In the MLB Recent Form Report, I apply filters listed under the “Adv Stats – Recent” heading of our FREE MLB Trends tool. I am looking for players whose recent play has not shown up in their stats or whose production has been exceeding or falling short of expectations. The MLB Recent Form Report is released on Monday morning each week.
Pitchers
Matt Harvey
The only logical place to start this week is with Matt Harvey, who has been a complete mess in three consecutive starts now. No matter which advanced stat you choose to look at, the numbers are ugly. Over the past 15 days, Harvey’s:
• Average fastball velocity is down 1.4 MPH
• Groundball percentage is down 10 points
• Average distance allowed on batted balls has increased by 18 feet
• Exit velocity allowed has increased by 2.0 MPH
It’s hard to quantify how disappointing Harvey has been lately, but I will attempt to do just that using our free Trends tool.
I created a pitcher trend on FanDuel and added filters that matched Harvey’s recent differentials in Pitch Velocity, Distance, and Exit Velocity. So what did the Plus/Minus look like? While I would have accepted “Crying Jordan” or “Poop Emoji,” the actual Plus/Minus is -2.57:
In his last start, Harvey’s velocity was actually right around his yearly average (his 15-day numbers are dragged down by his previous start). That’s a good sign, but Harvey was throwing 94.9 MPH in a 5/8 start against the Padres before his most recent string of mediocre starts. In other words, I’m going to need to see more than that from him to get back on board.
Tanner Roark
If you exclude his 5/14 meltdown against the Marlins, Tanner Roark has been a pretty difficult matchup for opposing hitters so far in 2016.
He’s typically not the most exciting pitcher to roster because he’s not the type of guy who is going to strikeout 15 batters – except that one time he did. But I think it’s probably time we start paying a little more attention to Tanner Roark, at least until his advanced stats say that we shouldn’t.
Over the past 15 days, Roark has allowed an Average Distance of just 169 feet and has induced groundballs at a 65 percent clip. If you also consider that the average batted ball against Roark has spent just 2.1 seconds in the air, it becomes evident that he is limiting hard contact at an elite rate right now.
Batters
Miguel Sano & Josh Donaldson
Speaking of airtime, balls coming off the bat of Miguel Sano are averaging 4.32 seconds in the air in the past 15 days. For those who are unsure how to quantify that number, Josh Donaldson is the only other batter with an average over four seconds among qualifiers (4.12). For comparison, over the past calendar year, Chris Carter has the highest Average Airtime among qualifiers at 3.70 seconds.
In addition to spending an absurd amount of time in the air, balls off the bats of Sano and Donaldson are also racking up the distance. Sano’s Average Distance over the last 15 days has been 258 feet, while Donaldson is not too far behind at 231 feet.
If we create a trend with those same Airtime and Distance ranges, the Plus/Minus is pretty negligible:
But there are lots of different types of batters and, at the moment, this trend is making no effort to distinguish between them. What type of batter should benefit the most when their batted balls are hanging in the air a little longer and traveling a little farther? Probably home run hitters. When I add a home run per at-bat filter, the Plus/Minus jumps significantly:
Now, we’re not uncovering any hidden gems here. Donaldson double-donged on Friday and Sano recently homered in three straight games. The main takeaway here is probably the above copied trend. These guys have homered five times over the past few days, but it’s not always going to work out like that. You’re going to have matches for this trend in the future for players who are hitting the ball as hard as Sano and Donaldson are right now, but it hasn’t led to homers yet. Keep this one in your back pocket and be ready to play the guys who show up under that “Current Matches” tab.
Conclusion
Today, we looked at two sluggers who have been absolutely crushing the ball recently and we used their recent production as a template to help us identify future plays. We looked at one pitcher whose career strikeout stats mean he’s not necessarily a must-play at pitcher, but his advanced stats indicate he may be a must-avoid with opposing bats. I also had a bunch of negative things to say about Matt Harvey. How do players perform after Bill Monighetti talks sh*t about them? Hard to say – we don’t have a trend filter for that…yet. Luckily, there are dozens of other trend filters waiting to be explored via our free MLB Trends tool.
