Time To Worry About Braves’ Julio Teheran?
As a sequel of sorts to last week’s piece on Alex Wood, today’s post is about the early struggles of the Braves’ young ace, Julio Teheran.
Teheran followed up a 2.7 fWAR rookie performance in 2013 (one that earned him a 6 year, $32.4MM contract extension) with a brilliant 2014 that was worth 3.5 fWAR. The sophomore slump was a non-factor for Teheran.
But the third year is proving to be a bit trickier for the Braves’ 24 year old right hander. I postponed this article to the point where I postponed it further just to see Teheran get another start under his belt and add some more data to weigh in on. Man, was I not disappointed. Teheran tossed 7 innings, giving up just 1 run on 2 hits and a single walk against 8 strikeouts (all 8 were swinging). He certainly looked like vintage Teheran last night.
But even with last night’s stellar performance, his ERA is down to just 3.91. His FIP is a whopping 4.94. These are not Julio Teheran numbers. You can chalk some of it up to a .319 BABIP against him, that’d certainly be fair. But while Teheran is striking out hitters on a better than usual pace (8.35 K/9 compared to 7.57 K/9 in 2014), he’s also walking 1.3 more men per 9 this season. Couple this with a .70 increase in home runs, and there’s your dangerously high FIP number.
But not all of Teheran’s performance has been discouraging. As I mentioned, he is striking out a bit more men this season. Last night he made the likes of Carlos Gomez and Ryan Braun look like they had no clue what he was throwing at them. His ground ball rate is also a career best so far a 38.8 percent. And on top of that, he’s decreased his fly ball rate by 10.5 percent from last year.
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That’s a weird trait to have, right? Giving up fewer fly balls by a sizeable amount, but on pace to having more of them leaving the yard than ever? That’s pretty unlucky. But it’s shockingly true, as 18.4 percent of his fly balls this season have exited the outfield wall.
As I broke down his PitchFX, I didn’t seem to find any anomalies, until I came to the slider. 3 of the 9 hits tallied against his slider this season have been a big fly. 5 of the 9 have gone for extra bases. His max velocity on the slider this season has been just 82.5 MPH, a significant decrease from the 87 MPH and 89.3 MPH max velocity in 2013 and 2014, respectively. His average velocity is just over 2 MPH less than 2014.
Batters are only hitting .170 against it, and he’s struck out 18 men with it, but is a slightly diminishing velocity on his slider causing a sizeable chunk of Teheran’s stuggles? I’d argue yes, since a big chunk of the not so great peripherals are coming from these increased home runs. Otherwise, it seems Julio still has it. And as I said earlier, last night was definitely vintage Julio. 10 fly balls compared to 4 ground balls.
So what do we chalk this up to?
I’d say growing pains. This is just something that happens, even in the best pitchers, from time to time. The Braves coaching staff may be well ahead of me, seeing as how he pretty much went against everything he’s done this season to a lineup that featured some pretty fearsome hitters last night(even if the Brewers overall are pretty bad).
So should you be worried?
Eh, probably not.
If it is just a slightly diminished secondary pitch that needs a little work, with a little bit of fluky BABIP related luck sprinkled in, I’d say he’s in good shape. The walk rate is worrisome, but as long as he’s not giving up home runs, expect last night to be the norm for Julio Teheran for the rest of 2015.