Rockie road
Colorado hurler can turn around rough season
COMING off a season in which he went 10-4 with a 3.67 ERA with 112 strikeouts and a 1.296 WHIP over 20 starts, the Rockies’ Jon Gray was one of those middle-ofthe-draft pitching targets this year. Unfortunately, his season has been a mixed bag — some flashes of brilliance combined with starts that make you throw up your hands and scream, “Why the heck did I draft this guy?!?”
After being demoted to Triple-A Albuquerque this week, Gray was the sixth-most dropped player in ESPN leagues (the most dropped, non-injured starting pitcher), seeing his ownership plummet from 60.1 percent to 44.5, and dropping 15 percent to 44.5 at Yahoo since Thursday.
Before being demoted, Gray was 7-7 with an 5.77 ERA and 1.489 WHIP. He also has a careerhigh HR/FB rate (15.5 percent).
Sure, those numbers look like they belong to someone who pitches half his games in a ballpark where you could hit a ping-pong ball out of the stadium with an HDMI cable, but Gray’s issues aren’t a Coors Field thing. In fact, his home (5.64) and road (5.89) ERAs are virtually the same.
So, why is this all happening? Why is this space being used to talk about a struggling pitcher on a team notorious for housing lousy pitchers? Why write about a guy whose ERA, among qualified pitchers, is only slightly better than the White Sox’s Lucas Giolito (6.93) and the Orioles’ Alex Cobb (6.53)? Why spend time talking about a guy who was just demoted after giving up the most hits (108) and earned runs (59) in the NL?
We l l , because he will be back in the majors sooner rather than later, and there are numbers that actually indicate Gray is (and will be) much better than he is right now.
Gray has been extraordinarily unlucky. He has been bitten by the highest BABIP (.386) among qualified starting pitchers. His FIP (3.08) is more than two runs below his ERA, and his xFIP (2.75) is even lower.
His FIP ranks in the top 15 in baseball, one spot behind Gerrit Cole and three spots ahead of Corey Kluber. He ranks sixth in xFIP, one spot behind Kluber and one spot above Max Scherzer. He has also been hurt by a low strand rate (63.1 percent).
Gray has struck out 119 batters (over 92 innings), the 13th-most in the league. He has the sixth highest strikeouts per nine in the majors (11.64) — which is also a career high — trailing Scherzer, Boston’s Chris Sale, Cole, Charlie Morton, and Seattle’s James Paxton.
Gray, a pitcher who has allowed four earned runs or more in 10 of his 17 starts, has the 13th-best K-BB percentage (21.8), sandwiched between Stephen Strasburg (23.2) and Nick Pivetta (20.8), and tied with Morton. He also has the 12thbest swinging-strike percentage (13.4), which means he has been overpowering. His swingingstrike percentage is better than that of Carlos Carrasco, Morton, Trevor Bauer, Justin Verlander and Luis Severino. It is also about 3 percent better than Kluber’s (10.8 percent).
The truth is, Gray’s numbers are better than they ever have been, but the results haven’t supported the numbers. He simply has been one of the unluckiest pitchers in the game.
Being demoted should not be seen as a sign of doom, but a sign of hope — hope the young hurler can rediscover the confidence or the form that helped him become one of the top 40 fantasy pitchers heading into the season.
The move this week was not the Rockies throwing in the towel on a young pitcher, but the Rockies giving him a much-needed reset — one that could help fantasy owners, too. Now’s a good time to buy low, stash him and believe in his luck turning around.