While Cyler Anderson has been having a great season thus far, it’s no secret he’s been over performing his expected outcomes by quite a bit: 2.72 ERA vs 4.84 xERA. SIERA, xFIP, K/BB rates all tell similar tales.
For that reason I’m not convinced that Anderson would have a lot of value in a hypothetical trade. Assuming he hasn’t regressed come the trade deadline, are teams really gonna be interested in an over performing regression candidate? Teams are smarter these days, I mean we had a 2 time Cy Young winner have to settle for much less than he wanted cause teams did not like his peripherals. They were far more interested in a guy who had never thrown a pitch in the MLB.
That said, looking at expected outcomes isn’t all doom and gloom. Because many of our pitchers are actually underperforming their expected outcomes by a quite a bit:
Detmers: 5.80 ERA 3.58 xERA
Sandy: 4.59 ERA 3.61 xERA
Moore: 6.62 ERA 3.68 xERA
Suarez: 7.11 ERA, 4.71 xERA
You can see the full list here:
So while it won’t be surprising if Anderson starts to regress, our pitching across the board should actually get better as time goes on and luck starts to even out.