There have been a good number of surprising starts lately and Nate Karns is at the forefront with his second straight 10+ K outing with a 5.0 IP, 2 ER, 5 Hits, 1 BBs, 12 Ks line against the Orioles. First of all, yes he's worth a that add in a 12-teamer as he gets the Twins next. But the question here is if the K upside is real. Well, as with all questions I want to see a change in approach, pitches, movement, etc. for me to consider it as a possibility, and guess what! There is one. Karns is throwing a TON more of his Knuckle-Curve, featuring the pitch over 40% in each of his last three starts (48.4% yesterday!) after featuring a 26.8% rate across his first four starts. With that 40% rate, Karns has a 15.06 K/9, 2.08 BB/9, 2.08 ERA, 2.02 FIP, 1.95 xFIP and other ungodly good stats (25% soft contact, with only 27.8% pull rate, only 14.3% line drives...). That Knuckle-Curve has jumped from a 13.3% whiff rate to a 27.0% thus far, as batters are chasing it nearly 50% out of the zone and making contact at 50.4%. Groundballs are way up on the pitch to 67.9%, and he's doing an excellent job of throwing it for a strike when he wants to, while teasing it off the plate for a whiff as well. This ride is for real.
Let’s see how every other SP did yesterday:
It seems like every article suggests using a pitcher against the Twins. I’m not saying Karns won’t shut them down, but they have performed pretty okay against righties this year.
That’s fair, I’d say I generally group team offenses into “avoid” or “safe” (sometimes in the middle, of course, but not as common). I consider Twins as a “safe” option, thus they get thrown in with the rest of them.
Nick–thanks for all the work you do here.
Would you see Benintendi (me) for Cueto (other guy) as a fair trade assuming I could use some support on my pitching staff? If it’s relevant, I’d be replacing Benintendi’s ABs with Piscotty and Bregman (via the utility spot).
I’d make that deal for Cueto.
Karns or JC Ramirez
Karns.
“A 3.37 FIP isn’t TERRIBLE”…LOL that’s the 23rd best FIP in baseball. Yeah…I’d say that “isn’t terrible”….
That was more in line with the xFIP than the FIP, but true, I should have made that clearer.
Not to mention, the italics is supposed to highlight that the tone of it is saying that it’s good in contrast with my gut saying that I don’t want to endorse Walker.
For sure, yeah definitely see what youre saying. Just jumped out at me because I had recently looked up FIPs and was surprised how good Taijuans was!