In 2014 the Houston Astros brought up a journeyman that had been up and down in the minors for a few years and found very little success. Then out of nowhere he shows up as an Astro and becomes part of the best pitching duos in the American League. This year however Collin McHugh has seen a reversal of fortune and has seen many of his stats start to rise leaving fantasy owners having to answer the oldest question in fantasy “What the &%*# do I do with this guy?” Today we take a look at the numbers and see if McHugh can turn the season around or is it time owners look to see what value he has left.
It has been a frustrating year so far for McHugh owners as McHugh owns a 5.04 ERA with a 1.34 WHIP in fourteen games pitched. He owns a 7-3 record and has a K/BB rate of 3.33. Overall not all that impressive and most are tough for owners to swallow and there are less signs of hope that owners would like to see. To see if there is a chance of redemption we need to see the other numbers so looking at his FIP and BABIP we see some mixed signs. The FIP of 4.42 is not encouraging but that .316 BABIP is twenty points higher than his career BABIP and the same goes for the FIP but it is forty points higher. That does at least give some indication that bad luck is involved here and “could” change.
So we mentioned there is a chance for improvement for McHugh but we need to see what his other stats like strikeouts and BB/9 are looking like to see what the odds are. As previously stated the K/BB of 3.33 is a little low but there is some good news here even though his K/9 has dropped from 9.14 in 2014 to 7.35 in 2015 he has also lowered his BB/9 a little but 2.21 is still a very good BB/9. More importantly this BB/9 gives life to the bad luck theory for McHugh since he is not putting many men on base for free and still striking out an above average amount of hitters. The lack of K’s can be attributed to some ineffectiveness from his slider, which last years averaged 17 runs saved per use while this year it sits at -8.1 per use.
Another thing to look at is the type of contact McHugh is generating; after all if he is getting hit hard it’s a bad sign for him. As of this article he has a hard hit percent of 30.1%, which falls perfectly in line with the league average, and he even has a higher soft hit percent at 19.7%. What looks bad for McHugh is the in fly ball rate going up 3% from his 33.7% last year to 36.3% this year and the correlating 4% rise in his HR/FB from last years 9.5% to this years 13.7%. It is a mixed bag of info here but there are some signs that if he can keep the ball down McHugh could return to his 2014 form.
What do owners do with McHugh moving forward? It is going to depend on the owner’s league since the larger leagues may find it hard to drop him while the shallow 10-team leagues might be able to find an easy replacement. Personally this writer dropped him in the 12-team league but it was a hard choice to make and he is still on the radar. He has little trade value unless owners are willing to trade him for .50 cents to the dollar and that is not a great value.
