2017 MLB Draft Guide Player Profile: Rick Porcello

Rick Porcello

Age: 28 years old

Bats/Throws: R/R 

Height/Weight: 6’5”, 195 lbs

Position: Starting Pitcher

THE NUMBERS

THE SKILLS
 

In his eighth season, Rick Porcello finally became the pitcher who folks had been suggesting for years he could be. On his way to the Cy Young, Porcello set career-bests in wins (22), ERA (3.15), WHIP (1.01), strikeouts (189) and innings pitched (223). That’s pretty much the whole she-bang ain’t it?  What would you say if I told you he will not reach a single one of those numbers in 2017? What would you say to that?

Category-by-category.

WINS: Porcello had never won more than 15 games before. His first seven seasons he averaged 12.1 victories. Only 11 men have won 22 games in the 21^st century. The only won to win 22 in back-to-back seasons is Curt Schilling.

ERA: Porcello had never posted an ERA lower than 3.43 before 2016. Moreover, the mark was at least 3.96 in 6-of-7 seasons entering last year. Note that he also posted a 4.92 mark in 2015. His career mark is 4.20.

WHIP: Porcello owns a 1.31 career rate (the league average during his career is 1.33). His first seven seasons Porcello never posted a mark under 1.23.

Strikeouts: In his first seven seasons Porcello never struck out 150 batters a single time.

Innings: In seven seasons only once did Porcello throw 200-innings. In 5-of-7 seasons he didn’t even make it to 180-innings.

So how did Porcello best his career levels by such a massive amount in 2016? Was it simply maturation? Did he make a deal with the devil? I don’t know what he does in his free time but I will tell you that there is enough oddness going on here that it seems rather obvious to me that Porcello is in line for a big pull back in 2017. Let’s explore more fully.

When a guy sees his ERA drop by more than a full run from his career level you should be extremely curious. When you note that a guy drops his ERA a run and three quarters from the previous season your Spidey-senses should be in overdrive. Let me show this very simply.

So you’re going to toss aside eight years of data and just accept his 2016 mark? What if we did this...

That’s odd. It really doesn’t appear that he pitched appreciably different last year, does it?

Porcello set that career-best last season in strikeouts by a large margin. That was all about innings pitched though. Yes, he posted the second best K/9 rate of his career at 7.63. Still, the mark was lower than the 7.80 rate he posted in 2015. The strikeouts weren’t the really reason for his success.

Porcello had an 8.2 swinging strike rate last season. The mark was 8.5 in 2015. The mark for the last four seasons is 8.2 percent. Swinging strikes weren’t the reason for his success.

Porcello had a first pitch strike percentage last season of 64.2 percent. That was the second best mark of his career (64.6 percent in 2014). Throwing more first pitch strikes help, but I would hardly suggest that an increase of a few percentage points over his career level is the reason for her success.

Porcello walked a career best 1.29 batters per nine innings. That was 32 walks in 33 starts. That’s significant in a major way. It’s also not a sustainable pace. He’s always been sharp as a tack with the walks, just 2.04 per nine, but the mark had never been lower than 1.80 before and in 6-of-7 seasons entering last year the mark was 1.99 or higher. This speaks to his success last year, but is extremely unlikely to be repeated in 2017. It’s just too low a number.

The homer has never been an issue for Porcello. His career mark in the homer per nine category is 0.97. Last season the mark was 0.93. Keeping the ball in the yard wasn’t the cause for his success.

What about the batted ball?

Now we’re getting down to it.

Porcello owns a .307 career BABIP, pretty much a league average mark. Makes a ton of sense. His mark in 2016? Try on for size .269. A guy with his skills and track record could totally post a .269 mark. Once. He won’t be repeating that effort in 2017. Mind you the mark had never been lower than .277 and in 6-of-7 seasons heading into last year the mark was .298 or higher.

Porcello did help himself last year by lowering his line drive rate. The owner of a career rate of 20.2 percent he posted a mark of 18.9. Multiple issues with that number repeating moving forward. First, pitcher’s don’t have much control over line drive rates. Second, the number tends to regress to the league average rate of 20-21 percent (recall that Porcello was at 20.2 percent last season). He’s league average here and the odds are certainly stacked in favor of his 2017 mark being higher than his 2016 rate (the last time the mark was better than the 18.9 percent rate he posted last season was 2010).

This is where things start to really get interesting.

Long a ground ball putcher, Porcello excelled last season with the worst ground ball rate of his career, and it’s not close. Here are the marks in ground ball and fly ball percentages for every year of his career.
 

Porcello has not reached his career ground ball level in three years.
Porcello has not reached his career fly ball rate in two years.
Porcello hasn’t reached his career GB/FB ratio in three year.

Porcello has seen his ground ball rate recede each of the past three years. At the same time his fly ball rate has increased each of those three seasons.

Porcello had the best year of his career with the worst ground ball rate of his career.
Porcello had the best year of his career with the worst fly ball rate of his career.

Does that make sense to you because it doesn’t to me?

Back to SIERA, FIP and xFIP from above. Remember how all those measures suggested that Porcello really didn’t pitch much differently last season than he had previously? I should say that more clearly. It’s not that Porcello didn’t pitch differently last season because he actually did. Unfortunately for Porcello, the changes he enacted aren’t positive and don’t seem likely to create a repeat effort in 2017.

The only thing that Porcello did last season that was outstanding was the walk rate. The rest of his game, just there. Compare him to Mr. Average. Heck, I’ll compare him to two arms no one is pumped about for 2017.

A little up, a little down. Again, the only standout difference for Porcello is the K/BB ratio that is all about his walk rate. Looking at those measurements is there a difference between the three arms listed? Not really, and that should make you all kinds of nervous with Porcello in 2017.

CONCLUSION

Things happen that don’t make sense all the time. Another way to say it is that things occur on a daily, weekly, monthly or yearly basis that we have a hard time explaining. Whenever that occurs we sit down to assess what happened. We look for those features that are outstanding that might speak to what caused the differences. I’ve sat down and tried to do that with Porcello. As you’ve seen, I really can’t find an explanation to explain why his game went to a whole other effort last season. Let me be crystal clear with Porcello. HE WILL NOT REPEAT HIS 2017 EFFORT. Yes, I used all caps. Folks, he didn’t show any appreciable growth last season. None. That means he will regress. Period. With an ever increasing loss of grounders, and far from impressive strikeout totals, you should be expecting him to be no better than his 2014 self. That’s the best-case scenario in 2017.

10-Team Mixed: Honestly, I wouldn’t draft him in this league. No way in hell, not with the cost others will be willing to pay.

12-Team Mixed: I want him as my 5^th starter here. No possible chance he falls that far on draft day.

15-Team Mixed: He doesn’t have the profile I’m looking for. I’m certainly not going to reach on him with an eye toward a repeat meaning he’s at best and SP3 here, though I’m certainly hoping he’s my 4th starting pitcher. The love for his Cy Young award, and the name on his jersey, means someone out there will almost certainly be drafting him to be their SP2.

AL-Only League: The cost is too high. Period. Let someone else chase the past. Remember what I wrote about above He has no shot to repeat the wins, is extremely unlikely to match the innings pitched total, and in eight big league season his ratios were never even close to last year’s levels. In a league that goes this deep you cannot afford to over-invest on a starter who pitched over his head the previous season.

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Ray Flowers can be heard Monday/Tuesday and Thursday/Friday, 8 PM EDT, Wednesday 7 PM EDT on SiriusXM Fantasy Sports Radio (Sirius 210, XM 87). You can also hear Ray on Sunday nights at 9 PM EDT PM as well. Follow Ray’s work at Fantasy Alarm and on Twitter (@baseballguys).