Long live the King (sorta)

Many a fantasy owner’s dreams are shattered by elevated expectations and taking on an inappropriate level of risk for the amount of reward. King Felix probably falls into this category, which unfortunately also includes me. Felix has the stuff that might be better than 98% of the pitchers in the majors. The question is whether or not he will put it together.

After his last start I want to see what’s different from his good start from his bad starts based on the graphs by Dan Brooks at Brooksbaseball.net.

First we’ll break down his good start from 5/31 (click on the image to zoom in)

To start off with look at how tight his release point is. It is very centralized around -2 horizontal and 6 vertical. Having this centralized allows the pitcher to keep from getting injured. Repeatable mechanics is key for injury prevention. Repeatable mechanics is also key in keeping the hitters from getting an advantage. Throwing the ball from the same arm slot regardless of pitch doesn’t allow the hitter to get a cheating glance at the grip.

Next we’ll look at the strike zone plot. Notice how there is absolutely no pitches dead center of the zone. There are pitches that are plenty in the zone but never any that are dead center. He kept his fastball low and inside to right handed batters and mixing that with the amount of movement on his fastball does not allow the hitters to hit a straight ball.

Let’s compare these to one of the bad starts. This one is on 5/3/08 against the Yankees.

He basically had no control over any pitch that day. All of pitches ended up as a hittable pitch that day. Many fastballs were in the hitter’s zone down the middle so to speak. His movement on a change-up and a fastball were pretty much exactly the same. It was just at a different (slower) speed. Compare that to the good start where every pitch has a certain amount of movement and they didn’t really overlap. Also look at his release point. It is much more spread out giving the hitters a decent look at it right away. To good hitters, this is basically telling them what pitch is coming and saying go ahead and hit it. Finally, the vertical break to speed is also giving away signs that he wasn’t going to have much luck. His slider and his change broke the same amount for the speed that was thrown. So basically his change was his slider and vice versa.

So now that the technical mumbo jumbo is out of the way, what does this mean to you, the fantasy owner. I think it’s one of those cases where what you see is what you get for the next few years. He’s going to be a #2 Starter for most teams here on out and you have to plan accordingly. I think that there is nothing here to say he is injured because otherwise his plots would be deteriorating slowly, or quickly, depending on the situation. He will have his amazing games but he will also have the blow ups. There is a good possibility that as he gets more innings under his belt, he will improve as a pitcher and not just be a thrower.