Point Blank – July 26
Is Jordy Nelson really that damn good...Do we begin charting King Felix as a “Pitch to Contact” guy, and can CC Sabathia do anything but pitch to contact...Did anyone else notice that Matt Garza threw the ball well last week ( I doubt it)…
Today it is all about setting perspectives by digging more deeply into the numbers, from what should perhaps be a greater appreciation of Jordy Nelson, to several pitchers across the MLB Diamonds that bring some intrigue based on recent outings that do not necessarily correlate with their market perceptions. Let’s get to work, as the team-by-team tour across the NFL continues…
Item: Is Jordy Nelson really that damn good?
The Green Bay Packers were a disappointment in 2015, though still making it into the second weekend of the playoffs, before a tough O.T. loss at Arizona. The offense had a stunning fall from #1 on the Football Outsiders adjusted charts in 2014 to a dismal #21, and you could see it easily in the Aaron Rodgers final tallies -
CMP% YPP INT TD PR
2014 65.6 8.4 5 38 112.2
2015 60.7 6.7 8 31 92.7
Those is a rather staggering decline for a player that may be the NFL’s best at his, or any position, when he is on top of his game. Contributing greatly to that was the absence of veteran WR Jordy Nelson, who had been considered a good player, but not necessarily a great one – just one Pro Bowl appearance through his first seven seasons (he was also an alternate twice). Yet what may have been happening in 2013 and 2014 was the developing of a truly special relationship between Rodgers and Nelson, a QB/WR chemistry that took each beyond their individual abilities, and across those season Nelson caught 193 passes, 21 going for TDs. Then it got interrupted.
Nelson’s injury did not cause a ripple in the betting marketplace, and there were many in the Sports Mediaverse detailing how Randall Cobb, who had a big 2014 season, could step in to his shoes. It was a prime topic here last August, because there was a considerable difference in physical strength and style of play between the two, Nelson at 6-3/217 and Cobb 5-10/192. There was also something else that did not get fully appreciated – when a #2 WR moves into the #1 spot he has to take on the top cover CB from opposing defenses, and some guys just are not geared for that. Cobb wasn’t. Instead of putting up bigger numbers as the #1 he fell off significantly, despite getting targeted a few extra times. So let’s set the perspective, doing a comparison of Cobb as the #2 in 2014 to the #1 in 2015, and then comparing his production at #1 to that of Nelson’s the previous season -
TGT REC YPT* TD
2014 127 91 10.1 12
2015 129 79 6.4 6
2014 151 98 10.3 13**
* - Yards Per Target
** - Nelson’s 2014
The gap between Cobb’s 2014 and 2015, and his 2015 and Nelson’s 2014, are substantial. Cobb produced far fewer catches despite more touches, and the yardage was not what an offense can live with from their #1 option - for Rodgers and the passing game there was a 38 percent drop on every attempt to what should have been the go-to WR.
Is Nelson really that good? It is not easy to prove that as an individual player in isolation, but frame it as “Is the Nelson/Rodgers chemistry that good” and it makes more sense. Not only do those two have a special feel for attacking defenses, but in the overall scheme the presence of Nelson means that Cobb can go back to being what he is, a terrific #2 that gets the benefit of working through defenses that have been adjusted to shade Nelson. It wasn’t just that the Packers lost Nelson’s abilities; the chemistry of the entire passing game was thrown off.
Nelson is going to begin training camp on the PUP list, as is likely #4 WR Ty Montgomery, so the re-assimilation process will be a bit behind schedule, but they do expect both of them to be at full health when the regular season begins. Is Nelson’s presence alone enough to take the Green Bay offense from #21 back to the elite? It may well be, despite the fact that he is unlikely to be garnering Hall of Fame votes down the road. In this case it is mostly about the sum of the parts.
Item: Tracking a trio of veteran pitchers
Tuesday’s board brings a lot of intrigue, one of those in which the pocket may be active based on some of the early prices out there. There are some challenging pitchers for the markets to track, so let’s get out the microscope.
I’ll go in rotation order and start with CC Sabathia. He was made the lead topic here a month ago - CC Sabathia is going to start giving up HRs – and his season has indeed turned inside-out, a 5-4/2.20 through his first 11 starts collapsing into an 0-4/7.46 over the last six. But might things get worse before they can get better? While many pitchers have had a boost since getting time off for the All Star break, Sabathia’s numbers after a full week of rest have been downright frightening. You can start with the ratio of 16 hits allowed vs. only four strikeouts over those two games, but how about this for perspective –
2016 SWS%
Bartolo Colon 5.1
Sabathia-post break 2.7
Colon is dead last in the Major’s in the count, yet Sabathia over his last two games is barely above half of that. That is scary stuff; at a time in which he should have come back refreshed there has not been much zip at all, and at the age of 36, plus having topped 100 innings, might he already be out of gas? I believe Sabathia will be vulnerable to the left-field porch in Minute Made Park this evening, and I will find a way to be in play against him, sorting through the market options as they settle out.
King Felix Hernandez returned for Seattle last week, and the first glance at the box score was ominous, with only two strikeouts vs. 10 hits allowed, but the Mariners rallied to win a game that he had them down 4-0 in the top of the second inning. Yet might there have been something positive to see? Perhaps, which makes his start tonight in Pittsburgh a prime one for the Eye Test.
Hernandez was a much different pitcher vs. the White Sox. He was recorded as having thrown his sinker 42.6 percent of the time, compared to just 28.6 for the full season. That pitch was also quite effective, getting a lot of contact outs and producing a 14.1 PPI, his second low for the campaign. Is that what we should expect to see going forward? Might he indeed be morphing into a ground-ball first guy? He has the savvy, and the competitor's heart, to potentially have an interesting career "Second Act", despite his fastball having falling from a high of 94.5 in 2008 to the current 90.3.
San Diego’s Andrew Cashner was a feature topic on Thursday, noting how sharp he had been in his first post-break start vs. the Giants, and also the fact that each time he takes the mound is an audition to be acquired by a contender. For the second straight game his stuff was electric, but the Padres could not hold a 5-1 lead that they had when he left. In those two starts since getting some down time Cashner has 17 strikeouts without allowing a walk, and has given up just seven hits, his average fastball at 94.9, a full mph above his season norm, and his slider is up 2.3 mph. He may be bringing much more to the table than a market seemingly weighing that 4-7/4.79 for the full season too heavily, and with Toronto as high as -250 in the morning trading I will be working on getting Cashner/Padres into play in some form.
In the Sights…
On what is going to be a busy day across the board, let’s isolate one situation here, which leads to #906 Milwaukee (8:10 Eastern), a spot in which Matt Garza may bring more than the markets expect, while the paint is slowly drying on what is a dreary 2016 mural for Patrick Corbin.
Garza brings no sex appeal to the markets at all with his 1-4/5.94, but there may be something to see. First note that overall he has not been nearly that bad, FIP reading him at 4.60, with both a .359 BABIP and 62.9 LOB% candidates to swing in his favor. But it was in charting his loss at Pittsburgh last week that things got interesting. Garza was throwing heat and making some good pitches, his average fastball at 93.5, more than a full mph higher than any of his previous six starts. And it wasn’t just the numbers on the page, but how he felt about it – "I've been searching for my arm strength, searching for my breaking stuff, and tonight I had it all. I had a curveball, I had a good slider and a good changeup, (but) I waited too long to go soft early. And I paid for it."
He paid for it via a three-run HR by Matt Joyce in the first inning, but settled down to work well after that, which was not lost on manager Craig Counsell - "I thought he had great stuff - that's the best we've seen him in a while. Any time he fell behind, his off-speed was good in the strike zone, and his fastball was plus - 95 and a couple of 96s."
Patrick Corbin may be far younger than Garza, but he could only wish for that velocity. Corbin’s 2016 has been a 4-9/5.23 disaster, with FIP sitting right there at 5.18, and if anything his ERA has been rather fortunate – over the last four starts there have also been nine unearned runs allowed, a rather natural consequence of bad pitching, much of it to contact, and bad defense (the Diamondbacks are #29 in PADE).
There does not appear to be any reason for optimism with Corbin. His K/9 has collapsed from 8.3 last season to 6.7, with SWS% making a similar decline from 10.8 to 9.0, while BB/9 has doubled from 1.8 to 3.6. He has lost nearly a full mph off of his 2015 fastball, and hasn’t finished the sixth inning over his last five starts, with no bounce at all after taking a full week off at the break – the first two starts back have brought fastball registers of 90.6 and 90.7, the first time all season he has failed to reach 91 in back-to-back games.
Garza and the Brewers aren’t anything special, but with as low as -105 out there in the morning trading they don’t have to be.
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