Don't blame Jason Hammel for not winning. The Kansas City starter is doing everything he can to keep his club in games this season, with three quality starts in five outings and a 3.38 ERA. It's far from Cy Young-worthy to be sure, but he deserves better than his current record of 0-2.
Even though the Rays touched up Dylan Bundy for seven earned runs in his last start, the Baltimore pitcher is still the proud owner of a 2.97 ERA through six starts, four of them of the quality variety. Yet he's sitting at just 1-3 on the year.
Carlos Carrasco is 4-1 with a 3.08 ERA, finally having tasted defeat this past Saturday with a three-inning clunker against the Mariners, who in two games against the Cleveland hurler have launched four of the five home runs he's allowed on the season. Take Seattle out of the equation and he's 4-for-4 in quality starts.
Now, anybody who has been playing fantasy baseball for any extended period of time should be well aware that wins are by no means an accurate measure of a pitcher's performance. Sure, if a starter gets torched for eight in the first, that's on him. However, if he throws seven-plus shutout innings and still walks away with a no-decision, as 12 pitchers have managed to accomplish this season (Carrasco and Bundy included and Johnny Cueto twice), that's on the hitters.
Still, a pitcher's win-loss record is still going to impact perception -- and in a huge way. If you compare these three guys on the ESPN Player Rater, there's no contest. Carrasco is No. 14, Bundy is No. 43 and Hammel is No. 99. Taking a closer look at this trio, specifically the run support they've received from their lineups, brings the huge gaps between their rankings into clearer focus.
The average runs scored per game by individual teams this season is 4.48. Cleveland (3.65), Baltimore (3.50) and Kansas City (3.30) all reside near the bottom of the barrel in this regard. However, the outlook is even bleaker than that for these three SP: Hammel has received 2.00 runs per start (tied for the lowest in MLB), Bundy 2.50 (T-7th lowest) and Carrasco 3.50 (T-22nd lowest).
If you were to simply bump Hammel and Bundy up to their own team's average runs scored per start, it would have a tangible impact on their win total for 2018 -- and even more so if it rose to league-average production, but these guys are still wearing the uniforms they do, so let's not get too crazy here. Similarly, take just a single run per game away from Carrasco's support and three of his wins fade away.
The upshot of all this is that if you change the records accordingly and keep all of their other statistics the same, Bundy moves into the top 25, Carrasco nearly falls out of the top 40 and Hammel enters the top 50.
By no means am I suggesting that you swap out Hammel for Carrasco. That would require you to be blind to the stats that these guys do control. Still, run support at the extremes is likely to swing back toward the center, so grabbing Hammel (4 percent rostered) off the waiver wire for some spot starts (once he gets through today's battle in Boston) seems to make some sense.
And looking beyond the records to see which pitchers might be on a lot more fantasy rosters if they were, say, closer to 3-1 than 1-3 might give you a slightly different take on the likes of Reynaldo Lopez, Michael Fulmer or Aaron Sanchez.