Does Astros Scandal affect Greinke

[Sour Masher]

I'm struggling to imagine how a pretty good pitcher like Ray can spend 60% his pitches using the worst curve in baseball and still succeed.... Doesn't really make any sense at all, something feels off.

I have not looked at all, but my assumption is that the curveball overall as a pitch is more sparsely used and generally is an out pitch, so the stats on its effectiveness are skewed. So, if a pitcher uses it all the time, it may still be decently effective, but not compared to everyone else that use it sparingly as an out pitch.

[Ken]

I have not looked at all, but my assumption is that the curveball overall as a pitch is more sparsely used and generally is an out pitch, so the stats on its effectiveness are skewed. So, if a pitcher uses it all the time, it may still be decently effective, but not compared to everyone else that use it sparingly as an out pitch.

That makes sense in the abstract.

Robbie Ray has never thrown his curveball more than 22% of the time though (that 60% jumped off the page), so I suspect we may be dealing with bad data.

https://www.fangraphs.com/players/robbie-ray/11486/stats?position=P#pitchtype

And while the curve was far from his best pitch last year, it was also far from the worst curve that anyone put up in 2019.

https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=pit&lg=all&qual=y&type=7&season=2019&month=0&season1=2019&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&startdate=2019-01-01&enddate=2019-12-31&sort=6,a

[Judge Jude]

sounds like I misheard the percentage, or what the percentage meant.
but they did say he had the worst curve last year, that he threw it a lot and graded a D for the pitch, and Greinke got an A.

wait - could they have been talking about a different pitch for those two? I caught the discussion in the middle (Luis Castillo graded as the best changeup fwiw)

[Ken]

Maybe 60% was really 16% and misheard?
Maybe worst curve was really worst curve by a pitcher who pitched 100 IP for the diamondbacks last year? ** Although there were only 3, Greinke, Ray, Merrill Kelly so that would be a weird stat too.

[Ken]

wait - could they have been talking about a different pitch for those two? I caught the discussion in the middle (Luis Castillo graded as the best changeup fwiw)

Might be getting closer, Ray had one of the 5 worst sliders last year:

https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=pit&lg=all&qual=y&type=7&season=2019&month=0&season1=2019&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&startdate=2019-01-01&enddate=2019-12-31&sort=4,a

[chancellor]

In this particular keeper league Pitching is a super premium. I Know there is a 20 pick difference in NFBC but in this particular league they will all go within 10 picks of each other. You like Castillo and Corbin 20 picks better than Greinke?
I see them as pretty close.

I'm with you. If I can get Greinke 20 picks later than Corbin or Castillo, I'm taking the plus hitter and Greinke and shopping for the K difference elsewhere. But that won't happen in my league, either.