Nick Martinez (SP - TB) - Martinez moved to 10-2 on the season by throwing 6 shutout innings against the Guardians on Saturday, scattering 4 singles and striking out 5 without walking a man. Martinez is showing some of the best control in baseball this season, and he's allowing his typically very low exit velocity as well, despite an equally low GB rate. He doesn't get many swings and misses, but he's obviously fooling hitters, because here in his 9th big-league season he has never allowed a BABIP above .293 (which was the major league average last season). Ever since he came back from Japan he has consistently outperformed the advanced ERA metrics, so there's obviously something that he does that can't be caught statistically. Not walking people and not allowing hard contact seems like a prescription for success to me....this was Martinez's 8th straight start allowing 3 ER or fewer, incidentally. He has the 7th lowest ERA in MLB, he's tied for 8th in W, and he's in the top-30 in WHIP. I understand that he appears below average by xFIP, xERA, and SIERA, but at some point we have to acknowledge that these measures are missing something with Martinez.
Andre Pallante (SP - STL) - Pallante moved to 11-6 on the year with 7 shutout innings against the Reds on Saturday. The 27 year old allowed 2 singles and a walk, striking out 8 and generating 15 swinging strikes on 90 pitches. He's kept the massive GB rate intact while improving his control significantly this season, rendering the lack of K's a bit less important in the process. For one of the rare times, the advanced ERA metrics disagree on Pallante: xFIP pegs him as roughly average, SIERA thinks he's below average, while xERA thinks he's quite a bit better than average. I'm inclined to go with the xFIP here, as I think Pallante is around a 4.00 ERA sort of a guy. I've never loved the low-K profile, but it can work with good control and a 50+% GB rate, both of which Pallante apparently now has. For me he's a solid back-end starter in all formats, albeit one with a high floor and a relatively low ceiling.
Robbie Ray (SP - SF) - It was a little bit more dominant of an outing for Ray on Saturday, as he shut the Angels out for 6 innings on 6 hits and 2 walks with 5 K's (9 swinging strikes on 80 pitches) to move to 9-6 on the year. Still, despite that 7th straight start allowing 3 ER or fewer, everything is trending the wrong way for the 34 year old this year. The velocity, control, GB rate, and swinging strike rate are all worse this season, and the advanced ERA metrics all point to a pitcher that "deserves" an ERA in the high 4.00's, a far cry from the 3.16 that he's posting after his most recent start. It's probably not a great sign when a famous fastball/slider SP has his two new pitches (sinker and change) as his most effective ones at age 34. He's absolutely a sell right now for me....the bat-missing just hasn't been the same since the UCL injury 3+ years ago.
Brandon Young (SP - BAL) - Young was very solid again on Saturday, this time holding the Braves to 1 run on 4 hits over 6 1/3 innings, walking 2 and fanning 6. He's only allowed more than 3 runs twice in 17 starts this season, even though the peripherals don't paint quite as cheery a picture. He's shown good control in the minors plus the ability to miss bats, but all of that hasn't quite translated to the big-league level through his first 29 starts. The velocity is up a bit this year as well....I'm slowly talking myself into Young possibly being a reliable 4th starter. He's really only had one blowup this season, and he was saved in that one by 6 unearned runs, and his next two starts are against bottom-half offenses in Philly (strange to say that but it's been true) and the Angels. There are far worse options out there than Young right now.
Kyle Tucker (OF - LAD) - Tucker homered for the second straight game, giving him 9 for the season now as he tries to recover the form that he seems to have left in Houston two years ago. He's been notably less patient this year and his contact rate has suffered for it, but he's also had some poor fortune, as a career-high LD rate is somehow yielding a career-low AVG to this point. Saturday's HR was his hardest-hit ball of the year at just 107.7, and he hasn't hit a ball over 110 (roughly the average MLB player's max exit velo) since 2023. He isn't running much at all this year either, and in fact he has the 3rd-lowest sprint speed of anyone on the Dodgers, besting only Freeman and Rojas. His bat speed is off quite a bit from the past two seasons as well, and he's posting the lowest flyball rate of his career. As Jeremy mentioned yesterday, it's tough to see a player like Tucker just falling off a cliff at 28-29, but that's exactly what I'm seeing: a player that's swinging more often at worse pitches with less authority, and he's also running less and having a bit of bad luck to boot. Hopefully we're seeing the start of a resurgence here with homers on back-to-back days, but I remain skeptical.
