After a rough start to the season, Carlos Carrasco has already been labeled a bounce-back candidate by fantasy analysts due to his elevated BABIP. Eight starts in, it sits at .359, which is well above the expected level of .300 over an extended sample size.
In theory, over the course of the season Carrasco’s BABIP should normalize to about .300, which means a streak of good luck is in his future.
When you consider the rate at which Carrasco strikes hitters out, a low BABIP would likely lead to a truly dominant stretch.
There are two issues with the BABIP argument for Carrasco, however.
For starters, he has the Indians defense behind him.
While he isn’t penalized (directly) for their errors, their lack of range is most definitely a factor in BABIP. Through Sunday’s games, the Indians have allowed a league-worst BABIP of .343. Not surprisingly, they also rank 29th in DRS, 25th in UZR and dead last in OOZ.
In other words, if it’s not hit directly at an Indians fielder, they’re probably not making the play. This leads to a naturally inflated BABIP, which will not normalize at .300.
Dating back to the start of the 2014 season the Indians have allowed a BABIP of .317 (worst in baseball), so some decline in bad luck is likely to take place for Carrasco and the rest of the staff. But the dramatic fall back to .300 is unlikely occur.
The other issue for Carrasco is that he isn’t getting beat with bloop singles. He’s getting hit hard at a rate significantly higher than during his dominant run at the end of the 2014 season.
Carrasco currently has a well-hit average of .145 – only slightly above the .143 league average.
That isn’t necessarily a concern overall, but if we’re expecting anything close to his 2014 stretch run it won’t happen unless that number drops.
During his final 10 starts of 2014, Carrasco had a dominant well-hit average of .104 – the fifth best of all pitchers with at least 50 IP during that six-week span.
Along those same lines, Carrasco has never been the type of pitcher who induces a lot of softly-hit balls. Even during his dominant stretch run, his soft-hit average was .347 while the league average was .393.
It makes sense for a power pitcher like Carrasco to have a lower soft-hit average. You would expect sinker ballers and other pitches that rely more heavily on off-speed pitches to produce a higher number of soft-hit balls, but also a higher number of balls in play overall.
Carrasco’s soft-hit average this year, however, has plummeted to a concerning rate of .279.
Over the past two seasons combined, Carrasco ranks 113 out of 116 qualifying pitchers with a .343 soft-hit average.
So can Carrasco regain his form from late in the 2014 season?
Realistically, no. That type of dominance just doesn’t continue for long periods of time – and certainly not from a pitcher with a track record indicating he is far from that type of pitcher.
But can he at least become the No. 2 starter we hoped for this season?
Maybe. But there’s a lot of evidence stacked against him. Yes, his BABIP is high – and a lot of people looking for a quick answer to this from a fantasy perspective will stop looking there – but as we’ve established, there are good reasons for his high BABIP.
If you’re giving up more hard hits, fewer weak hits and playing with a terrible defense behind you… well, you’re going to give up a lot of hits.
Carrasco is a power pitcher and he’s certainly going to have some outings where he looks like an ace. But Indians fans should probably brace themselves for a season that features a Carrasco that looks a lot closer to the one we’ve seen the past few weeks than the one we saw last September.
This is the problem, Ryan: you clearly belong in the realm of Carrasco skeptics, and that’s fine, we all have our opinions. But when it comes to analysis, or simple reporting, you can’t start shading the facts based on your biases, and when you covered yesterday’s game with the headline that “Carrasco’s Slide Continues”; declare that Carrasco is “turning back into a pumpkin,” and say that the entire season is “jeopardized” by Carrasco, one can only conclude your own emotions are getting the best of you. And that wouldn’t be so bad, except the Tribe has one of the dumbest fanbases around, and we need more objective and informative reporting than that.
Your post above is far more balanced than yesterday’s game story, but it still leaves the reader with the impression that Carrasco’s chances of being an exceptional pitcher for this team are slim. The only thing slim is the idea that the “team is built around” Kluber and Carrasco performing like they did down the stretch last year. That is completely absurd; no intelligent team would make that assumption, for that kind of performance is unsustainable. But how about having a front of the rotation that is one of the elite in the game? Would that be sufficient to contend?
How about this: In the entire MLB–not just the AL–if you rank starting pitchers by fielding independent pitching (FIP), the Tribe has Kluber at #8, Carrasco at #12, Bauer tied for #34, and Salazar at #42. That’s for all 30 clubs! The Royals only have one guy above Salazar, and that’s Volquez at #28. The first Tigers starter is Shane Greene at #44! Pitching is clearly not killing the Royals or Tigers…so why is Carrasco “jeopardizing” the Tribe’s season? Because he’s NOT, nor is he pitching poorly. One can only imagine how Kluber or Carrasco (or any Indian pitcher for that matter) would be doing if they could benefit from a Royals-like defense or a Tiger-like offense.
You want to bring some light to the Tribe’s troubles, continue to shine a light on our porous and uninstinctive defense, Chisenhall’s persistent OBP problems, the team’s continuing vulnerability to southpaws (Kipnis is still only hitting .218 against lefties), a disappointing bullpen, the devastating loss of Gomes…there’s more than enough pumpkins or never-was guys littered throughout this team that it isn’t necessary to bash a guy who manned up and threw a complete game when the team needed it AND gave us every chance to win. If this team was built around our elite starting pitching winning games 1-0, then yeah, this season was “jeopardized” from the very beginning.
Thanks for reading.
If you have no bias and stats tell you that the #12 FIP pitcher in baseball has turned back into a “pumpkin” and is personally “jeopardizing” the Indians season, then you need to find some more insightful stats than you are currently using. The fact is, the totality of the information available indicates Carrasco is not a problem, but rather a huge asset. That you continue to “watch him closely” and this eludes you speaks volumes that it isn’t stats that fail Carlos, it’s simple faith in what he brings to the table. Hey, some people refuse to believe in what’s right in front of them (batters continuing to flail at filthy stuff) OR the sum total of numbers on a page. Carrasco’s “problems” (or Kluber’s for that matter) may simply be a factor of Gomes’ absence, or just some bad situational luck, but there’s nothing anywhere to indicate there should be any concern, other than the skepticism that comes from observers that never believed in him in the first place (I daresay you were one of those who completely dismissed–or conveniently forgot–his first excellent run in the majors before he tore up his elbow). Oh, and by the way, can we not give a guy credit for taking a line drive to the face and subsequently pitching like nothing fazed him? Carlos has done a lot of growing up–yesterday’s game was another example–and this will also serve him well in any adversity he faces in the future.
The real truth is, had the bulk of fans and observers like you had been able to have their way, Carrasco would have matured into the pitcher he is on another team’s roster because he would have never made the Tribe’s opening day one last year. There was more than enough grousing about that at the time. Thank goodness the Tribe stuck to its guns and we have the #12 FIP starter in baseball so far in 2015.