Explaining Rays ace Chris Archer’s disappointing start to 2016
Tampa Bay Rays ace Chris Archer came into this season with enough talent and pitching tact to be a Cy Young candidate. He’s smart and has swing-and-miss stuff, the type of combination we’ve seen be so dangerous in the past. Particularly in Tampa Bay, where David Price, Archer’s mentor, flashed the same brilliance.
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Things haven’t looked very Cy Young-ish for Archer this season, though. He’s 3-7 with a 4.75 ERA in 12 starts. The win-loss record isn’t particularly disappointing, because those stats are outdated and he’s always been about .500 in the W-L column. Despite a 12-13 record in 2015, he was an All-Star with a 3.23 ERA and ranked second in the AL in strikeouts.
This season he’s still striking out a good number of batters — good enough, in fact, to rank seventh in the American League. Problem is, when Archer isn’t striking people out, he’s allowing walks and homers more frequently than ever. Further, opposing batters are hitting .262 against him up, way up from .219 last season.
In a year that’s seen a number of high-profile pitchers get off to rough starts, from Matt Harvey to Adam Wainwright, you can put Archer on the list too. Being a MLB pitcher, though, is the kind of job where you can be in a funk one week and be lights out the next. Just ask Harvey, who has turned his season around in his previous two starts.
Let’s see if Archer can start to regain his form Monday, when he and the Tampa Bay Rays play the Arizona Diamondbacks in the MLB Free Game of the Day here on Yahoo Sports. First pitch is at 9:40 p.m. ET. You can stream the game for free on Yahoo’s Sports Home, MLB index and video home. Local blackout restrictions apply, per MLB rules.
[Elsewhere: Madison Bumgarner would like to be in the Home Run Derby]
To diagnose what’s wrong with Archer, let’s look at some numbers beyond wins, losses and strikeouts:
• Perhaps the most troubling fact is this: His home run-to-fly ball rate has nearly doubled this season. It’s 20 percent going into Monday night’s game and it was 10.4 percent last season. The tangible result of that: Archer has allowed 12 homers this season, which is how much he gave up in ALL of 2014. In 2015, he allowed 19.
• While his strikeouts-per-nine inning rate is almost the same (10.31 this season vs. 10.7 last), his walks are a different story. Last season, he walked 2.80 batters per nine innings. Now that’s up to 4.21.
• Here’s one stat that could mean Archer can even things out: HIs batting average on balls in play (BABIP) this season is .325, which is higher than both the league average and Archer’s career average. That could mean he’s encountered some tough luck. However, the walks and homers also say this isn’t entirely a BABIP issue.
• This is another number that tells us BABIP isn’t the whole story: Opponents are hitting the ball harder than ever against Archer. Per Fangraphs, 35.1 percent of the balls hit against Archer are being classified as “hard hit.” That’s the highest such percentage of his career and about three percent higher than last season.
All of this is troubling to a degree. But being an MLB pitcher means not every day is going to be a great one. Archer has proven himself to be an All-Star-caliber pitcher, so the pedigree is there. Now we wait to see if he can fix himself.
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Mike Oz is the editor of Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @MikeOz