“Unveiling the Secret Sauce: Which Surprising Pitchers Are Defying Expectations with Game-Changing Early Stats?”

Are we going to keep fighting the good fight with Arizona’s Brandon Pfaadt? He underperformed his expected ERA last year (4.71 ERA, 3.61 FIP) but was a good source of strikeouts, making him an interesting breakout candidate in his age-26 season. Interestingly, his strikeouts are down this year, but his walks are way down. He has been bitten by three homers. An improved chase rate suggests the strikeouts will follow soon enough. He’s also making some inroads to fight the platoon disadvantage.

The ERA estimators don’t agree on Pfaadt — xFIP suggests a playable 3.53 number (excusing the homers), but the Statcast data spits out an ERA just under eight. Chase Field is a good scoring park but a yard that supresses home runs. The projection crew says Pfaadt should have an ERA around 4.00 the rest of the way, which is playable in medium and deeper pools if the strikeouts rebound, as expected.

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