Ray Flowers participated in a 15-team mixed league last week for the League of Alternative Baseball Reality (LABR). He already posted his diary of the draft, written in real-time, with the results. However, he did something in the draft that he never, ever does. What was the out of nowhere move he made? Why did he make it? Here is his explanation in podcast form as he speaks about how the draft unfolded, who he took in the first round, why he took him, and what that players outlook is for 2022.
Let’s start on July 1st of 2022 after the sticky stuff was outlawed and Gerrit Cole.
He threw 79/2 innings over 14 starts with a 3.95 ERA and 1.26 WHIP, not his normal numbers. But… let’s compare that second half to his numbers in 2020 which will have *** in front of them.
He had a 33.8 K rate and a 7.1 BB-rate.
*** 32.6 and 5.9
His BABIP was .351.
*** .242 (career .300 and under .287 the previous three years)
His homer rate was 1.13.
*** 1.73 (1.22 for 2017-20)
His GB/FB was 1.04
*** 0.87 (0.92 from 2018-20)
His July on numbers also include a 2.88 FIP, 3.02 xFIP and 3.06 SIERA.
We can get down in the weeds and talk spin rates and all of that, but an overall pass at the numbers suggest that he wasn’t that far off in the second half last year – especially with that flat out Stupid BABIP that had league average numbers like 88.1 exit velocity and 36.4 hard-hit rate. My thought – his stuff is still better than everyone else’s, and it is not like he’s the only one who used the sticky stuff and he is certainly as stable an innings eater as there is.
