carrasco has a massive 10.58 K/9 rate. He walked a mere 2.12 per nine leading to a better than 5:1 mark. Archer was even better at 10.70 in the K department, but he walked a few more (2.80) leading to a 3.82 rate.

Speaking of that rate, 5.00, here are the totals of hurlers who hit that mark the previous five seasons.

2011: Three

2012: Two

2013: Four

2014: Fourteen

2105: Sixteen

Talk about an explosion of talent on the bump.

NO BIG FLIES

THE FANTASY ALARM PODCAST IS AVAILABLE (TUESDAY AND FRIDAY EACH WEEK). MANS AND FLOWERS TALK FOOTBALL, LADIES, BOOZE, DFS... YOU JUST NEVER KNOW.