Welcome to our surprising starts series. Every week we’ll be going over a few surprising starting pitcher performances around the majors to determine whether these starts were smoke and mirrors or something more.

This week we saw Jack Flaherty strike out the world with his slider on Sunday. We also saw two Tigers' lefties continue to outperform their peripherals.

Flaherty leads the trio, and he has been on the radar since a nine strikeout performance on April 3rd. Matthew Boyd has been doing some interesting things with his slider, but has some questionable underlying numbers. Francisco Liriano epitomizes questionable underlying numbers.

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Real Deal or Mirage?

Matthew Boyd, Detroit Tigers

2018 Stats prior to this start: 42 IP, 3.21 ERA, 3.62 FIP, 2.7 K/BB ratio

05/17 @ SEA: 6 IP, 6 H, 2 ER, 1 BB, 9 K

Based on his season long stats Boyd might not seem to qualify as a surprising starter, but despite solid surface numbers nobody is buying him. He is only 20% owned in Yahoo leagues as of writing this. There have been several starts from Boyd this season that could have warranted a write up, but for his profile put him in the Jarlin Garcia/Matt Koch class of pitchers. Yeah, they have had decent results, but we are just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Things fell apart for both Garcia and Koch, but Boyd won’t stop pitching well.

There is legitimate reason for skepticism. He is riding a .261 BABIP and 4.2% HR/FB ratio through his first eight starts despite being a predominantly flyball pitcher. He isn’t compensating for this by inducing an exorbitant number of pop-ups either. Boyd has a career low 9.2% infield-flyball rate. His average flyball distance of 194 feet puts him 16th out of 129 pitchers with at least 100 batted ball events. While that stat isn’t necessarily damning, it’s not good to be towards the top of the leaderboard. The only pitcher in the top 20 average flyball distance with a better HR/9 than Boyd is Justin Verlander. They only other pitchers with a HR/9 lower than one are Verlander, Max Scherzer, and Gerrit Cole. The rest of list features the likes of Josh Tomlin, Carson Fulmer, and Matt Harvey among similarly homer-prone pitchers. Which group do you think Boyd leans toward? There is no chance he maintains this home run rate, and with a 4.62 xFIP his production would take a nosedive had he been surrendering league average home run rates this season.

It’s not all gloom and doom for Boyd’s outlook though. There are some positive steps forward. He has a career high 11% swinging strike rate, making him above league average for the first time in his career. While his 7.69 K/9 doesn’t look like much of a jump over his 7.36 career mark his 21.1% raw strikeout rate is a 2.2% increase compared to his career rate. Boyd has also started using his slider significantly more in 2018, throwing it 34.6% of the time compared to just 10.3% last season. He’s also taken something off the pitch, as it’s averaging just 80.5 MPH this year when it was averaging just over 86 last season. It has also gained just over an inch of horizontal movement and just under and inch of vertical movement. These changes took the slider from being a decent pitch for Boyd to his best. Batters have a lower average (.173), ISO (.053), and BABIP (.283) against the pitch compared to his career and it has an 18.11% whiff rate. Let’s compare one from his last start (bottom) to one from 2017 (top)

2017

2018

Not only is the velocity lower, but it has movement inside towards right-handed hitters. This can help diminish some of his issues with right handed hitters. Righties have a .342 wOBA against Boyd all time but just a .290 wOBA against him this season. He is using the slider a lot more in general, but especially against righties. He threw it 12% of the time against righties last season, but is throwing it 33% of the time this season, including 45% of the time with two strikes. Boyd can get righties out now with this pitch.

Verdict:

There are certainly things in this profile to shy away from. The 4.2% HR/FB ratio will certainly climb. Boyd’s 0.56 HR/FB is wholly unsustainable based on the way he has pitched. He has taken big strides with his slider and it looks like an out pitch for Boyd. There is risk with Boyd, but he’s better than the pitcher he was over the past couple seasons. Streaming consideration depends on ballpark and weekly situation. Avoid using him in home run friendly ballparks and don’t use him if you are trying to protect ratios. He’s about a 50/50 mix of luck and legit.

Francisco Liriano, Detroit Tigers

2018 Stats prior to this start: 44.2 IP, 4.03 ERA, 4.84 FIP, 1.4 K/BB ratio

05/20 @ SEA: 8 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 3 BB, 5 K

Another Detroit lefty that gives us a lot of room for doubt, Liriano has skirted through the season with a 3.42 ERA despite a plethora of red flags in his profile. For starters he has a career low 17.6% strikeout rate. The league is on pace for historic strikeout numbers and Liriano can’t even put up a passable strikeout rate. He also has an atrocious 12.4% walk rate. Of course we expect walks from Francisco Liriano, but at least at other points in his career he was getting strikeouts to compensate for this deficiency. Based on Liriano’s career track record a walk rate above 4.0 BB/9 has been a breaking point for him. With 2014 as the only exception, in seasons where Lirianio’s walk rate is greater than 4.0 BB/9 he has never had an ERA lower than 4.69 or a FIP lower than 4.34. He has a .214 BABIP, which is fifth lowest among qualified starters. He also has a 9.3% swinging strike rate, which continues a downward trend and marks a career low.

It would be nice to say that Liriano has changed his pitch mix, or has debuted a new pitch, or inducing more pop-ups or grounders, but none of that is true. He does have a slightly above average 20.7% soft contact rate, but that’s just too tenuous to trust. There just isn’t much to dig into with Liriano, he’s the same pitcher he has been over the last two seasons. The only difference is his luck. He is currently neck-and-neck with Bartolo Colon in a contest to see which veteran can outpitch his peripherals longer.

Verdict:

Only in the most desperate situations should you consider using Francisco Liriano, even as a streamer.

Jack Flaherty, St. Louis Cardinals

2018 Stats prior to this start: 15.2 IP, 2.87 ERA, 3.33 FIP, 2.3 K/BB ratio

05/20 vs. PHI: 7.2 IP, 2 H, 1 ER, 1 BB, 13 K

Flaherty had a similarly dominant start earlier this season at Milwaukee and was promptly reward with a trip back to the minors. The issue with Flaherty hasn’t necessarily been ability, but questionable role on the major league team. The Cardinals had trouble finding a spot for him in their rotation, but with Carlos Martinez on the 10-day disabled list and Adam Wainwright transferred to the 60-day disabled list Flaherty should have a spot in the rotation locked down for the time being.

There was a lot to like in this start from Flaherty, and perhaps the most encouraging stat was his whopping 24 swinging strikes. 12 of those came by way of his slider, while the other half were pretty evenly split across his other pitches. The slider has been the real gem for Flaherty this season. Batters have hit .097 with a .194 SLG against the pitch. His slider also has a 27.88% whiff rate and 44.6% chase rate. That number is higher than notable slider-heavy pitchers such as Tyson Ross, Patrick Corbin, and Chris Archer. Here is a look at a few of the sliders from yesterday.

The pitch moves sharply away from right-handed batters, making it especially tough to hit for them. Flaherty attacks righties with it early and often, throwing both a first-pitch and two-strike slider 43% of the time to right-handers.

Flaherty has the stuff to rack up big strikeouts, so what happened in his three-strikeout effort against the Twins? What about his two-strikeout game against the Pirates? His strikeout total seems to depend on the amount of lefties in the opposing lineup. The Twins threw six lefties or switch-hitters at him in their matchup, while the Pirates started five. The Phillies only had three in the game from this past Sunday, while the Brewers had four. His strikeout percentage against righties is 34.1% but only 26.7% against lefties. 26.7% is still very good, it’s just about Zack Greinke’s overall strikeout percentage, but it’s a noticable dip compared to his number against righties. Flaherty has actually been better against lefties from a results perspective. Left-handed batters have a .200 AVG and .234 wOBA against him. Don’t be scared of Flaherty if the opposing lineup boasts a large amount of lefties, but temper strikeout expections. This is just nitpicking quite honestly. There is little reason to doubt Flaherty’s ability, and if he continues to pitch like this it will be hard for the Cardinals to justify removing him from the rotation when everyone is healthy for them.

Verdict:

Flaherty passes the numbers test and the eye test. He should be owned in most leagues based on both his performance and upside, yet he is only owned in 46% of Yahoo leagues (as of 05/21). With a large crop of interesting rookie pitchers to sift through, Flaherty stands above even the likes of Freddy Peralta, Fernando Romero, and Nick Kingham.

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