Josh Beckett and Mat Latos share two important things in common this season; K/9 above their career rates and BABIP's in the .180's. A lot of their other stats, however, have been quite different. Latos sports a 5.94 ERA while Beckett's is a shiny 1.93. Latos has been handing out free passes at a rate of 4.86/9 while Beckett has been doing so at a 2.89/9 clip. Latos has been bitten by the long ball five times already in just under seventeen innings while Beckett, oft criticized for "allowing" gopher balls, has been tagged for just one over twenty-eight innings. The real question is, what's the noise and what's actionable?
Let's start with the K's. Both pitchers have shown that they have the talent to strike out a around a batter an inning but Beckett hasn't quite hit that mark since 2003. He also hasn't dropped below 8K/9 since 2006 so it looks like he's a touch ahead of the curve so far this year but you can expect him to settle in somewhere between 8-9K/9. His velocity is down a bit but that could be overly influenced by his first start in freezing weather against the Indians so I wouldn't worry about it, yet.
Latos obviously has a much shorter track record to examine than does Beckett but last year he did manage an excellent K/9 of 9.21 for the season. Because his BABIP was so low, .273, that 9.21 figure could be a low estimate of his true talent (lower BABIP means fewer batters faced and fewer K opportunities. Latos was fourth in the Majors last year as he struck out one batter out of every 3.96 he faced. His K/9, however, was eighth.) Still, his current K rate of 10.80, or one every 3.65 batters, is probably not sustainable. Given his career swinging strike rate approaching 11%, though, don't expect his K/9 to dip below 9.00. If Beckett gets an A- Latos has to get an A+. The odds of Latos being in the top five strikeout starters are very high.
The red flag with Latos is obviously injury. He missed a couple starts with shoulder soreness and his velocity is definitely down, about 1.5 mph on each of his pitcher, a bit more on his change. Here the scouting matches the data as Latos still has great movement and stuff, thus the K's and swinging strikes, but when he has to get a strike his fastball is more hittable than last year's model. A little bad luck with the long ball and waaay too many walks and you get an ERA approaching 6 while maintaining a decent WHIP or 1.26 (OK maybe the .184 BABIP helps a bit with the WHIP, too.)
Bottom line: Josh Beckett has been a very good starter in nine of the ten seasons that he's played at the major league level (I still have nightmares about '06) but he's probably not sub 3.00 xFIP good. Expect his BABIP to rise a lot and his K rate to drop slightly while he settles in to an ERA in the low to mid 3's. Plenty good enough to reward those of us who targeted him this year but in the AL East he won't finish as a top five fantasy pitcher. Mat Latos has shown that he is a tremendous talent who can be a top fantasy pitcher when healthy. Watch carefully to see whether his velocity returns in the next couple of starts and if it does try to pry him from any owner frustrated by his slow start.
Beckett
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