Quick Look: Mike Foltynewicz

The people spoke and I watched Foltynewicz’s start this past Friday.

Who should I watch (and then write about) this afternoon? — Jeff Zimmerman (@jeffwzimmerman) April 7, 2017

I’ve seen him throw previously and nothing has changed. He’s got a hard straight fastball and owners seems to be hoping one or more of his non-slider breaking pitches eventually play up. I only tracked his progress for the first two or so innings and quit once the rain at the game started coming down. Here’s what I saw.

Fastball (Grade 55): 92-97. Straight. Some rise. Heavy early use. The ball comes in fast and sometimes leaves even faster.

Slider (Grade 60): 84-87 mph, 2-7 break. Great break and it offsets his fastball nicely. The break can be inconsistent.

Curveball (Grade 50): 78-82 mph: Slider-ish movement. Almost identical break as his slider (image). It might be an OK pitch by itself but the break and speed are too close to his slider.

Change (Grade 40): 84-86 mph, Straight. He threw just a couple of these and didn’t fool any hitters.

He’s definitely a thrower instead of a pitcher. He relies too much on his fastball for strikes and ends up getting hit around (career .324 BABIP).

In some role, starter or reliever, he’ll be in the majors for years. He needs to develop a unique 3rd pitch to keep hitters from sitting on his fastball to stay as a starter. He is a streamer in shallow leagues and must own in deeper ones.

Tout Wars Team Analysis: Freddy Galvis, Steven Souza Jr., and Randal Grichuk

In Tout Wars this week, I picked up Freddy Galvis. It’s something I am still coming to grips with. I have never been a fan of his but he’s becoming productive and I need productive players to win.

Last year, the 27-year-old hit 2o home runs after showing no previous signs of such power. He’s still hitting the ball hard this year. He’s ninth on the way-too-early exit velocity leaderboard. Additionally, he’s not chasing as many pitches out of the strike zone (2016 O-Swing% = 40%, 2017: 26%). He’s being more selective and has made pitchers pay so far. It’s the pitchers’ turn to start adjusting back to Galvis. I hope they take a while.

Additionally, I was trying to decide a move on Steven Souza Jr. after his hot start (.417/.533/.667). Souza is not hitting the ball any harder this year. His biggest improvement is in his plate approach. His outside swing rate has dropped from 31% to 16%. Since becoming more selective, his contact rate has jumped from 68% to 77%.

The patience can be seen with his 20% walk rate. His six walks so far are more than or equal to five of his 2016 monthly totals:

April: 6

May: 9

June: 2

July: 3

August: 5

September: 6

I would be selling Souza’s based just on his slash line but some underlying skills may have changed. I am going to hold him for now.

I am moving Randal Grichuk to my bench. After a first day home run, he’s done nothing (.158/.158/.211). I bet his hand, which got hit by a pitch in late spring training, is still bothering him. Here is his current exit velocity placement.

All I know is that it is not good for the power-only slugger to have his exit velocity comparable to Mallex Smith and Billy Hamilton. The hurt hand makes for a decent narrative. The narrative could eventually change. He may just suck.

Notes

• Tom Tango and Mitchel Lichtman are having a great discussion on how to project pitchers while trying to take into account survivor bias. Here’s the money quote:

So even though my projections were perfect, collectively, survivorship bias makes it look like my projections were bad! Sure if all these pitchers were allowed to pitch the same amount in MLB we could fairly evaluate my projections by just looking at predicted versus actual, but there is always a weeding out at the major league level – even for average pitchers. (All good projections should be a bit higher than actual because of this. That is especially true the worse we get in the projections.)

All players with little to any major league experience probably have a current projection better than their true talent level. Only pitchers who have outperformed their expectations keep pitching. The players used for future projections are these outperforming pitchers and thereby creating inflated projections. It will be interesting to see what the pair works out as the correct solution.

• I updated my fastball velocity spreadsheet this morning. The one pitcher of note whose fastball has dropped quite a bit is Kyle Hendricks. He’s down just over 2 mph from last April.

Whole his pitches display lots of movement, I am not sure if he can pulling off his voodoo in the Jared Weaver velocity spectrum.