In MLB Recent Form Report, I apply filters listed under the “Adv Stats – Recent” heading of our MLB Trend Tool. I am looking for players whose recent play has not shown up in their stats or for justification on players who have been exceeding or falling short of expectations. MLB Recent Form Report is released on Monday morning each week.
There’s been a lot of talk this season about Madison Bumgarner, particularly whether or not his lingering foot issues are going to have a strong impact on his performance. I personally started to worry when this FanGraphs piece told me I should start to worry a couple of weeks ago. Since then though, Bumgarner has exceeded value in two of three games against the Dodgers (twice) and Diamondbacks. Let’s use our advanced stats to take a look at Bumgarner’s recent performance.
In Eno Sarris’ FanGraphs article, he mentioned Bumgarner’s spike in Late Game Inconsistency as a troubling indicator. Indeed, there was a pretty significant spike, but that has since normalized (courtesy: Baseball Heatmaps).
While MadBum’s current velocity often sits in the 88-89 mph range, which is lower than the 92-93 he was throwing last spring, he has still posted some nice DFS scores here and there. In fact, in 22 recent starts where Bumgarner’s velocity over the two weeks leading up to the game has been less than 90 mph, Bumgarner’s Plus/Minus exceeds +5.0.
While Bumgarner has remained effective at lower velocities, the next pitcher is basically breaking our Trends tool with his triple-digit fireballs. As of 4/25/16, Noah Syndergaard’s average fastball velocity over the past 15 days is 98.3 mph. While there are several flamethrowers on today’s slate (Eovaldi, Richards, Archer), none of them come within even 1.5 mph of Syndergaard’s recent velocity.
Syndergaard’s average fastball velocity over the past 12 months sits at 97.1, meaning he has added more than 1 mph to start the 2016 MLB Season. To put that into perspective, let’s throw together a quick trend. Here, I am looking at pitchers whose season velocity exceeds 96 mph who have also added 1 mph or more to their recent velocity:
The Plus/Minus is very good, but what stands out to me is how infrequently something like this has happened. Over the past couple of seasons, only three players have qualified for this trend:
Now, let’s move onto hitters. If you’d have given me 100 guesses to answer the question “Who is the only player to have played in at least 10 games over the past 15 days with an average exit velocity above 96 and an average batted-ball distance above 250 feet,” I still wouldn’t have gotten it. Right ahead of Miguel Sano, Colby Rasmus, and Joey Votto sits…David Wright.
Things get even more interesting with Wright once we look under the hood. His 48.6 percent hard-hit percentage score to start 2016 buries his career average of 34.1 percent, and although his career BABIP of .340 is very high, his 2016 BABIP of .394 is just absurd.
If he is just smoking the ball off the bat when he makes contact as it appears by his numbers, why is his batting average so low (.254)? I believe his K% of 34.8 (career: 18.6) answers that question. The guy is just hacking away at the plate. While this profile does not scream “cash-game play”, you could probably do worse in GPPs than a guy who is literally playing “Home Run or Out” every time he steps to the plate.
In last week’s Recent Form Report, I mentioned that Giancarlo Stanton’s recent batted-ball distance was below 200 feet and cited that as a key factor in his struggles to start 2016. At the risk of turning this series into “Giancarlo Watch,” I want to take another peek at Stanton’s recent stats leading into yesterday’s game.
Although leading up to today, Stanton has posted a series of zero fantasy point games, you can see that his average distance is steadily increasing. When Stanton has exceeded 220 feet in this category, he has added approximately one fantasy point per game to his production:
Last week, I said I would probably be off Stanton until he started hitting the ball harder. Well, I might be getting ready to buy again. The best part about buying now with Stanton is that the advanced stats haven’t translated into much surface level production…yet (though he did homer yesterday). That means the buy-low window is wide open.
