Tampa Bay Rays: Chris Archer being overvalued on the market?
Worries with Archer’s trends
Many who trumpet Archer’s value point to his underlying numbers as being a reason that he should be valued more strongly. However, there are certainly numbers as well that point in a direction that lead to some certain worry.
First, we will look at his batted ball profile. Archer moved from a sinker/four-seam combo in 2013-2014 to the point where he almost exclusively utilizes his four-seam fastball now. From that point, he’s gone from allowing 31.1% fly balls in 2014 to 36% in 2017, and his HR/FB rate has typically stayed in the 10-15% range.
It’s also been a trend for Archer that he has seen his medium-strength contact percentage go from 56.9% in 2013 go down every season to 47.4% in 2017. His weak contact was 15.1% in 2013, and it was down to 13.2% in 2017. Conversely his hard hit rate has gone from 28% in his first significant season in the rotation in 2013 to 39.4% in 2017, which is a definite red flag.
Archer is 29, and he won’t turn 30 until September of next season. For many, if velocity has maintained to 30, it will then start to taper off. For instance, while Justin Verlander had his peak value in 2009 at age 26, but he generally stayed between 95-96.1 average MPH until his age 30 season, when he dropped (until a spike in 2017).
As far as pitch usage goes, the typical trend sees that the more a pitcher utilizes his breaking pitch, the higher the risk of injury for that pitcher (not a perfect 1:1 correlation, but certainly a trend). Per Pitch Info data, Archer has seen his slider usage go from 28% as a rookie to 43.8% in 2017.
Per Brooks Baseball, Archer has seen his slider usage go from ~40% in 2015 and 2016 to 44% in 2017 via their tracking methods, which is definitely a notable rise.
In viewing Archer’s info at Brooks Baseball, it’s easy to see why he’s throwing his slider nearly as much as his four-seam fastball at this point, as he does get nearly a 40% swing and miss rate on the slider. He does see a nearly-11% HR/FB rate on his slider. Only his change is put out a worse rate.
What exactly does that mean? The short and long of it is that with the increasing usage of his slider, his HR/FB rate will likely continue to be high, meaning that his value will most likely be measured by those metrics that measure his actual results rather than what his results “should” have been with a “normal” home run rate, making bWAR a better measure with Archer. In other words, Archer is more a solid #2 than a true ace.
In the initial discussion, comparables to Archer were mentioned. Let’s take a look at them…