Welcome back to our Patience or Panic series! This will be one of our last articles of the season, as the fantasy season has officially reached its final month. If your head-to-head leagues aren’t in playoff season already, they will be next week, meaning that each roster move or sit-start decision is critical. The same can be said in roto leagues, where one bad start or great game can be the difference in your standings. If you don’t believe me, let me share this quick anecdote.
Last season, I played in a RotoWire Online Championship Qualifier and was in contention for first place in my league going into the final day. For those who do not know, winning first place in this league gets you your $50 entry back and a free $350 entry into a RotoWire Online Championship league the next season. With all other games finished for the day, a Marcell Ozuna home run in the bottom of the 9th (after Atlanta failed to shut the door with an 8-7 lead in the top of the 9th) allowed my competitor for first to tie me in home runs on the season; that one-point swing was enough for him to edge me out on the season for the title. My goal today and throughout the season has been to give you the information you need for your sit/start and keep/cut decisions to prevent something like that from happening to you. With that said, good luck, and let’s get into this week’s trio! All stats are through the games of September 3.
George Kirby, SP, Seattle Mariners
Since 8/4: 25 IP, 22 K, 2 W, 6.84 ERA, 1.64 WHIP
Season: 161 IP, 153 K, 10 W, 3.63 ERA, 1.11 WHIP
It has been an up-and-down season for Kirby, whose monthly ERAs from April to August are as follows: 4.18, 4.00, 1.74, 2.21, 6.84. As a Kirby manager in several leagues, I was befuddled to see such an ugly August with the following matchups: vs DET, at DET, at PIT, vs SF, and at LAA. Not a single one of those teams, in terms of wRC+, has been above average offensively in the last month or for the entire season!
The long ball has done Kirby in as of late, with nine homers allowed during this stretch. Nick’s roundups indicate that Kirby, the epitome of a strike thrower, is leaving too many fastballs in the zone and struggling to locate his slider.
Verdict: Slight Panic. Kirby is still a must-start, but I’m not putting him in my lineup as confidently as I was a few weeks ago. His poor results lately are mostly supported by the underlying numbers, and I’m concerned that they came against such poor competition. By the time you’re reading this, he will have hopefully righted the ship with a strong start in Oakland. I would be nervous about his two-step next week against the Padres and Rangers if both starts weren’t in T-Mobile Park, where Kirby has a career 2.95 ERA and 2.73 FIP compared to a 3.94 ERA and 3.77 FIP on the road.
Brandon Pfaadt, SP, Arizona Diamondbacks
Since 8/4 (five starts): 29 IP, 37 K, 4 W, 5.90 ERA, 1.48 WHIP
Season: 160.1 IP, 155 K, 9 W, 4.32 ERA, 1.19 WHIP
Pfaadt has hit a rough patch lately, allowing three or more earned runs in each of his last four starts. Despite that, he’s still recorded wins in four of his last five starts because the Diamondbacks’ offense has been unstoppable. Most of Pfaadt’s struggles come against lefties; he’s posted a .334 wOBA and 12.3 K-BB% against southpaws this year while righties have scuffled to a .268 wOBA with a 24.2% K-BB%. Most of this has to do with Pfaadt’s primary secondary pitch being his sweeper, an offering that is quickly becoming notorious for wide platoon splits.
With a 4.38 ERA, Pfaadt has underperformed his ERA estimators (3.48 FIP, 3.64 xFIP, 3.73 SIERA) all season. This has been taken to the extreme during this five-start stretch, as his 5.90 ERA comes with a .407 BABIP, 3.15 FIP, and 3.03 xFIP. Pfaadt ranks third among qualified pitchers in the difference between ERA and FIP, indicating that he has been one of the league’s unluckiest starters this season.
Verdict: Patience. While my concerns about Pfaddt’s ability to get lefties out remain, he hasn’t done anything in this stretch for me to change my opinion of him. He’s posted a 37:5 K:BB in those five starts and PLVs of at least 5.14 each time out. He has a couple of tough matchups (at Houston, vs. Milwaukee) on the horizon, but I expect him to continue to be a great source of Ks and wins with some ratio risk. I would only sit him in shallow leagues where you don’t need (or don’t have) wins and are protecting ratios.
Logan O’Hoppe, C, Los Angeles Angels
Since 8/4: .098/.169/.183 (-3 wRC+), 5 R, 2 HR, 5 RBI, 0 SB
Season: .242/.300/.409 (98 wRC+), 53 R, 18 HR, 51 RBI, 2 SB
With a -3 wRC+, O’Hoppe has easily been the worst-qualified hitter in the past month. Only he and Lenyn Sosa (14) have a wRC+ below 40 since August 4. The fact that the season-long line for O’Hoppe remains roughly league-average despite this abysmal stretch tells us just how solid he was for the first four months of the season, providing stable power production for managers at the thinnest position in our game.
Those contributions have almost completely eroded in recent weeks. O’Hoppe sports a strikeout rate of 46.1% since 8/4 and has struck out multiple times in 13 of 23 games during that span! O’Hoppe has been expanding the zone all season with a 36.6% O-Swing% (14th percentile), and he has continued to do so during this slump with a chase rate of 38.4%. Pitchers have picked up on this tendency and continued to feed O’Hoppe pitches outside the strike zone. His season-long Zone% of 42.6% ranks in the 7th percentile, and in the last month, this rate has fallen to 40.3%. Only 15 out of 301 hitters with at least 50 PA in the last month have seen fewer pitches in the zone than O’Hoppe. When a hitter chases often and struggles to make contact outside of the zone, a boatload of strikeouts is often the result.
Verdict: Panic. Pitchers might have solved O’Hoppe, at least temporarily. His falloff has coincided with the late-season doldrums that we have come to expect from the Angels. They have been one of the worst offenses in baseball in the last month, ranking 3rd-worst in wRC+ (80) and runs per game (3.33). O’Hoppe remains a threat to hit the occasional long ball, but his contact skills are so poor that he is almost guaranteed to hurt you in every other category given the Halos’ weak lineup. I would be comfortable cutting him in any one-catcher format. I’m currently on a bye in a 12-team league where I have O’Hoppe and am considering replacing him with Connor Wong or Ryan Jeffers. It’s also not a bad idea to swap O’Hoppe for a pitcher with some weak upcoming matchups if you’re comfortable not having a backstop.