Living on the edge: avoiding low zone-percentage pitchers in fantasy

Houston Astros SP Dallas Keuchel has become the poster boy for what can happen when a soft-throwing pitcher lives on the edge of the strike zone. Any factor that upsets the status quo can drive a drastic change in performance.

Opposing batters are no longer getting fooled into chasing pitches outside of the zone. That has forced Keuchel to throw more pitches inside the zone than he did in 2015, which isn't what you want to see from a man whose fastball now tops out at 88 mph.

Pitchers who throw a large percentage of pitches outside the zone perform a high-wire act every five days, living dangerously close to destruction. Knowing this information can help fantasy players in two ways: it can better inform pitcher adds/drops in season-long leagues and batter-stacking in daily fantasy. For this post, we'll look more at the pitcher valuation side.

Keuchel's decline has been written about to death, but little attention has been paid to his teammate Collin McHugh, a late-bloomer that finished eighth in Cy Young voting last season and fourth in Rookie of the Year voting in 2014. Pegged with a preseason ADP of 155, many had counted on McHugh taking another step forward, riding his big curveball to fantasy gold.

While McHugh hasn't been an elite strikeout option by any means, he has excelled at not issuing free passes to batters. His 2016 walk rate of 5.7 percent is the 29th lowest among 99 qualified starting pitchers this year. Even more impressive is that he has walked so few batters despite throwing 55.7 percent of his pitches outside of the zone, the 21st-highest mark in baseball.

Or is that impressive? If he's throwing more pitches outside the zone than all but 20 major league pitchers but isn't walking batters, that means that batters are swinging at his pitches and either striking out or making contact. As the following graph shows, McHugh has been quite hittable outside the zone since joining the Astros in 2014:

(Chart courtesy Brooks Baseball)

With opponents hitting him well outside the zone, McHugh has two options: throw the ball inside like a burnt offering to the Baseball Gods or aim outside the zone with enough movement to induce weak contact.

The league average for contact (Z-contact) on pitches thrown in the zone is 85.7 percent this season. McHugh's rate is even higher at 90.6 percent, and as that big red blob in the middle of the previous chart shows, throwing inside might be the precursor to McHugh having to find a new occupation.

Assuming there isn't a drastic change in McHugh's repertoire, approach or ability, the only option is to keep dancing on the edge of the zone, drawing weak contact. To that end, it's a terrible sign that his hard-hit rate has risen from 19.7 percent in 2014 to 21.3 percent last season, to a whopping 30.1 percent in 2016.

When we look at the leaderboard for lowest percentage of pitches thrown inside the zone, there are some names that jump out. James Shields ranks second with 39.2 percent. Francisco Liriano is third with 39.6. Other veterans in the top-10 include aces Cole Hamels (39.9, first) and Zack Greinke (42.2, seventh). And of course, Keuchel ranks sixth with 41.3 percent.

This isn't to say that a pitcher can't succeed while avoiding the zone; it just means that an eventual dropoff from key fantasy contributor to unplayable wreck is never far off. You can put a fork in the fantasy outlook for Shields and Liriano; Keuchel's relative youth and Cy Young peak earn him more leeway.

Hamels is the biggest name to watch. While his strikeouts per nine are still close to his career average and he can go to sleep content with a sparkling 2.79 ERA, there are signs that he might be the next pitcher to see a sudden, screeching end to fantasy relevance.

His walk rate jumped to 3.44 BB/9 this season, the highest rate of his career. His hard-hit percentage has gone above his career average for the first time in three years. His velocity is ever so slightly on the decline. Combined with a switch in home parks (and leagues) to the bandbox in Arlington and the Texas Rangers star could be close to imploding.

It's time to shop Hamels. His value is at a season high, and it wouldn't shock me if he became droppable for a playoff team down the stretch.

Meanwhile, don't count on McHugh turning his woes around. While he'll still twirl the occasional gem, his game has slipped in too many key areas to really count on him for consistent fantasy production. Coming eighth in Cy Young voting will likely stand as his career highlight. His deployment should be restricted to streaming and two-start weeks from here on out.