Jair Jurrjens grounding his value? Be careful « Fantasy Sports Blog: Rounding the Bases

4May/113

Jair Jurrjens grounding his value? Be careful

Rub some Jurrjens on your roster for now

For some time I've thought the solid Jair Jurrjens, who's mowing down fools, has been a bit overrated, but the news of David Ross becoming his personal receiver caught my eye. So is his career-best GB pace.

Maybe Ross is imploring him to keep the ball down, something that would go a long way in prolonging the success of Jurrjens' contact-first approach.

His typical combo of tepid dominance and a moderate grounder rate always left me thinking I'd be nervous and dependent on luck if I invested heavily; I haven't done so since I rode his '08 surge off the waiver wire.

I'm tempering my enthusiasm once again; so far he has faced the New York Mets, Los Angeles Dodgers (at Chavez Ravine), San Diego Padres (at PETCO) and the Milwaukee Brewers; the first three, all shaky offenses, laid a nice foundation. He also struggled mightily on the road last year and was fortunate to be in such solid parks in his two away outings.

It's early, but you need to watch his elevated LOB% and deflated BABIP - prime for regression, even if he remains solid. Good news: His homer suppression isn't foreign, even with his previous FB rates (career 0.68 HR/9). But his short sample size figure of 0.30 so far is ripe for a come-up. I'd like to see a prolonged competence in worm-burning - some sort of change in his approach that hasn't been reported or revealed yet - before I express more confidence. This might be opponent- and fortune-fueled, not skill-based.

Naturally, play him while he's rolling, but don't lose track of the warning signs ... and how they might come back to bite him against the Philadelphia Phillies in his next start.

If he keeps this going to build up trade value and you can sell him for an upgrade, great; if you can't in deep leagues, he probably won't be a disaster as long as he isn't a centerpiece of your rotation. It'll just be a "thanks for all you've done" cut bait sitch if it all falls down.

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Tagged as: Atlanta Braves, Fantasy Baseball, fantasy baseball free agents, Jair Jurrjens, Major League Baseball, MLB, starting pitchers Leave a comment

Tim Heaney

Steve, I'll concede that point based on his history. But right now, opponents are hitting just 13.3 percent line drives against him - yes, he's often hard to hit when he's on, but that's just absurd in this tiny window. I bet that has a lot to do with his opponents so far. The risk of that increasing when he faces better offenses and gains a bigger sample size leaves room for more downturn. Including that in the post probably would've done my argument more justice. Plus, I acknowledge that he's a good mixed back-end guy normally. I'm just not sure he's going to become more interesting than his normal self, which many people might be thinking.
Steve Parsons

I'm usually not interested in LD% just because of the inherent problem in how it is recorded- GO/AO usually works better and eliminates the subjective part. But it is true that his GB + LD vs. GB are suspiciously low. Itty bitty sample of course, it's just a handful of results from his career norm. I don't think he is that hard to hit, his in-play hits per 9 are 7.2 this year, 2009 and the beginning of 2010 - maybe we are seeing mirror Adam LaRoche phenomena. He's got a big LOB% and only 1 HR in just short of 30 ip and neither of those will last. But while you obviously don't want to pay 1.52 ERA money for the guy, a "normal" LOB% and HR rate isn't going to push him much higher than what he did in 2009 and 2010 (until he got hurt). 1.52 is, as Dave Barry would say, a squid on the manifold, but he's a pretty good pitcher, and his BABIP could easily go up 20 points without increasing his hits if his strikeout rate levels at his usual rate. I like him, but as you say, with his K rate what it is he's not the front of a fantasy rotation.
Steve Parsons

Look, can we lose the BABIP thing? Pitchers like Jurrjens regularly maintain this kind of BABIP for years on end, it's a fallacy that they don't and his in-play hit rate per 9 IP is low, but not unusual. His BABIP is pretty much a function of his mediocre (fantasy-wise) K rates. He's the identical pitcher he was last time he was healthy for a full season (2009) and he started off the same way in 2010, before getting injured.

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