This post is unfortunately not just an opinion or update on teams but just a re-hash of an article I read on Bleacher Report on the Houston Astros pitcher Dallas Keuchel. Now I play in plenty of fantasy baseball leagues so I noticed pretty quickly that Keuchel was putting together some pretty good numbers and as such he's managed to put himself a top the Astros rotation and for good reason. However I never really considered him an 'Ace' level pitcher, now thats because when you look at his outings he's not usually striking out more than 5-7 batters, from fan graphs you can see he's more of a ground ball pitcher and well ……he's playing for the Astros. Now those are all really just stereotypical things because we all relate ace starting pitchers with those that have great control and can pound the strike zone to end the year with upwards of 200+ strikeouts. Now I couldn't be more wrong about Keuchel being an ace and here's why.
First off we look at his ERA, now that is at a surreal 2.38, and the even weirder thing is that the previous season had him post a 5.15 ERA. Now as you well know one of the first ways to check if a pitchers ERA is for real or not is to check their FIP and xFIP, and in this case Keuchel has a FIP of 2.82 and an xFIP of 2.80. Thats right the man is sporting field independent pitching stats only half a run higher than his ERA, so in short this is one indication that his performance is far from a fluke. Additionally we have his strikeout rate, which as I said, is about average at about 7.44 K/9 however to contrast this he has a 1.79 BB/9, so he's striking out an average number, allowing VERY few walks and then to top it off he has a ground ball percentage of 65.6%, and thats HUGE. Though the next question is how the hell he can keep that % high over the year because we see high GB% all the time and they all inevitably falter.
So how does he maintain the strikeouts and ground balls, well thats the work of his slider, which he gets the majority of his strikeouts from, but additionally he has the second highest swing and miss % (52.2) on his slider in the majors second only to Clayton Kershaw (57.9), thats right KERSHAW. Now saying his slider isn't really an explanation as to why it works so here is a little more, Chris Sale throws a cutter that for one is hard to hit because of his funky arm action, however it also has approximately 3.82 inches of horizontal movement making it harder for a hitter to lock onto and hit. Now if we then look at Keuchel's slider you'd find out that it in fact has 5.23 inches of horizontal movement, you heard me right 5.23 inches thats nearly a 6 inch sub sandwich! Hell thats about 1/3 of the length of a bat or so.
Now outside of his slider Keuchel also has a sinker that happens to be responsible for 81% of his ground balls and if you watch him throw it in a game you notice just how low to the ground it stays and that in itself makes the ridiculous GB% make a whole lot more sense. Finally rounding out his main pitches are his cutter and his change up, now the cutter isn't as good as the previously mentioned pitches but given how much movement he can get on his pitches its a good weapon to have. Finally his change up has batters a tad confused as well since batters are only hitting .208 on it.
All in all Dallas Keuchel is a force to be reckoned with and my god if the Astros manage to turn their prospects into a winning team in the next few years their pitching rotation with Keuchel at the front is going to be scary as all hell.
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