2015 Fantasy Baseball Player Profile: Phil Hughes

Phil Hughes has had success at the big league level, including a K/BB ratio in 2014 that was the best in the history of baseball (I know, right?). Hughes was also an elite prospect moving through the minor leagues. Alas, his path to success has been up and down, troublesome at other points, an extremely hard to predict from season to season. Can you expect Hughes to match the success he posted in his first year with the Twins, or should you be pumping the breaks a wee bit on the Twins' righty?

THE MINORS

Being that Hughes has pitched for eight years in the big leagues and won 16 games three times, I probably don't need to go year-by-year with his minor league game. Instead, I'll just list his totals. 

Note in 2007 Baseball America ranked him as the 4th best prospect in baseball while Baseball Prospectus had him ranked second. 

TOTALS: 32-8, 2.35 ERA, 0.93 WHIP, 10.1 K/9, 4.53 K/BB ratio over 344 innings. 

THE MAJORS

2007: Went 5-3 for the Yankees with a 4.46 ERA, 1.28 WHIP and 7.18 K/9. He also had a 2.00 K/BB ratio. 

2008: Made eight starts without a win. Lost four games with a 6.62 ERA, 1.71 WHIP and 1.53 K/BB ratio.

2009: Made only seven starts but 44 appearances out of the bullpen led to success. Posted an 8-3 record with a 3.03 ERA, 1.12 WHIP and better than 10 strikeouts per nine innings.

2010: Returned to starting and won a career best 18 games against eight loses. Posted a 4.19 ERA, 1.25 WHIP and 2.52 K/BB ratio over 176.1 innings.

2011: Another year of regression. Hughes made 14 starts out of 17 appearances going 5-5 with a 5.79 ERA, 1.49 WHIP and saw his K/9 mark fall to an unsightly 5.67 dropping his K/BB ratio to 1.74.

2012: Literally doubled his '11 K/BB ratio at 3.59 as he won 16 games with a 4.23 ERA and 1.26 WHIP over 191.1 innings and 32 starts. 

2013: His last year in New York and more struggles. Made 30 appearances but only won four of 18 decisions while being saddled with a 5.19 ERA and 1.46 WHIP in 145.2 innings of action. 

2014: Won 16 games in his first season with the Twins posting a 3.52 ERA, his best as a starter, an a 1.13 WHIP, again his best as a starter. Thanks can be directly tied to a 11.63 K/BB ratio that just so happens to be the best in the history of baseball for a fella who threw at least 162 innings (he tossed a career-high 209.2 innings).
 

THE SKILLS

The best ever. 

That was Phil flippin' Hughes in 2015.

Hughes walked a total of 16 batters in 209.2 innings last season. The other two seasons in which he pitched 175 innings he walked 58 and 46 batters. He simply didn't walk anyone though last season. As a result, Hughes posted a K/BB ratio of 11.63 --- the best ever (Bret Saberhagen held the old record at 11.00 in 1994). This from a guy who entered 2014 with a K/BB ratio of 2.68. HE WAS MORE THAN FOUR TIMES BETTER THAN HIS CAREER AVERAGE IN 2014. That's impossible. In his previous seven seasons he'd only had two seasons with a mark over 2.90. It makes no sense. It won't be repeated. The question is, how much of that growth will he give back in 2015?

PITCH TYPE IS THE KEY?

Hughes threw his fastball 92 mph last year.
Same as always.

Hughes threw his fastball 65 percent of the time last year.
He throws it 64 percent of the time overall.

He virtually stopped throwing his changeup but had only been throwing it five percent of the time for his career before, so it wasn't a huge change.

Hughes also abandoned his slider in favor of the cutter. They are very similar pitches in one respect - they are "hard" off-speed pitches - and that was the only significant change he made to his pitch type in '14. Note that his slider velocity was 81 mph and he pumped in the cutter last year at 88.5 mph. In essence, Hughes threw a variation of his fastball on 85 percent of his pitches in 2014, something he had never done before at that rate. 

For his career Hughes has allowed a 21 percent line drive rate, a bit about the leave average. The mark has been over 22.5 percent the last two seasons including a six year high last season at 23.2 percent.

Hughes is a fly ball hurler, always has been. Fewer fly balls end up as hits than grounders or liners, but they also end up in the seats and lead to the big innings that can cause issues, especially to ERA. From 2010 to 2013 Hughes allowed at least a homer per nine innings with 2012-13 resulting in marks of 1.65 and 1.48 per nine. That's simply horrendous work.

In 2014, his first season out of New York, he cut that mark by more than 50 percent all the way down to 0.69. Can obviously use the ballpark as part of the reason for that as the 2014 Park Factors report that New York was the worst park in baseball for homers while the Twins home park was 14th. But it was more than that. Hughes also changed in terms of the batted ball rates, thanks in no small part to throwing all those fastballs that I noted above. From 2011-13 Hughes induced a ground ball rate of about 32 percent. Last season he posted his highest mark since 2007 as he induced a 36.5 percent ground ball rate. As noted above, those extra grounders didn't come as a result of less liners. He allowed more line drives than at any point in seven years. The extra grounders came at the expense of the fly ball. After four seasons (2010-13) with a fly ball rate of 47 percent he permitted just 40 percent of batted balls to be fly balls in 2014. So let me bullet point this.

He threw more fastballs than ever.
He allowed more liners than usual.
He generated more grounders than usual.
He allowed way fewer fly balls than usual.

Add to all of that a 6.2 percent HR/F ratio and you have the key to his 2014 success. At the same time, Hughes had allowed a HR/F ratio of at least 11 percent in both 2012 and 2013 and the mark was 10 percent for his career prior to last season. Can he keep up career best rates in grounders, fly balls and HR/F in 2015?

One outcome of throwing more fastball was a higher than expected BABIP of .324. Note though that he also posted a .324 mark in 2013 and that for a guy with a career .300 mark a .324 total for a season is far from outlandish. 

CONCLUSION

People always overestimated Phil Hughes because he had an NY on his ball cap. He's also been an extremely frustrating arm the last five years alternating solid work with downright crap. Perhaps he's turned a corner? Am I sold that he can repeat last years effort? Hell no. The metrics support his overall effort, in fact xFIP (3.18) and SIERA (3.17) agree that his 3.52 ERA last season might have actually been too high. Point by point though here are my concerns.

(1) Can merely throwing more fastballs and cutters make this much of a difference? If it was that easy...

(2) I simply can't explain how a guy who had walked 2.82 batters per nine for seven years suddenly walks 0.69 per nine. Pitch style change or not, that's not a rate he will be able to sustain. Bank on that. The issue is does his new pitching repertoire allow him to post a mark of 1.50, 2.00 or does he revert back to an even higher number? 

(3) Can he maintain a 7.98 K/9 mark? Not only is that above his career mark that was 7.56 before '14, but it's also a rate he last saw back in 2009.

(4) Can his new approach, and new ballpark, literally lead to him being able to cut his homer rate in half and sustain that?

(5) Will he be able to maintain career best marks in grounders and fly balls, even as he allows more line drive than ever before?

Everything changed based on throwing the cutter more. I for one don't buy full into the effort Hughes posted last season and I'm keenly interested in what he does for a follow up. Maybe after seven years of me trying to tell people to avoid the hype I might be able to quit that in 2015? No, I'll still tell people to avoid hyperbole with Hughes, but I'm certainly a bigger fan now than I was 12 months ago.

10 team lg: I'm not interested in Hughes as a target. If someone else gets him it won't cause me to shed a tear. If he ends up on my team, fine. He's no ace though. Be careful you don't view has anything more than an SP5 type in this format. 

12 team lg: Still not a target. Still an SP4/5 type. I'm stubborn.

15 team lg: If only I knew that his control would be as pinpoint yet again. Since I don't, Hughes is going to be an arm that someone else almost certainly grabs before I'm personally willing to take the plunge. If he falls as a depth arm to me, alright. But again, there's not enough to support making him an SP2 in this format. Even as an SP3... should I say it again? I'm nervous in that scenario. 

AL-only: Finally a spot I'm willing to look more closely at Hughes. Still, don't reach, and note that only two in his career has he thrown 180-innings in a season, and that alone, performance aside, should make you weary of going all in.