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Check out the other 2023 Gallardo Awards here.

The M-SABR Gallardo Awards, originally conceived by alumni Cam Cain and Sahil Shah, are given to some of the worst performing players in their respective categories each season.

This is the fifth article in this year’s series and a new addition to the Gallardo Awards. Below, we outline the meticulous selection process for the ultimate and coveted Yovani Gallardo Award, honoring MLB’s worst performing pitcher. The namesake of the prize refers to the particularly disastrous 2018 season long-time big-league pitcher Yovani Gallardo had in 2018. The top ten vote-getters are highlighted in reverse order before awarding M-SABR’s ultimate prize.

First, let’s take a minute to appreciate each of these athletes for earning their way to baseball’s highest, most competitive level. It is an incredible accomplishment that is not to be undermined by a singular season against the world’s greatest hitters. So, this work is not to criticize the athletes but rather give background for some of the downfalls they experienced in what is an incredibly difficult sport.

Note – All pitchers qualified for this award threw at least 60 innings in 2023.

10. Luis L. Ortiz, PIT

6.90 xERA, 5.38 xFIP, -0.3 fWAR

To kick us off, Ortiz threw his first season of substantial innings at the big league level in 2023, and on the surface, it doesn’t look particularly bad. Some might even argue that his teammate Roasny Contreras is more deserving after posting a 6.59 ERA in 68.1 innings of work. And don’t worry, he would definitely be an honorable mention. However, we (M-SABR) are a baseball analytics club at U of M, and advanced statistics matter. Some pitchers are simply more lucky than others.

To highlight the disparity which is present in stats like ERA, expected ERA is a more full-encompassing statistic we can take a look at. Just like xwOBA for hitters, xERA takes every batted ball and its effect on run creation into account. For example, if a pitcher allows a barrel – the statistic which identifies batted balls with the ideal launch angle and exit velocity to achieve higher run creation – but a defender makes an incredible play to nullify any chance of scoring, xERA would discredit the pitcher for allowing that type of contact. ERA, on the other hand, would not.

In the case of Ortiz and why he makes our list, he had the fourth-worst xERA (6.90) across all of baseball in 2023 despite posting a 4.78 ERA over 86.2 innings. This is the highest difference between xERA and ERA amongst all major leaguers, highlighting a statistically significant likelihood of the presence of strong defensive play behind him.

Conversely, Contreras posted an xERA of 5.41, which is still poor but far less substantial than Ortiz’s figure. Since fWAR is considered to be a more all-encompassing statistic which also takes ballpark factor into account, we can look at Ortiz’s -0.1 value and see that the disparity created by ERA is present in Contreras’ 0.3 fWAR.

To make matters worse for Ortiz, he walked 12% of batters while striking out a bottom-percentile 14.8%. The 2.8% difference between K% and BB% for Ortiz is the lowest among all major league pitchers, highlighting an inability to force swings and misses, while simultaneously failing to find the strike zone.

9. Carlos Carrasco, NYM 

6.82 xERA, 4.93 xFIP, -0.3 fWAR

I used to really not enjoy when “Cookie” Carrasco would come up to Comerica Park year after year and hold my Tigers to two runs over seven innings of work. During a stretch from 2015 to 2018, Carrasco was honestly one of the most underrated pitchers in baseball. In those four seasons, his highest xERA was a 3.71, and he had three seasons of at least 4.8 fWAR. Somehow, he was never voted to an All-Star Game.

This is disappointing to say the least for a guy who had such a great run in the middle of his career. Then, like most pitchers do when they reach a certain age, Carrasco started to see a decline in his performance. However, he managed to throw in a very strong 2022 season with the Mets, a time when a lot of things seemed to be going right for the team from Queens.

And mirroring his team’s performance once again, Carrasco was one of many issues for the 75-win Metropolitans in 2023. He finished fifth worst, right after Ortiz, with an xERA of 6.82 over his 20 starts. Despite reeling in two-thirds-of-a-season’s worth of games started, Carrasco managed just 90 innings. He opened the season with an injury, closed the season with another, and was limited in between.

It’s been a long grind of a career for Carrasco, who even took a short hiatus from playing back in 2019 due to a leukemia diagnosis. As the veteran arm enters his age-37 season back with his longtime Cleveland Guardians, it’s likely he’s nearing the end of his time in the MLB. So, while Carrasco did make the top 10 for the Gallardo Award, I would like to recognize him for a highly underrated career and say that, as a Tigers fan, he made my life miserable (which is the best compliment I can give).

8. Joey Wentz, DET

5.74 xERA, 5.13 xFIP, -0.6 fWAR

Oh boy, here we go. I couldn’t escape this list without recognizing one of my Tigers. I do want to start by saying, though, that Wentz, a 6’5” left-handed starter, has pretty remarkable stuff. He boasts a four-seam fastball with some of the best horizontal movement the game has to offer with a changeup that he tunnels off of it extremely well. 

Given his tendency to go deep into games, If utilized in the right way, Wentz could be a fairly deceptive pitcher who would offer great inning-eating ability. No, he could never be one of the game’s stars but might be able to put together a productive and lengthy career.

So, what caused Wentz to post a 5.74 xERA and -0.6 fWAR in a big-league season? Location, location, location. There’s not much more I can say. If you don’t locate your pitches, you will get hit around in the MLB. It’s not that he has an inability to hit the strike zone (though he could cut down on his walks a bit) but rather that he finds too much of it.

Above, you see the heat maps (by Baseball Savant) for his four-seam fastball and cutter, a high-speed pair of pitches he uses two-thirds of the time. Wentz is simply all over the heart of the zone. Considering he doesn’t throw an above-average-velocity fastball, these maps are a clear cause for concern. As a point of comparison, below you will see heat maps for wildly-successful low-velocity pitcher Logan Webb.

There are two things which stand out: (1) Wentz throws far more fastballs than Webb and (2) he doesn’t spot them on the edges of the zone like the latter. These are areas where he can improve but only with time and experience in the league. However, given the recent additions of Kenta Maeda and Jack Flaherty, as well as the return of Casey Mize, Wentz might not get that chance. 

7. Alek Manoah, TOR

6.24 xERA, 5.85 xFIP, -0.4 fWAR

Manoah may be one of the more talked-about pitchers on this list, purely due to the massive dropoff in performance he had between a Cy Young-caliber 2022 and a 2023 season in which he made a trip to the Florida Complex League.

The 6’6”, 285-lb. power pitcher was utterly dominant in ‘22, posting a miniscule 2.24 ERA which was good for the top-ranked pitching run value across all of baseball. Those figures fell to a 5.87 ERA and fourth-percentile pitching run value a year later. He also finished seventh-worst in all of baseball in xERA (6.24) and BB% (14.2%). This was enough to warrant the Blue Jays righty a pair of minor league starts which also went quite poorly.

So, many are asking, what happened to Manoah and will he return to form in the near future? Well, when looking at things from a purely pitch-level standpoint, there is one glaring issue for Manoah between 2022 and ‘23. The fastball. His four-seamer dropped over a full MPH in velocity and showed far less vertical ride than before.

It became clear that, as the season went on, Manoah lost confidence in his bread-and-butter pitch, throwing it less as the year progressed and missing over the heart of the plate far too often. Though oftentimes a drop in velocity could signal an injury or a change in mechanics, it could be purely mental as well. Struggling to find the feel for the pitch and knowing there are expectations to live up to as a power pitcher can only worsen the results.

Though there is no way to pinpoint the specifics, it is clear Manoah relies heavily on his fastball. His pitch run values fell across the board, but the most substantial drop was far and away the heater (from 19 to -10 between ‘22 and ‘23). Being a high-percentage fastball thrower, and seeing as that likely won’t change, he will need to find this pitch if he hopes to regain success at baseball’s highest level.

6. Luis Severino, NYY

5.96 xERA, 4.83 xFIP, -0.6 fWAR

From one flamethrowing righty to another, Luis Severino’s fastball velocity has far from dropped over the course of recent years. Still in the top echelon of fastball velocities, Severino’s 96.3 MPH heater is the centerpiece of his repertoire. Once upon a time, in his All-Star 2017 and ‘18 campaigns, the Sevy four-seam fastball was one of the most unhittable pitches across all of baseball.

Wracking up a high opponent whiff rate which reached 24% at its peak in 2017, Severino’s fastball has always been the key to his success. Considering the pitch’s velocity didn’t fall in 2023, though, why did it produce a -14 run value and .468 opponent wOBA?

Similarly to Wentz, Severino has struggled with pitch placement. While working up in the zone is a key attribute of high-velocity pitchers, it can present an issue which many arms in this category eventually fall victim to. If a pitcher begins missing just slightly lower than their intended location, they can get into big power trouble. Simply put, the easiest pitches to hit gap-to-gap and over the fence are fastballs above the waist, while some of the most difficult to catch up to are the ones at the letters. A pitcher is treading the line if this is their primary mode of attack.

Severino fits this bill, allowing a whopping .688 SLG against fastballs, which was by far the highest total of his career. He is missing in the power zone and throws too many fastballs (63% four-seam fastball, cutter, or sinker in 2023) to leverage deception in any manner. Additionally, he allowed the most home runs per nine innings in all of baseball (2.32), which is not a statistic you want to be at the top of the list for. 

Severino heads cross-city to the New York Mets in 2024 on a one-year, “prove it” deal. If he improves his pitch location, the Mets may just see the high-strikeout, low-opponent-SLG Sevy of old. If not, expect a short leash. The Mets do not want a repeat of 2023.

5. Chris Flexen, SEA/COL

6.20 xERA, 5.12 xFIP, -0.5 fWAR

Chris Flexen returned to the MLB post-covid after a stint in Korea, reportedly having had a revelation in terms of his mechanics and pitch shaping. Well, whatever he discovered worked, putting together a pair of quality seasons in 2021-22. Out of the KBO, Flexen returned to post 3.0 fWAR and the lowest home run total among all qualified pitchers in his first season back in the states.

2022 didn’t quite hold the same success for Flexen, but he was serviceable nonetheless. A crafty pitcher, the Mariners righty doesn’t overpower hitters with a fastball, but rather utilizes his large plethora of pitch types and shapes to keep them off balance. Adding a spinny gyro-slider before the ‘22 season, Flexen went from a heavy vertically-focused four-seam, curveball pitcher to the complete opposite – a horizontal cutter, changeup, slider guy.

This change was, in truth, the beginning of a turn for the worse for Flexen. The slider he added isn’t nearly deceptive enough, and working it off his fastball ended up negatively impacting the latter. As previously noted, once a pitcher loses the advantage of a strong fastball which allows their other pitches to play off of it, they are toast.

Flexen’s expected statistics in 2022 (5.04 xFIP, 4.62 xERA) foreshadowed the disastrous season which was up ahead. He finished the 2023 campaign with the second-worst FIP (6.22) in all of baseball and the eighth-worst ERA (6.86). This performance was good for -0.5 fWAR.

To be fair, Flexen was traded to Colorado at the midway point of the season, which is a difficult place for anyone to pitch, but his statistics in Seattle actually managed to look worse than those with the Rockies when all set and done. There was little positive to take from 2023 for Flexen, who signed with the White Sox this offseason. A lot of strategic adjustments would need to be made for the right-hander to rebound in ‘24. I wouldn’t expect much from him.

4. Noah Syndergaard, LAD/CLE

6.52 xERA, 5.21 xFIP, -0.5 fWAR

Do you remember the 2018 New York Mets core four pitchers? It was a deadly quartet of arms that made it nearly impossible for an opposing offense to get through a series with more than a few runs scored. If only they had a smidge of offense to move them over the 77-win threshold. Well, Noah Syndergaard was ridiculously good at the time and the second-best option the Mets had after Jacob deGrom. Then, the staff fell apart due to a variety of injuries, and “Thor” hasn’t really been the same ever since.

Prior to the pandemic, Syndergaard was top five in fastball velocity year in and year out and was yet another pitcher on this list who relied so heavily on the heater that a fall in velocity was almost sure to be a career-ender. And frankly, it was. 

Syndergaard endured a pair of elbow surgeries during 2020-21 and returned in ‘22 with a fastball that had dropped by over three MPH. A change this drastic in a guy’s most important pitch requires a complete overhaul in how he attacks hitters. Though difficult, many have done it throughout history. 

Pitchers like David Cone and Hall of Famer Mike Mussina managed to salvage their careers by becoming completely control-focused after extreme losses in velocity. Whereas others, like Tim Lincecum and most recently, Madison Bumgarner, were never able to find success after similar declines. Syndergaard unfortunately appears to be falling into the latter category. 

The 6’6” righty has shifted his focus toward movement pitches, like the sinker, cutter combination, but it’s completely new for him. Pitchers like Syndergaard, who so heavily relied on the fastball from high school ball all the way through the pros, might simply never have developed strong enough secondary pitches to make up for an extreme loss of fastball velocity. This much is apparent for Syndergaard, who posted a 6.52 xERA in 88.2 innings split between the Dodgers and Guardians. One of the league’s premier strikeout artists nearly a decade ago, Syndergaard finished with the seventh-lowest K/9 total across all of baseball (5.68).

3. Adam Wainwright, STL

7.35 xERA, 5.77 xFIP, -0.4 fWAR

Nothing really went right in the Cardinals’ pitching room in 2023. Miles Mikolas, who was a key piece entering the season, struggled immensely, Jack Flaherty was so-so before being traded, and Jordan Montgomery was pitching fine before also being dealt. Additionally, the bullpen was poor and veteran arm Adam Wainwright returned for his age-41 major league season. 

Though it seemed Waino had mastered the art of pitching with low velocity back in 2022 when he posted a serviceable 3.71 ERA over nearly 200 innings, his numbers fell off the map in ‘23. In truth, when Yadier Molina and Albert Pujols retired at the end of the 2022 season, I figured Wainwright was going to go with them. Instead, he returned and posted a 7.35 xERA, tied for the worst total across the league.

Wainwright’s velocity across all of his pitches had fallen dramatically and this translated into an inability to force swings and misses. He forced the league’s lowest whiff rate (13%) and K-rate (11.4%). With the ball put in play so often, it was very unlikely Wainwright would garner success anywhere close to what he used to produce. He also finished last in the league in opponent xBA, xSLG, wOBA, and xwOBA.

There is definitely a clear argument for Wainwright to bring home the Yovani Gallardo Award in 2023, but the truth is he didn’t hurt himself by way of walks or barrels allowed. He also didn’t have his best stuff, throwing a sinker that averaged a career-low 87 mph and didn’t move nearly as much as it used to. This pitch saw a whopping -23 run value, the worst against a single pitch in the major leagues amongst arms with at least 100 innings pitched in 2023.

Adam Wainwright announced his retirement at the conclusion of the ‘23 campaign, marking the end of an excellent 24-year professional career (18 seasons at the big league level). Uncle Charlie amassed 2,688.1 innings, 2,202 strikeouts, and a 3.53 ERA over the course of his career. Add in a 2006 World Series ring, and in my book, he should be enshrined in Cooperstown when the time comes. Congrats on an illustrious career, Waino!

Runner-Up – Michael Kopech, CHW

5.81 xERA, 5.68 xFIP, -0.9 fWAR

For all those firm believers in the merits of WAR, Michael Kopech would be the 2023 Yovani Gallardo Award winner; however, there’s reason to believe he doesn’t quite deserve the honor. Many might even argue that Kopech’s 5.81 xERA, a value far lower than Wainwright’s league-worst 7.35, warrants that he should be lower on this list. In any case, the White Sox righty was one of many substandard storylines surrounding the Southside squad in 2023.

Kopech threw 129.1 innings last season, the most among all pitchers on this list, which merits the question – why did the White Sox keep rolling him out to the mound every fifth day? Well, simply put, this pitching staff was horrendous. Outside of a decent story in reliever Gregory Santos, there was little positive which came from this past season for Chicago.

Shifting back to Kopech, there is one aspect of the game a pitcher can control above all else. Walks. Walks are nearly entirely attributed to the pitcher and are the easiest way for an offense to start a rally. Well, in 2023, only Tigers closer Alex Lange walked hitters at a higher rate than Kopech, who allowed the free pass a substantial 15.4% of the time. These walks also necessitated a league-worst 6.46 FIP.

The other component of FIP deals with home runs, and Kopech gave up over two of these per nine innings. Allowing big flies and walking batters is a deadly combination which sets up a pitcher for failure. Removing poor defense and luck from the picture, these are the components of the game a pitcher can best control for, and Kopech was about as bad as it can get in these areas. 

What makes things even worse for the White Sox flamethrower is that his stuff hasn’t really lost any power and movement; his execution is just poor. We have seen Kopech put together successful seasons in the past, but only some of that has been as a starter. It might be time for the White Sox to consider moving his talents back to the bullpen for a fresh start. This way, Kopech can more heavily rely on his fastball and focus his efforts on short spurts of energy.

2023 Yovani Gallardo Award Recipient: Kyle Muller, OAK

7.35 xERA, 5.50 xFIP, -0.7 fWAR

Without further ado, Oakland Athletics left-handed starter Kyle Muller is the 2023 Yovani Gallardo Award winner. As a quick run through, Muller finished last in the league in ERA (7.60), tied-for-last in xERA (7.35), second-to-last in fWAR (-0.7), second-to-last in opponent xBA (.315), second-to-last in opponent xSLG (.546), second-to-last in opponent wOBA (.417), and last in opponent hard-hit rate (49.6%).

Muller was, simply put, the worst performing pitcher in baseball in 2023. In truth, the 25-year-old hadn’t shown much success in his limited stints in ‘21 and ‘22 with Atlanta either, and he may just not be cut out for major league ball. It seems almost unfair to an extent; all of Muller’s pitches are below-average in terms of velocity, break, and spin, which makes pitching at baseball’s highest level extremely difficult.

There have been pitchers who have gotten by without the best stuff, but having not one plus option is a tall feat. So, who is to blame for Muller’s less-than-ideal major league career thus far? I would say, the Oakland Athletics.

Oakland, as an organization, has failed athletes like Kyle Muller and many others due to the lack of care given to the on-field performance of the team in recent years. The Athletics have spent virtually zero money (and that number was actually $0 in the 2021-22 offseason) on their major league squad, rolling out inexperienced guys like Muller to the field.

Pushing young athletes to the sport’s highest level before giving them the opportunity to fully mature can ruin their careers before they even get off the ground. Muller, for example, had shown minor league success with Atlanta but had yet to put that on display in the majors. When Oakland acquired the young arm, it felt as if he was immediately expected to be one of the key components to their big-league rotation. This was exemplified further when he was named the Opening Day starter for the squad in 2023.

Truthfully, Kyle Muller shouldn’t be in the major leagues at this point in time, and though I’m sure he’s glad to have the opportunity, I can’t help but feel he has been slighted by the organization like so many others. Shame on Oakland for allowing their on-field talent to dwindle so far behind the rest of the league. And now, with a move to Las Vegas imminent, it’s hard to believe what reality has become for A’s fans in the Bay Area.

Categories: 2023 Gallardo Awards, Articles, Season Analysis

Tags: 2023 Gallardo Awards