McHugh's xFIP has been more accurate at estimating his next year's ERA than ERA. XFIP is generally better in small samples. McHugh's xFIP last year was 4.66. It is a small sample size so I would not expect his ERA to jump all the way to 4.66, but I would not say 2017 was his best since 2014.
I don't think there are many teams in baseball that run through 10-12 starting pitchers a year. Even last year, with the disastrous mess of having 4 SPs on the DL at the same time, a guy get suspended for roids, and trading for Verlander, we used 10 total starters, and 1 of those was for 1 game. 146 games were started by 7 games, that didn't include Verlander. No team should be building depth of 10 SPs at the expense of any other part of their team.
I think the reality of major league baseball may be changing. We may be close to seeing what we see in the NBA. Purposely holding guys out here and there to save up for the post season if you feel confident you will make it to the post season.
Small correction, we used 11 starters (Verlander, Keuchel, Lmj, McHugh, Fiers, Peacock, Martes, Musgrove, Paulino, Morton, and Diaz). Like you said Diaz was only for 1 game and that was a bullpen game, so I wouldn't count him. That still leaves 10.
I don't think it's "at the expense of other parts of the team" when many of the 10-12 can function well out of the pen.
So McHugh added a slider last year, and it was good. This year, it is sweeping like Peacock's slider, and it has significantly more dive than than Peacock's slider. So far, he's thrown it 29 times and so far not given up a hit. It has been put in play 3 times. Best contact against it this season was drilled 83 mph off the bat for a lazy fly to Marisnick. He's getting an okay whiff rate of about 20% so far, but for the most part batters are praying it isn't a strike early in the count. So far, letting McHugh get ahead has not worked for the batters. I expect the whiff rate on the slider will go up when batters start swing more early in the count against McHugh. Not sure what this means long term. It makes him much more interesting to me than he was at the start of the year. He used the cutter as a way for him to throw ball in the zone to get early strikes or weak contact. This slider been significantly better at getting McHugh into pitcher counts so far. I expect he's moving up the high leverage reliever ladder.
I love seeing McHugh succeed and hope he gets to stay on the team. He just seems like a "good guy" and he went through all the losing during the rebuild and the injuries last year. I'd love for him to be able to carve out an important role with this year's team and be a significant piece of the puzzle.
One way or another, he will be an important piece for this team this year...though odds are decent it will be in bringing back something of value. He's the 6th starter so he's 1st in line should there be an injury (relatively likely that one of Keuchel and McCullers will go to the DL at some point). I think Peacock is making the more permanent move to the pen.
I had thought this earlier this year when he was just start injury protection, but right now he's also dominant in the pen. If his slider keeps moving like it is, he should remain effective in the pen. We'll know closer to the deadline if he is or isn't just having a few good weeks with the slider movement (i.e., it is moving like a cross between Kluber's and Peacock's right now). This is the thing. If he's only getting good movement because his arm is fresh, we should see some change once Astros need to use relievers more frequently. Peacock's movement was not nearly as good in second half and playoffs as it was early last year. Devenski, Peacock (minus a bad outing), Harris, Rondon, and McHugh are off to the best bullpen outings so far and should be splitting the high leverage situations. Smith's velocity looks down and that is scary. Sipp is Sipp (even last year when he also went by Liriano). Giles...the run prevention results are good, but his slider is more sweeping this year (but not close to Peacock's though) instead of his downward movement that got him Ks. I doubt Giles can keep putting up zeros on the scoreboard without getting whiffs on his slider because that is the only thing he is good at.
Didn't his K rate go down last year, with all other metrics of success improving from 2016? I think Giles can get outs with better fastball location to set up whatever slider he has. When he doesn't have fastball location, the slider is a useless pitch (even if its the good downward one).
There are times he has fastball location? Giles's K rate was at normal career levels last year after a small spike the year before. This year, he is making Keuchel look like a genetically engineered strikeout machine built with DNA from Nolan Ryan, Cy Young, and Greg Maddux.
Only 2 K's over his last 6 outings . His BABIP over that stretch is .000, yes 0. Not to mention a few nail biter near HR's. He got one in his last appearance, maybe it's a start. He needs to miss bats.
FIFY. I think Peacock will still be used as a starter at some point as well. There are just going to be stretches, hopefully limited, where we may be out two aces and just have to go with a full house rather than four aces.
