Look at Ray Ray Run

Guy wasnt even in the top 10 most likely to win college POY entering last season, let alone a shoe to be a future 1-1.

He has? Guy was the 17th ranked player in his high school class.

Said it earlier, but this is such a silly thing to say in December. We have no idea what will happen over the next few months, and in baseball it's rare for some consensus guy to maintain a firm grip on #1. It wouldn't be crazy if the best year of Roch life was this past season. Happens in baseball all the time.

Bad defender and base runner who doesnt carry the iso value to trust sustained success as a hitter only imo. Lost some bat speed already last year, getting older, and just think that iso and bat speed continues down from here. I also just dont trust thet he's suddenly hitting lefties.

FV's for guys like Schultz are funny though. His distribution more likely looks like this: If he gets healthy and stops over tinkering his likely outcome is as a 1 or high 2 (far right of the distribution), but if the knee/body doesn't hold up allowing him to maintain his mechanics then he's a zero. I just don't see much middle with Schultz. Maybe when you average those out you get a 50, but he's an example as to why using the FV grade to dictate star power doesn't always work.

O'Hearn going to turn back into a pumpkin. Good on him for getting a few bucks with a nice stretch of games

Yeah, wasnt doing any math as much as making the point that this "great" end of season run came in situations where the Sox protected him from exposure (used opener to limit top of order times through) and he could of qualified for a win like one time.

Always liked Newcomb. Lot of risk with injury, and lack of success in this capacity, but I think he'll have a nice little run here in his thirties as a useful reliever though. A lot of base runners, so he'll be pitching out of jams with some frequency, but like his sinker keeping the ball in the infield as a reliever will help limit damage.

As I already showed, his swinging strike rate did not spike with that time (excluding our one WASN game). Having a spike in k-rate without a spike in swinging strike rate doesn't have a lot of sustainability. I don't want to keep going back and forth on Burke. I've already likely wasted enough words on a guy who isn't worth this much of a review.

A #3 starter who avg 3.2 IP per start. What are you talking about pal?? Sheesh

Relative to other pitchers with his similar usage, he was the 81st ranked arm of 87. He stunk. Arguing otherwise is truly baffling. No one is saying he stinks relative to me and you. His swinging strike rate went from 10.5% to 11.8% the final few appearances. While an improvement, it was all obtained in the final start of the year vs the Nats (again) where he ran a 21.3% swinging strike percentage. If you removed that OUTLIER (which is what it is), his swinging strike percentage from July 12th on was..... 10.8%. Nothing about his stuff played up but for one appearance. If your swstrk% doesn't change, your k/9 change is just sequencing noise mostly.

His minor league numbers show impeccable control (meaning he threw a ton of strikes, and his stuff was good enough at that level to keep people off balance in the zone), but command doesn't truly get tested until you start getting smacked around in the zone. So far, his command in the big leagues has been bad.

Don't want to get too much into the weeds on this, but his curve is good because of his angle of attack. There's a reason a lot of guys don't have good curves and good sliders, and it's because the angle you want to come through with the arm that creates the action is different for both pitches. Not just grip oriented. Burke would have to change his angle of attack, which isn't a guarantee to produce a + slider and isn't guaranteed for any pitcher. It would definitely impact the quality of his curve ball though.

During the best stretch of his year, he had 1 plus pitch and 4 negative pitches. You're getting way too caught up in a k/9 rate that was heavily influenced by 10k's vs a terrible Nats offense down the stretch where his fastball played way up (throwing 96.5!). Small samples are almost never worth looking at as a baseline for future performance. The other guys on your list are ACTUAL starters too. Who went through lineups multiple times and pitched into the 5th inning.

I follow all arms throughout the league throughout the year. Watching starts doesn't afford me much more insight than following the way I do. I do not have Burke projected to be a viable MLB starter. I get you're in optimistic mode and amped up but it doesn't change that. You like Burke. I did at one point too. Now I've gathered more data on him and he's much less intriguing and is a likely nothing burger.

I'll come back to this to. Thorpe was a very polarizing prospect. He's basically the second coming of Kyle Hendricks, but being Kyle Hendricks means you have to be perfect. Hendricks basically was that for 6 years, but anytime Hendricks hasn't been perfect he's been a bum. Additionally, Hendricks never really missed bats like Thorpe did in the minors, so he was always pitching to contact. With Thorpe, I think he's going to have a steep learning curve pitching to more contact. The funny thing about command and walks is that while the higher in level you go the more predictive of your MLB production, those on the extreme ends of the curve (BB rate) have less correlation. This is driven mainly by guys who attack the zone until they can't anymore (MLB). Thorpe could be one of those guys. Or maybe he adds 2 MPH post-surgery like Skubal, his fastball goes to avg and he dominates the league with his secondaries. Maybe he was hurt throughout all his MLB time and that's something to hang onto. With Thorpe though, the margin for error is so small and he's been everything but pinpoint when up-leveled. With Kay, no I didn't watch his NPB starts. Last time he was in the big leagues, he was bad and his big change was going from 4 seamers up in the zone to throwing a sinker. MLB hitters today are crushing the ball down and being beat up in the zone with four seamers so I'm skeptical of that transformation taking as much hold in the US.

Not a lot of fastball/curveball guys out of the pen anymore in baseball, and his curveball is his best pitch. That's the main reason I don't see the bullpen utility for Burke, because curveballs are challenging to be consistent with/find in short stints. Of course, his stuff could always get better disrupting everything we know about him. It's happened before, but it's not something I would expect or predict.

Run values added are going to be derived from your overall value which is heavily tied to results. Depending on the system you use, the correlation is high enough that you won't see a lot of positives with negative outcomes, but you can see individual pitch values where a pitcher is succeeding despite failure. Burke really doesn't have anything to hang his hat on. I'll also agree that FIP is a better predictor of future production; xERA isn't much better than actual ERA. His FIP being as bad as it was is the #1 indicator of his flaws, but I figured we could get more granular.

The only thing that finished + for him from a pitching grade last year was location. His command was above league average, even with the high walk rate. Problem is he picks around the edges because his stuff isn't good enough.

The problem is you're claiming ebbs and flows in performance are driven by development and not standard performance distributions. In his final 10 appearances, he faced Cleveland twice, the Royals once, the angels once, the Nats once, and Baltimore. That's 5 of the bottom 8 offenses in MLB last year.

Yeah, I was actually pretty optimistic about cannon and still think be may be able to move to the pen because his sinker had been effective until last year. It took a huge step back last year though, and it's possible the league just figured it out. Skubal was very mediocre when he first came up. Before the injury he only threw 94 mph. When he came back he was throwing 96 mph. That 2 mph took a medicore fastball and made it a good one.

Burke was in the 11th percentile in pitching run value. 25th in fastball run value (his best pitch), 4th in off speed run value. Walk rate was in the 15th percentile and barrel rate the 17th. Fastball ranks in the bottom 15% in multiple metrics available (stuff+, value added). After the first time through the order, the league had an 813 ops and he had a 4.81 era. Compare that to the first time through where Burke allows a 737 ops with a 3.4 era. Worst though, his first time through he struck out 66 guys in 252 batters faced. The second+ time, he only struck out 67 guys in 344 batters faced. That was with some good batted ball luck too the second time through which is pretty crazy to think about. Burke stinks. I hate breaking seasons up and finding good periods. It exists with every pitcher in the game. You are the culmination of your stuff throughout a season. His stuff stinks, and he stinks. When I use that word I mean relative to the rest of the actual mlb starters.

Burke cant get through a lineup twice consistently. That's pretty important for a starter. League average? Of 87 starters who threw 130+ innings last year, Burke ranked 81st.

You're much higher on them than me/baseball then IMO. The median 3 year outcome for all of those pitchers is being out of MLB baseball. Kay has literally already been out of MLB. Thorpe had a very very thin line with his velocity. He has an elite pitch though, so maybe he has a shot to stick in the pen. Burke doesn't fool anyone.

I'm happy to get into why each guy is not a viable MLB starter (Kay has that veil of mystery at least... I guess), starting with Burke but when I'm not on mobile. I had some optimism about Burke entering last year, saw his first few starters and did a complete 180. Rest of the year wasn't any better.