Collette Calls: Breaking Down German Marquez

Enter German Marquez, who picked up his 10th win of the season Tuesday against the slumping Astros, whose season has taken a turn since they decided to test the karma gods and acquire an abusive reliever from Toronto. (Bad things happen when you steal Jobu's rum, and they also happen when you break your own zero-tolerance policy in the name of winning.) Marquez now has a positive dollar value in mixed leagues, something rare for Colorado starting pitchers, and has now earned $8 in NL-formats.

There is something happening here with the 23-year-old hurler, who is showing growth in his second full season at the big league level, although the surface stats do not yet show it. He is one strikeout shy of equaling his 2017 total despite facing 116 fewer batters to date. The other side of that is that he is two walks shy of matching his 2017 total of 49 and his ERA is still hanging out in the mid 4's, and even his FIP is still north of 4.00. Let's dig below the surface to see what Marquez is doing differently this year and is this a case of the trendline pointing in the right direction or is this Rockies pitcher still unrosterable in mixed leagues?

Marquez was one of my 60 bold predictions coming into the season as I said he would finish in the top 60 for starting pitchers. In standard mixed leagues, the 12 teams will likely roster six starting pitchers each, so that put Marquez squarely in the $1 end game for that format where his current value lies. Our current in-season auction values earned board has Marquez right at the 60th-most value starting pitcher, ahead of name such as Stephen Strasburg, Michael Wacha, and Cole Hamels to name just a few. The defense of the prediction I made on Feb. 21 read:

"He is ranked 85th in our projections at the position. Marquez had a solid first full season in the majors last year with an above-average strikeout rate and an average walk rate. The oddness of his stat line last year was that he was a better pitcher in Coors than on the road. He held batters to a .257 batting average and a .310 on-base percentage at Coors, but the 15 homers in 80.1 innings led to a 4.59 ERA at home. His 4.19 ERA on the road was better, but batters hit .283 against him and had a .353 on-base percentage in that environment.

"The reason I am most intrigued about Marquez is that the Rockies invested heavily in their bullpen for 2018. This should mean that Marquez can get out of his way and utilize the run support and the bullpen to increase his 2018 win total while improving his ratios even if it means a reduction in strikeouts. Much of his damage last year came when Colorado left him in the game too long.

THRU ORDER	TBF	ERA	ER	HR	AVG	OBP	SLG
1st time	261	2.86	20	8	.244	.301	.400
2nd time	259	4.83	32	7	.269	.345	.476
3rd time	181	6.18	27	10	.309	.359	.576

"If we eliminated the bottom numbers from his overall production last year, he has a 3.82 ERA, 110 strikeouts in 122.2 innings and has limited batters to a .256 average with a 1.30 WHIP. Any of us would take those numbers from a Colorado pitcher all day long, especially in NL-Only leagues. The extra exposure to the lineup added more than half a run to his ERA and another 40 points to his slugging percentage.

"By utilizing the expensive bullpen the team has assembled, it can limit Marquez's exposure to lineups a third time through and improve his ratios as well as his opportunities for wins. He won 11 of 29 outings last year, despite eight no decisions in quality starts. Fifteen wins, a sub 4.00 ERA with a decent amount of strikeouts is possible. I have four teams assembled for 2018 – 2 NL-Only keeper leagues, mixed LABR, and an NFBC draft and hold – and Marquez is on all four of those rosters." 

It is going to take some heavy lifting to get his ERA below 4.00 by seasons end, but the 15 wins are within reach, and the decent amount of strikeouts are there, and then some for him in 2018. The linchpin to that prediction was Colorado would not leave Marquez out there as long into his starts, and minimizing his damage to that TTOP penalty would not happen. In reality, he has only once been pulled before facing the 19th batter in a game this season, and that was in the third start of the season when he had to leave the game after being ejected as part of a bench-clearing brawl in the bottom of the third inning.

I want to re-visit the table above by looking into his 2018 splits in each area before looking into other areas of Marquez's 2018 season because there are strange things afoot at the Circle-K:

The groundball rate has been interesting for him over the past two seasons, so it is worth looking at by times through the order before looking at his pitch mixture changes.

See the change? Marquez has reduced his fastball utilization from 65 percent to 50 percent, while breaking out a better slider this year. Last year, the weighted run value on his slider was -3.7; this year it is 2.3 per 100 pitches. He threw the slider 105 times all season last year, and has already thrown it three times that much in 2018, and his usage continues to climb in season.

The slider was mostly a nothing pitch for Marquez last year as he has a nine percent whiff rate on the pitch when he threw it, which is well below average for sliders. This season, he has a 19 percent whiff rate on his slider, which is an above average rate for the slider.

He has good velocity on his fastball, but by weighted run values, it is a below league average pitch. Marquez is at his best when he gets ahead in the count and can then force batters to swing at the non-fastballs around and down in the zone. His first pitch strike rate is up three percentage points this season, while the percentage of pitches he throws in the zone is down five percentage points this season. Pitchers do not have to throw strikes later in the count if they get ahead early in the count and Marquez has taken advantage of that more in 2018 than he did in 2017. That is important for his success, because his numbers vary wildly when he is ahead in the count versus when he is behind in the count.

In short, Marquez has done the impossible this year and to date has turned a profit in standard mixed league formats as a starting pitcher in Colorado. He has shown growth in-season altering his pitch mixture and working ahead in count more frequently. Do not make the automatic move to avoid all Rockies starters in mixed leagues in 2019, because this one is showing signs of moving up the charts in the second half of the season.