McGreevey showing that a low ERA and low K rate doesn’t necessarily predict a rising future ERA

[Carp4Cy]

This could be a correlation does not prove causation scenario.

Alternatively- McGreevey might be a well above average pitcher, which his low ERA indicates and instead of a rising ERA, his K rate will instead rise when he decides to pitch for strikeouts instead of just letting hitters create grounders and flies.

Not all pitchers trying to get a swing and miss in every pitch. That doesn’t mean they don’t have the ability. It could just be a different game plan, and. Ow today he’s going with a Strike out game plan all of a sudden and proving he can do that too.

9k’s in 6 shutout IP. Against one of the better lineups.

[Cardinals1964]

I’m just enjoying the success. I’ll let others predict the future. 1/2 will be right one way or the other.

[mattmitchl44]

This could be a correlation does not prove causation scenario.

Alternatively- McGreevey might be a well above average pitcher, which his low ERA indicates and instead of a rising ERA, his K rate will instead rise when he decides to pitch for strikeouts instead of just letting hitters create grounders and flies.

Not all pitchers trying to get a swing and miss in every pitch. That doesn’t mean they don’t have the ability. It could just be a different game plan, and. Ow today he’s going with a Strike out game plan all of a sudden and proving he can do that too.

9k’s in 6 shutout IP. Against one of the better lineups.

Throughout his professional career to date, McGreevy hasn't been a strikeout pitcher:

2022 - AA/A+ - 144 IP - 7.30 K/9
2023 - AAA/AA - 153 IP - 7.24 K/9
2024 - AAA - 150 IP - 8.28 K/9 (better, but not exactly high yet)

In the majors he's now 5.98 K/9 over 164 IP.

I don't think there is much evidence to support the notion that he's just been "holding back" from striking out guys - or if he has, he's been holding back for almost 4 years.

His game yesterday was certainly different, in a very positive way. If he can become a guy who gets up to 8 K/9 or 9 K/9, then it would change his projection significantly.

[2ninr]

I’m just enjoying the success. I’ll let others predict the future. 1/2 will be right one way or the other.

Good post. Predicting the future is part of the fun of being a fan of baseball. If you are good at it you might just be a future pobo. Today's game we've gone from guys smoking cigars and sitting in the stands watching games and taking notes to college grads interpreting metrics, making up new ones, and evaluating guys. Maybe without even knowing if the guy is any good if he had to put away the calculator and watch him play. Than a guy who does know what he's watching uses the eggheads information and makes reccomendations on how to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to another guy who doesnt really care about anything but making money. It creates quite a conflict between the guys who came from the cigar chewing era and the younger generation and the old guys who understand metrics and their undeniable place in the game today. Either way, the game was invented as entertainment and meant to be enjoyed.

[Ronnie Dobbs]

Sometimes pitchers have really good games and offenses have bad games. Same reason we seem to beat Paul Skenes a lot, then some no name 7th starter shuts us out for 7 innings.

Like Matt said, I don’t think it’s McGreevy holding anything back. He’s never struck guys out in his career. But once in awhile you have a night like this. Doesn’t make him a bad pitcher, it’s just the way it is. Like everyone else, I’m hoping that McGreevy has learned to pitch with the tools that he has and he will continue to succeed. I had him pegged as a 4th or 5th starter. He’s been very good so far. I’m loving seeing it. Also, it’s maybe a good defense for why it’s good to let a guy develop in the minor leagues rather than rush to call him up because you’re desperate for help

[rockondlouie]

My McG comp has always been K. Hendricks.

Good ERA & WHiP w/o the high octane strikeout power but takes the ball every fifth game and gives his team a shot at winning most of the time.

[billybaseball]

Reminds me alot of Logan Webb.

[An Old Friend]

This could be a correlation does not prove causation scenario.

Alternatively- McGreevey might be a well above average pitcher, which his low ERA indicates and instead of a rising ERA, his K rate will instead rise when he decides to pitch for strikeouts instead of just letting hitters create grounders and flies.

Not all pitchers trying to get a swing and miss in every pitch. That doesn’t mean they don’t have the ability. It could just be a different game plan, and. Ow today he’s going with a Strike out game plan all of a sudden and proving he can do that too.

9k’s in 6 shutout IP. Against one of the better lineups.

He has a .200 BABIP against and an 87% strand rate. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but those aren’t sustainable

[An Old Friend]

Reminds me alot of Logan Webb.

I guess if Logan Webb struck far fewer guys out and gave up more HR

[mattmitchl44]

Sometimes pitchers have really good games and offenses have bad games. Same reason we seem to beat Paul Skenes a lot, then some no name 7th starter shuts us out for 7 innings.

Like Matt said, I don’t think it’s McGreevy holding anything back. He’s never struck guys out in his career. But once in awhile you have a night like this. Doesn’t make him a bad pitcher, it’s just the way it is. Like everyone else, I’m hoping that McGreevy has learned to pitch with the tools that he has and he will continue to succeed. I had him pegged as a 4th or 5th starter. He’s been very good so far. I’m loving seeing it. Also, it’s maybe a good defense for why it’s good to let a guy develop in the minor leagues rather than rush to call him up because you’re desperate for help

FWIW - Mikolas averaged 6.4 K/9 with the Cardinals, but had:

Three 10 K games
Five 9 K games, and
Two 8 K games

[hugeCardfan]

My McG comp has always been K. Hendricks.

Good ERA & WHiP w/o the high octane strikeout power but takes the ball every fifth game and gives his team a shot at winning most of the time.

A lot better comp than Mikolas.

[3dender]

He's certainly not showing that, the only thing being shown here is that OP doesn't understand regression to the mean.

"Hey I bet you peripheral stats guys feel dumb now that he's doing something he's never done before!"

Uhh no... if he starts suddenly striking out 50% more batters than he ever has before, then his peripherals change, meaning his ceiling and "new mean" also changes. And us peripheral guys would then predict a new, better mean for him to regress to.

But just like consistently outperforming peripherals, he'd also be one of the only guys ever to just suddenly become a strikeout pitcher completely out of the blue. So until he shows that over a serious stretch I'm gonna go with the more probable explanation, that it's a (cool and admittedly impressive) fluke.

[C-Unit]

There's 5 rotation slots on a major league baseball team. I think all of us, no matter which side of this argument we fall on, can agree that McGreevy appears to be a valuable member of that group of 5 going forward.

The real debate comes when we start trying to identify what an ace looks like. I interpret posts like the OP as attempts to pin the ace tag on McGreevy, based on the qualities they value in a pitcher.

If you want to call McGreevy the "ace..." well alright. But you shouldn't call him an ace in a way that suggests we should be satisfied such that we don't need to continue looking for more aces... a better ace... etc.

The safe, correct choice, imo is to settle on McGreevy being one of the 5 (of which he's very deserving), without expecting him to be more than the #3. We should all be able to accept that without anyone putting the ace tag on him.

I would agree to.the importance of the peripherals. I would tag McGreevy as a guy who could outperform the peripherals to a certain extent. He is also early enough in his career.that slight improvements can be made to his peripherals in which he could overall improve the pitcher he truly is. Otherwise, he has a very small MLB sample size right now. Therefore the easiest thing to do is point to the last guy who had a nice run of outperforming peripherals for a while. That would be Dakota Hudson, who was another favorite of the "I don't care what the numbers say, only the results" crowd.

It's interesting that these types of OPs would probably generally agree that it's bad for hitters to strikeout excessively. They are usually the types clamoring about "modern hitters, why can't they all be like Tony Gwynn..." So they seem to acknowledge the negative impact of a strikeout on the offense. Then, they turn around and don't see the advantage of having a pitcher who can induce more strikeouts of an opposing offense. They seem to almost view that sort of pitcher as possessing of some negative character trait in which if they could just show more humility then they would be able to get through a lineup without "showing off" with their high strikeout stuff. Case in point, the OP claiming that McGreevy must have been "holding back." Assosicating finesse pitching with some sort of virtuous character trait. It's like a don't eat with your elbows on the dinner table sort of thing.

Here's the fact: we want a pitcher who meets the following rubric in order to be an "ace"
- 10 K/9 or more
- 2 BB/9 or less
- 1.10 whip or less
- 180 innings or more

This such pitcher would strikeout a high percentage of opposing batters while also possessing good control (evidenced by a 5/1 k/bb ratio), and be able to limit offenses below a certain whip threshold (and in turn, limit runs allowed) for 180 innings or more.

McGreevy may be able to meet the bottom two requirements in a good season. But, because of the underlying peripherals, I would not preclude the search for another pitcher (by development from within, or addition externally) who could meet the requirements more effectively and more confidently than McGreevy.

[Carp4Cy]

This could be a correlation does not prove causation scenario.

Alternatively- McGreevey might be a well above average pitcher, which his low ERA indicates and instead of a rising ERA, his K rate will instead rise when he decides to pitch for strikeouts instead of just letting hitters create grounders and flies.

Not all pitchers trying to get a swing and miss in every pitch. That doesn’t mean they don’t have the ability. It could just be a different game plan, and. Ow today he’s going with a Strike out game plan all of a sudden and proving he can do that too.

9k’s in 6 shutout IP. Against one of the better lineups.

He has a .200 BABIP against and an 87% strand rate. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but those aren’t sustainable

Your inference of bad news means that you’re expecting that his ERA goes up, but the number of base runners allowed stays the same. It could be the inverse that his ERA normalizes to a near elite 3.0 while his base runners allowed stays very healthy/ drops and his strikeout rate goes up. Correlation means something, but causation is not always what you expect.

[An Old Friend]

This could be a correlation does not prove causation scenario.

Alternatively- McGreevey might be a well above average pitcher, which his low ERA indicates and instead of a rising ERA, his K rate will instead rise when he decides to pitch for strikeouts instead of just letting hitters create grounders and flies.

Not all pitchers trying to get a swing and miss in every pitch. That doesn’t mean they don’t have the ability. It could just be a different game plan, and. Ow today he’s going with a Strike out game plan all of a sudden and proving he can do that too.

9k’s in 6 shutout IP. Against one of the better lineups.

He has a .200 BABIP against and an 87% strand rate. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but those aren’t sustainable

Your inference of bad news means that you’re expecting that his ERA goes up, but the number of base runners allowed stays the same. It could be the inverse that his ERA normalizes to a near elite 3.0 while his base runners allowed stays very healthy/ drops and his strikeout rate goes up. Correlation means something, but causation is not always what you expect.

He has a .200 BABIP allowed and an 87% strand rate.

Those aren’t sustainable.

Your scenario relies on his strikeout rate to increase enough to offset a normalized BABIP.

Fortunately we’re not having a Dakota Hudson conversation because McGreevy can actually command the ball. But eventually he’s giving up more hits, the strand rate goes down, and the ERA rises unless he offsets all of that with bat missing stuff. It’s unlikely

[mattmitchl44]

This could be a correlation does not prove causation scenario.

Alternatively- McGreevey might be a well above average pitcher, which his low ERA indicates and instead of a rising ERA, his K rate will instead rise when he decides to pitch for strikeouts instead of just letting hitters create grounders and flies.

Not all pitchers trying to get a swing and miss in every pitch. That doesn’t mean they don’t have the ability. It could just be a different game plan, and. Ow today he’s going with a Strike out game plan all of a sudden and proving he can do that too.

9k’s in 6 shutout IP. Against one of the better lineups.

He has a .200 BABIP against and an 87% strand rate. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but those aren’t sustainable

Your inference of bad news means that you’re expecting that his ERA goes up, but the number of base runners allowed stays the same. It could be the inverse that his ERA normalizes to a near elite 3.0 while his base runners allowed stays very healthy/ drops and his strikeout rate goes up. Correlation means something, but causation is not always what you expect.

He has a .200 BABIP allowed and an 87% strand rate.

Those aren’t sustainable.

Your scenario relies on his strikeout rate to increase enough to offset a normalized BABIP.

Fortunately we’re not having a Dakota Hudson conversation because McGreevy can actually command the ball. But eventually he’s giving up more hits, the strand rate goes down, and the ERA rises unless he offsets all of that with bat missing stuff. It’s unlikely

Ironically, you are having exactly the "Dakota Hudson conversation" because some people said the same about him - that his early FIP would eventually come down to early ERA instead of his ERA normalizing to his FIP.