This article is part of our Collette Calls series.
Late in 2013, McHugh was waived by the Rockies. He was picked up by the "Lastros" as an afterthought and went on to become a three-win player for the team and a fantasy surprise last season winning 11 games with strong ratios and a solid strikeout rate while going drafted in 0.01% of leagues.
In 2015, he was rostered for $7 in Mixed Tout Wars. Jeff Erickson paid $13 for him in AL Tout Wars and then traded him to me for Luke Gregerson a couple weeks ago as I was hurting as much for wins as he was for saves. Needless to say, McHugh hasn't worked out for either of us as expected. My selfish interests plus many requests on Twitter from people lead me to make him the topic of my player investigation this week.
The data below shows how McHugh's 2015 metrics compare to his efforts in 2014.
| YEAR | ERA | WHIP | BA | OBP | SLG | BABIP | LOB% |
| 2014 | 2.73 | 1.02 | .208 | .268 | .320 | .263 | 76 |
| 2015 | 5.08 | 1.33 | .289 | .335 | .473 | .325 | 71 |
| YEAR | K% | BB% | Contact% | Foul% | InPlay% | O-Swing% | SwSTR% | HR/FB |
| 2014 | 25 | 7 | 74 | 38 | 36 | 29 | 11 | 10 |
| 2015 | 18 | 5 | 76 | 33 | 43 | 31 | 10 | 14 |
In short, his numbers are a bit all over the place. He is definitely more hittable this season in all aspects as more men are reaching the bases as well as the fences. The fortunes he enjoyed last season
Late in 2013, McHugh was waived by the Rockies. He was picked up by the "Lastros" as an afterthought and went on to become a three-win player for the team and a fantasy surprise last season winning 11 games with strong ratios and a solid strikeout rate while going drafted in 0.01% of leagues.
In 2015, he was rostered for $7 in Mixed Tout Wars. Jeff Erickson paid $13 for him in AL Tout Wars and then traded him to me for Luke Gregerson a couple weeks ago as I was hurting as much for wins as he was for saves. Needless to say, McHugh hasn't worked out for either of us as expected. My selfish interests plus many requests on Twitter from people lead me to make him the topic of my player investigation this week.
The data below shows how McHugh's 2015 metrics compare to his efforts in 2014.
| YEAR | ERA | WHIP | BA | OBP | SLG | BABIP | LOB% |
| 2014 | 2.73 | 1.02 | .208 | .268 | .320 | .263 | 76 |
| 2015 | 5.08 | 1.33 | .289 | .335 | .473 | .325 | 71 |
| YEAR | K% | BB% | Contact% | Foul% | InPlay% | O-Swing% | SwSTR% | HR/FB |
| 2014 | 25 | 7 | 74 | 38 | 36 | 29 | 11 | 10 |
| 2015 | 18 | 5 | 76 | 33 | 43 | 31 | 10 | 14 |
In short, his numbers are a bit all over the place. He is definitely more hittable this season in all aspects as more men are reaching the bases as well as the fences. The fortunes he enjoyed last season in terms of BABIP and LOB% have now gone the other way. Yet, he is still getting batters to chase pitches out of the zone and his swinging-strike rate is nearly in line with where it was last season.
Any time we look at a struggling pitcher, we first need to know if they are pitching with an injury. Outside of monitoring the RotoWire news feed, we can look at two things to see if the pitcher is hiding an injury: a drop in velocity or a drop in the arm angle to relieve stress on the shoulder. The velocity graphs at BrooksBaseball do not show anything to be concerned about and the data at Fangraphs is mostly the same.
Lastly, the vertical release point data at BrooksBaseball does not raise any issues of concern.
So, it is not an injury issue with McHugh, so let's look at what he is throwing this season.
| YEAR | FB% | CH% | SL% | CB% |
| 2014 | 40 | 5 | 32 | 24 |
| 2015 | 32 | 7 | 38 | 23 |
McHugh is throwing more non-fastballs this season than he was last season. Rather than zooming in on his slider percentage, let's just lump them into breaking balls as a whole.
It is not quite clear why McHugh is de-emphasizing his fastball this season. In 2014, the league hit .253 against his fastball with a .308 BABIP and a .400 slugging percentage. This season, the league is hitting .286 off his fastball with a .302 BABIP but a .500 slugging percentage. He has not commanded the pitch as well as he did last season, but he has actually generated more swings and misses in 2015 than he did in 2014.
Let's look at the breaking balls. In 2014, the league really had a tough time with his breaking balls as they hit a paltry .183 with a .239 BABIP and a low .293 slugging percentage. This season, the tables have been turned as the league is hitting .290 against McHugh's breaking balls with a .335 BABIP and a .472 slugging percentage. In fact, nine of the 12 home runs he has permitted this season have come off the breaking balls. So, we have a pitcher who is having his breaking balls hit at a higher rate than last year, but he's throwing more of them??!! In basketball, the adage goes that shooters have to shoot their way out of a slump. If McHugh is going to continue to throw breaking balls more than 60 percent of the time, we should look into what he is doing in 2015 with those pitchers versus what he did with them in 2014.
The table below shows how his breaking balls stack up on a skill level, and there are areas of concern:
| YEAR | Miss% | InPlay% | O-Swing% | SwSTR% | CalledStr% |
| 2014 | 29 | 38 | 35 | 15 | 37 |
| 2015 | 24 | 44 | 36 | 13 | 31 |
Batters are putting more of McHugh's breaking balls in play this season despite chasing them out of the zone more frequently. Equally concerning is the fact that he is not getting ahead on called strikes with his breaking balls as he was last season. If we separate the breaking balls into the curve and the slider, we see the real culprit here.
In 2014, as McHugh continued to pitch well, he increased the usage of his slider.
After all, batters hit just .210 against his slider last season with a .225 BABIP and a .332 slugging percentage. This season, he began slider heavy, but has tapered off the usage of the pitch and with good reason. This season, batters are hitting .354 against his slider with a .374 BABIP and a .558 slugging percentage. Six of the 12 home runs this season have come off the slider. His measures are down across the board on the slider:
| YEAR | Miss% | InPlay% | O-Swing% | SwSTR% | CalledStr% |
| 2014 | 23 | 44 | 38 | 14 | 42 |
| 2015 | 19 | 50 | 33 | 10 | 35 |
As we look at the heatmaps (courtesy of BaseballSavant.com) of his slider, it isn't too difficult to see why that is.
2014 | 2015 |
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Last season, McHugh worked the slider up and down in the zone with depth. This season, there doesn't appear to be as much depth to the pitch and he's expanding the zone more than the batters are willing to chase the pitch out there. This somewhat reminds me of the issues I covered with Matt Shoemakeron May 23 in regards to how he was not finishing off his splitter. Since that piece came out, Shoemaker has a 2.22 ERA, a .209/.255/.264 slash line, and has not allowed a home run in those four starts.
If the slider continues to struggle, so will the fastball. That combination of pitches work in sync with one another because their velocities are so close to one another. For McHugh, the velo separation on his fastball and slider are less than four miles an hour, so the hitter still has time to react if they're thinking fastball and see slider. Like Shoemaker, I feel that if McHugh can rediscover what made his slider great last year, he could turn things around in a hurry. During his struggles the last month, McHugh has a .353 BABIP, a 64.0 LOB% and while his 5.02 FIP validates how poorly he has pitched, it is still much better than his 6.86 ERA during this stretch.
I'm holding onto him and I suggest you look in to picking him up on the very cheap this week.
