Rather than assume Quintana sucks now and we should count that against him.. I think he knows teams want him but can't pay the full price. He is sucking on purpose (also helping the CWS tank and rebuild) while also lowering his cost so that another team could get him.
That is ridiculous. I hope you don't honestly believe that. Trade speculation could be affecting him, but he would not be intentionally struggling. I wouldn't be surprised to see him post a poor year by his standards. I've said before that I think a lot of people are going to be disappointed by him because they want a true #1 type pitcher and I think he is going to be more of a #3 in an ideal rotation. That said, he is a very good pitcher and cheap financially. I just don't want don't want to give up Martes & Tucker, especially adding parts to that. I still think he ends up with the Yankees assuming they continue to play well the next 2 months.
Those three starts look worse when taking into account peripherals suggested he probably wasn't as good as his ERA showed in 2016. Not that he's not a great pitcher, but been hearing he was no longer viewed as a Top 10 pitcher even before those three starts.
So did he pitch reasonably well in his second start in order to not have rampant speculation that he was intentionally sucking?
That certainly could be true. I just don't think his value is much different today than it was 2 weeks ago.
Shouldn't impact how GMs view him much. Considering how fans viewed him 2 weeks ago and use ERA primarily, fans should be changing their perspective of him as he's well on his way to having his 3rd 5+ ERA month out of his last 5.
I don't know how relevant that is. He had 2 months of ERAs above 5 last year - and 4 months in the 1's and 2's. He had 2 bad months the previous year too (and an ERA above 6 in April). That kind of month to month variability is generally true of most pitchers, good or bad. At the end of the day, he seems to universally produce similar numbers at the end of each year - last year was his best overall in terms of BAA and WHIP. Maybe this will be a crappier season for him, but looking at his past numbers, he's about as consistent a pitcher as I could imagine in his first 4 full years. Everything from innings pitched to Ks to ERA are all in an incredibly narrow range.
Look at fly balls, groundballs, and homers. Hitters where getting balls in the air a lot more against him. He mitigited the damage by giving up solo homers and pop ups last season. I'm not saying he's a bad pitcher, (actually said he was still great 2 or 3 posts ago), but seeing him as the same pitcher (3.30 ERA) is flawed. ERA has huge variability from year to year for most pitchers. Three years ago, he had a fluky year of allowing a ton of base runners to score inflating his ERA to 3.30 (lowest LOB of his career by far). Last year, he probably should have given up closer to a 3.60 ERA with his lower groundball number. From today to a year back, his ERA is 3.54 or 3.47 all the way back to start of last year. Projections had his ERA at 3.70-3.80 prior to the season which would seem crazy if you thought his true talent level was his 3.20 ERA of last year or his consistent 3.30 ERA of last three years. If you look at FIP and xFIP, you see a guy, while still great getting slightly worse from three years. He does mitigate a lot of contact so I would not expect his ERA to match his xFIP, but it should more or less follow the pattern of xFIP at about 0.3 to 0.4 less.
Here are rolling averages 17 game (half a season) of ERA, xFIP, and GB% per start. The ERA and xFIP numbers are inflated as I'm using per start for simplicity instead of per inning (i.e. less innings per bad start equals higher than actual average ERA). It shouldn't affect trends greatly. He could turn it around and pitch like an ace again but right now, he's been looking more like a great pitcher (and not even great for last 9 starts or so) than an ace for almost 5 months of baseball.
0-4 with a 6 era. I am so glad we did not trade for this blown out dud. Dude was overused and has been declining for months now. He was damaged goods from the start.
I expect he'll rebound to being a great pitcher, but he's likely not an ace as I expect his dominant runs will continue to be shorter and less frequent as they have been over last calendar year. As such, it will likely still take 1 very good prospect with other good prospects....though not the 2-3 very good prospects CWS wanted in offseason. That is unless Quintana has a huge dominant run between now and deadline to show last calendar year was a fluke.
Interesting article on espn discussing the potential for a buyers pitching market at this year's deadline. Would-be contenders who have struggled out of the gate - Jays, Royals, Mets, possibly Pirates and Twins - may end up shopping their rotation instead of adding to it. Here is a list of ToR (or borderline ToR) guys who might be available in addition to Quintana: Ervin Santana Zack Greinke Gerrit Cole Matt Harvey Sonny Gray Garrett Richards Chris Archer Felix Hernandez Justin Verlander Plus a host of middle and back of the rotation arms. Of course at most only a handful of those guys will actually be traded, but it's a longer list than what was available this offseason. Maybe that was a factor in Luhnow's decision to stand pat.
Chris Archer please. I don't know what exactly it is, but something about that guy screams "Astro" to me.
