Wade Miley, Seattle Mariners - Wade Miley's incredibly bad season continued Tuesday with a 3.2 inning outing where he allowed 13 baserunners but managed to allow just three runs. His 76.9% LOB rate for the game was WELL above his 42.3% strand rate that he had entering the game. While Miley has a nice strikeout rate but that's about all he's valuable for right now. The only chance he has at becoming anything nowadays is that his hard contact rate is down for the second straight season. His only pitch that rates as even a league average pitch is his changeup.
Carlos Carrasco, Cleveland Indians - Carrasco dominated for the second straight game with 6.1 innings of one run ball. He struggled a bit with his command walking three in the gae but he did fan five batters running his total to 18 in 19.1 innings on the season. The lone run he allowed was on a solo homerun to Kyle Seager, which has been a bit of a problem for the righty this far in the season. For his career he owns a 12.1% HR/FB rate but so far this year he's allowing homers on 22% of his fly balls. What could be slightly concerning with that number is that he's also allowing the most fly balls of his career, so not only his he giving up more fly balls than ever but more of those fly balls are leaving the yard too.
Henry Owens, Boston Red Sox - Joe Kelly left Tuesday's start with a shoulder impingement and personally I'm hoping this means that Henry Owens, who threw for Pawtucket on Monday, would be the one to get the call to the bigs if Kelly is forced to miss time. Sean O'Sullivan pitched today for the AAA team but he's not on the current 40 man roster so there would have to be some other accompanying move. If you like taking risks, Owens is worth an add as he was solid in his action last season going 4-and-4 with a modest 7.14 K/9. His command was a bit shaky last season, but through the minors he's routinely posted around a 4.00 BB/9 and he's currently walking five per nine in AAA. His changeup was his go to pitch in the majors last year with the offspeed offering being 5.1 runs above average according to Fangraphs' pitchfx. This is entirely speculation on my part for this callup, but it's not like Kelly has been good anyways so there's a chance that maybe this is all the front office needed to move forward with Owens in the rotation.
Yordano Ventura, Kansas City Royals - Ventura turned in a solid performance Tuesday but is still really struggling with his command walking three in five innings and running his total to 6.75 per nine on the year. He still managed to notch the win though which was his first of the season. He's still striking out more than a batter per inning and has his ERA under three at 2.81 thanks in part to a career high 84.1% strand rate and a career low 5.3% HR/FB rate. According to Brooks Baseball Ventura is locating the ball much lower in the zone as compared to his career rates, so that will help him out if he can continue to locate like he has been this year.
Mike Trout, Los Angeles Angels - Trout's slow start continued Tuesday with an 0-for-4 game with two more strikeouts raising his season total to 16 (26.7%). It's a little concerning to see his K% creeping back to to his 2014 levels after he was able to drop it down to 23% this last season. Either way these aren't the numbers that we saw in his first full season where he fanned only 19% of the time. Trout's pull percentage is up by nearly 10% compared to last year while his soft rate has jumped close to 20%. I'm not sure if that means he's trying to pull the ball so much that he's not hitting the ball to the opposite field like he has in the past. The only spot he's handling well (in terms of ISO) are pitching on the lower inside corner of the plate, and everywhere he's really struggling to drive the ball. Hold steady though, he's still Mike Trout at the end of the day.
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