After last year's "Cy Young" season from Rick Porcello, I haven't been expecting the same season from the Red Sox "Ace", but not like this. After last night's 6.0 IP, 3 ER, 9 Hits, 0 BBs, 7 Ks, Porcello has a 4.01 ERA, 1.34 WHIP, but a 9.49 K/9 and 1.64 BB/9. Is this the life Porcello is living now? A PQS (Pity Quality Start, i.e. 3 ER in 6 innings. You can hear the stat lord saying "ugh, fine I guess I'll give you one") and 1.50 WHIP but a great amount of Ks and zero walks? What's super weird is everything kinda checks out that it will...He's holding a crazy good 11.1% whiff rate (with a 13.3% whiff rate on his Four-Seamer! What?! There's also a 21.3% whiff rate on his Slider after sitting around 10-11% for years. ) Bad news here is the 43.6% hard contact that is making his .327 seem somewhat believable. His xFIP is saying 3.69, SIERA even lower at 3.43 (69.3% LOB rate after all), but I think Porcello can be a 3.40 ERA guy and still keep up the strikeouts with his super good whiff rates this season. Looks like a solid buy-low to me.
Let’s see how every other SP did yesterday:
