I feel like the Dad who needs to sit down next to his son and explain how the world works. I've been dreading this day, but it's time for us to get real about Jose Quintana following a 2.2 IP, 7 ER, 10 Hits, 0 BBs, 4 Ks evening against the Red Sox. It's back-to-back disaster outings after allowing eight runs to the Diamondbacks last week and I can feel how frustrated many of you are. Is he droppable? Is he worth your roster spot? Well, let's dive into this. Hard contact looks normal at 28.2% (good!) with a 19.7% soft contact rate - his highest of his career. However, groundballs are at a career low at 37.8% while flyballs are above 40% for the first time, which is terrible considering his HR/FB rate is at a shocking 13.0% mark. Quintana has been known in his career of being excellent at beating the league average in HR/FB rate - 9.1% career mark and that includes this year's clip - and obviously something is causing this change. The biggest one I see is a change of abandoning his Two-Seamer in favor of nearly exclusive Four-Seamers, which are being located higher in the zone as well. Pair that with fewer chases out of the zone on his Curveball and he has to rely on the heater more often and he's getting burned on the pitch often. I'll be the first to tell you that this isn't the most convincing argument and it's reasonable to believe that his 65.4% LOB rate, HR/FB mark and 3.36 BB/9 will all fall closer to career norms, making Quintana a serviceable #3/#4 on your squad. There's also a chance that he's a pain the entire year, bouncing back and forth and making you afraid to start him any given day. I imagine his stock is super low at the moment, meaning you have no choice but to hold, though I think I'd sit on him and not drop him yet.
Let’s see how every other SP did yesterday:
