The goal of this article is not to say that star pitchers are becoming bad without foreign substances. That's not true. Players like Gerrit Cole, Yu Darvish, and others were too good in the first place to suddenly be useless or terrible (unlike a certain Red Sox starting pitcher!). However, ever since the new policy was announced on June 15 and implemented on June 21, they have started to play significantly worse, worrying fantasy managers about their production for the rest of the season. So, what should fantasy managers do with these pitchers, and how concerned should you be?
Gerrit Cole- The consensus top-10 pick has been great- for most of this year. The All-Star is 8-4 with a 3.22 ERA and an 0.962 WHIP (that's less than one baserunner allowed per inning) with only 1.7 walks per nine innings. He's clearly still good. The problem is that he's been bad over the past month. In June, Cole had a 4.65 ERA, and he gave up more earned runs (16) than in the first two months combined. More specifically, in his last three starts, he's given up eleven runs in 16.1 innings, including a start yesterday where he couldn't get out of the fourth inning. Except for the fact that he's allowing a lot of hard contact, the peripherals all look good, but that's overall, including his Cy Young-quality April and May. In terms of spin rate, Cole has had a huge drop since the foreign substance policy started. Until June 15, Cole was averaging 2549 RPMs (rotations per minute) on his four-seam fastball. Since then, in those three bad starts, he's averaged only 2353 RPMs, down almost 200! That makes a big difference. The same applies to his other pitches:
Slider before: 2701 RPMs
Slider after: 2494 RPMs (-207)
Changeup before: 1752 RPMs
Changeup after: 1703 RPMs (-49)
Knuckle Curve before: 2832 RPMs
Knuckle Curve after: 2717 RPMs (-115)
Sinker before: 2486 RPMs
Sinker after: 2314 RPMs (-172)
(Note: The reason why some of these pitches have more drastic changes than others is because all pitches have different amounts of spin and ways that they are spun, so it just shows that the foreign substances Cole was clearly using helped some pitches more than others.)
Level of concern: Very worried. He's still in the top 10 starting pitchers (points leagues) for now, but I don't expect him to stay there, or anywhere relatively close. I'd say he'll probably end the season in the 30-40 range at this point. Those spin rates are substantially lower than they were before, which is very concerning for Cole owners. And, for people who aren't sure that spin rate impacts the actual game, just look at the results! He's had a 6.06 ERA over his last three starts, and that's because he can't spin the ball as well as he could with foreign substances. Trade Cole now, for his value is only going to go down along with his spin rates.
Yu Darvish- A top-20 pick in drafts (he went shortly after Cole), Darvish has also had a good year for the most part. He was voted into the All-Star Game by the players along with Cole (but for the NL), and he deserves it. He has a 2.65 ERA with 10.9 K/9 and an 0.951 WHIP. However, like Cole, Darvish has had his share of struggles since mid-June. In four starts since June 15, he's 1-1 with a 3.91 ERA, including two starts where he gave up four runs. While this is obviously not that bad, and none of these starts have actually been worth negative fantasy points (in ESPN standard leagues), it's definitely disappointing for managers who own shares in Darvish since he has been so consistant up to this point. So, in order to see how much he's been impacted by the new rules, we need to look at the spin rate (this time, I'll just include the difference from before to after):
Four-Seam Fastball: -146 RPMs
Sinker: -229 RPMs
Splitter: -3 RPMs
Slider: -246 RPMs
Curveball: -204 RPMs
Knuckle Curve: -294 RPMs
Level of concern: Worried. He's lost more spin on his pitches than Cole, so that is pretty concerning. But, unlike Cole, Darvish has still been pitching decently and he's still been getting lots of strikeouts in his recent starts, which is encouraging. Don't expect Darvish to stay in the top-10 starting pitchers, but he should end up in the top-25 at a minimum. However, now is a good time to trade him because if his lower spin rates start to impact his starts more, that will be bad for his value (so his value is likely at its peak now).
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