Trivia question: Can you name the only pitcher in baseball to begin the 2016 season with four consecutive starts of at least six innings, giving up no more than one run, each of which resulted in a victory for the pitcher in question?
It's a tricky one, but the answer is Mat Latos. (And yeah, the headline and photo probably gave it away, didn't it?)
Through four starts, Latos ranks eighth among starting pitchers on our Player Rater, as well as second in the American League on ESPN's "Cy Young Predictor." His performance has been magical, in more ways than one: His ERA so far is 0.74, but his FIP (fielding independent pitching), widely regarded a better indicator of how effectively a pitcher has pitched, is 3.56, in the neighborhood of his 3.44 career number in the category.
As Latos takes the mound for the fifth time Saturday, let's delve into his prospects of continuing his hot start -- or even something close to it.
From a pitch-selection standpoint, two significant things have changed for Latos in recent years: He introduced a splitter into his arsenal in late 2013 (and more permanently in 2014), which he has thrown a bit more so far this year, anywhere from 11-17 percent of the time depending on your tracking source. He has also lost a significant amount of fastball velocity over the years, going from a 93.6 average mph peak in 2010, to 91.4 mph in 2015, to a career-worst 89.4 mph this year.
While the addition of the splitter seems to have helped deepen Latos' arsenal, the loss of fastball velocity has been devastating, as his wOBA allowed with the pitch has ballooned accordingly, beginning with a respectable .293 in 2010 but rising in each subsequent year through 2014, before dropping back to a still-too-high .350 in 2015. This season it's down to .245, though much of that has been influenced by an absurdly low .184 BABIP, more than 100 points beneath his career number.
And that's exactly the point: It's Latos' BABIP -- his overall BABIP -- that has had much to say about his first four starts. Certainly it helps that his Chicago White Sox, defensively, have accrued the third most defensive runs saved (11) and third-best ultimate zone rating (8.2) as a team. That'd also help explain how Latos has a 96.9 percent strand rate -- this is the percentage of runners he leaves on base at inning's end -- which also hints he has had some extremely good fortune.
History, too, shows that examples such as Latos' are more mirage than miraculous rebirth. He's only the eighth undrafted-in-ESPN-leagues pitcher in the past 10 seasons to begin the season with four consecutive starts of at least a 54 game score, a number that represents a virtual lock for warranting your "start," but also an ERA more than two runs lower than his FIP within said season's first month (March/April).
Here are how the previous seven fared, contrasting their March/April fantasy stats to their numbers the rest of the year. Note that the ERA-FIP numbers in the final column are year-end numbers, rather than from May 1 forward.
From a rest-of-year perspective, regression hit these seven pitchers hard, making them difficult to consistently own in mixed leagues. That said, these pitchers do occasionally retain "streaming" value in standard mixed leagues, something best evidenced by their total number of those aforementioned 54-plus game score outings from May 1 forward:
Total 54-plus starts from May 1 on: Mike Pelfrey 15, Alfredo Simon 13, Lance Lynn 12, Livan Hernandez 11, Josh Tomlin 10, Joe Saunders 9, Nick Martinez 5.
Percentage of 54-plus starts: Pelfrey 52 percent, Simon 48 percent, Lynn 48 percent, Tomlin 48 percent, Hernandez 38 percent, Saunders 38 percent, Martinez 29 percent.
Bear in mind, however, that the major league average for starters reaching that game score threshold is roughly 49 percent, which illustrates the limited utility of these hot-starting miracle workers. Still, these seven pitchers combined managed a collective 3.48 ERA and 1.25 WHIP in 102 starts against sub-.500 teams during those seasons, so the lesson here is to pick your cakewalk matchups and avoid the rest.
That paints a clear picture of what Latos -- and any current or future similar examples -- is, however, and it's not that of a newfound fantasy stud.
Granted, Latos would be a difficult pitcher to pitch as a "sell-high" candidate, though by all means you should do that if you've got a taker. Still, as a streaming candidate, for those willing to put in the requisite matchups homework, he's potentially worth a look anytime he faces one of the league's weaker lineups.
Saturday's game at Baltimore's Camden Yards, unfortunately, is not one of them.