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Dodger Blue > Dodgers News > How Ross Stripling Has Emerged Into Valuable Starter For Dodgers
Dodgers News

How Ross Stripling Has Emerged Into Valuable Starter For Dodgers

Jeff Spiegel
May 25, 2018
6 Min Read
Troy Taormina-USA TODAY Sports
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With Rich Hill back on to the 10-day disabled list, where he’s joined Hyun-Jin Ryu and Clayton Kershaw, the Los Angeles Dodgers are now without three of their top five starting pitchers. For any team, a reality like this would be a devastating blow to their chances of success.

Not to mention a team like the Dodgers, who are still working to turn their season around. However, I began to wonder whether this was as devastating as it first seemed.

While Alex Wood and Kenta Maeda have been fantastic thus far (both have a FIP in the top-10 in all of baseball), the question was whether the team would have enough reinforcements at the back end of the rotation to keep things afloat.

Walker Buehler has been great but he’s a rookie who could reasonably regress as teams get more and more of a feel for him. Was there anyone else the Dodgers could count on?

Well, last Saturday, Ross Stripling took the mound and pitched the best game of his career: six innings, four hits, one earned run, zero walks and nine strikeouts. It led me to wonder whether Stripling not only a short-term answer to the team’s problem, but possibly a long-term one.

It’s weird to say this about Stripling — someone who has been around since 2016 and never really dominated “top prospect” lists. And yet, even looking at Stripling’s career as a whole, what he did Saturday shouldn’t have been completely unexpected.

For his career, Stripling has a 3.57 ERA and 3.56 FIP across 86 games (20 starts; 66 relief appearances). For some context, Julio Urias has an ERA of 3.86 and a FIP of 3.53 in 100 career innings.

While his career numbers are pretty impressive, it seems like in 2018, Stripling has made a jump. Before joining the rotation, Stripling was clearly the team’s best reliever this season — posting an absurd 0.59 ERA in 15 innings pitched.

In four starts this season, Stripling has pitched to a 3.26 ERA with 23 strikeouts over 19.1 innings.

So what’s the reason for Stripling’s improvement? Well, as you look into the numbers, it appears to be a combination of some luck and technical improvements.

On the luck side, Stripling is giving up more fly balls than he ever has before (35.5 percent) while also allowing fewer home runs per fly ball than ever before (6.1 percent). Last season he gave up fly balls 29 percent of the time, and of those fly balls, 16.1 ercent of them left the yard.

You could look into these numbers and conclude that somehow Stripling has gotten better at reducing the number of fly balls that go out, but the truth is many believe that this low of a number is more a product of luck than it is skill.

Fangraphs suggests that the league average for this ratio is somewhere around 10 percent — meaning Stripling is likely due for some real regression. Interestingly enough, part of the reason this number is so low is because 18.2 percent of the fly balls he has allowed have been classified as infield fly balls.

On the flip side, there are some things that Stripling can control that he has been doing a better job of. For one, he’s throwing more strikes. This season he is throwing 47 percent of his pitches inside the strike zone — up five percent from last season.

At the same time, he’s limiting hard contact, as just 25.3 percent of balls hit have been classified as ‘hard hit’ (down 7.5 percent since 2016). In fact, according to Statcast, the average exit velocity of balls hit off Stripling is just 84.7 mph — which is the 21st-best mark in the league.

What’s to make of all this? The home run/fly ball numbers are genuinely concerning as that number is far too low to be sustainable, and yet, in adjusting his pitch mix since coming up. Stripling is throwing more sliders and less fastballs, adding some velocity to his fastball (91.2 MPH in 2016 and 92.8 MPH in 2018) he has done a great job of limiting hard contact.

As it stands, we’re talking about a pretty small sample size this season but my overall conclusion is that Stripling may be better than I ever gave him credit for. I think he has the potential to be a high-end middle reliever at the very least, with the ceiling of someone who could slide into the No. 4 or 5 starter slot on a competitive team.

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TAGGED:2018 Los Angeles DodgersAlex WoodClayton KershawKenta MaedaRich HillRoss Stripling
ByJeff Spiegel
Jeff Spiegel was raised in California but currently resides in Portland, Oregon. After graduating from the University of Oregon, he worked in sports before entering journalism full time — first as a Sports Reporter and then as the Associate Editor of a local newspaper. Online, he has been writing about both the Dodgers and Raiders since 2012 — having written for DodgersNation.com and SBNation.com prior to joining both DodgerBlue.com and RaidersNation.com. He left full-time journalism in 2012 to become a pastor. Jeff can be found on Twitter at @JeffSpiegel. Favorite Dodger I'm going past and present (sort of) on this one. Recently, I was a die hard Yasiel Puig guy. The energy he played with was amazing and the hope and expectation he brought every single night was captivating. Whether it was a rifle from the warning track to throw a guy out at second, an aggressive bat flip or licking his bat, I was here for ALL of the Yasiel Puig era. Past tense, I'd go with Eric Gagné. This wasn't so much about Gagné himself as it was the experience of cheering for him. Yes, he was on steroids — but the dude was unlike any pitcher I've ever seen — he was NASTY. I still stand by the claim that if I needed one out and my life depended on it, and could choose any pitcher from any era to get me that out, I'm taking roided up Gagné in a heartbeat. Favorite Dodger Moment A few jump to mind immediately. Being born in November of 1988, I missed the last World Series by weeks — which also meant I didn't get to see the Dodgers win a playoff game until I was nearly 16. They had made the playoffs in 1995 and 1996, but were swept both times. In 2004, though, I got to see them win behind a complete game shutout from Jose Lima, and that was pretty freaking special. The next in-person moment that came to mind was the Manny Ramirez bobblehead night pinch-hit grand slam from 2009. Vin Scully claimed it was the loudest he had heard Dodger Stadium in 20 years, and it's hard to disagree. As far as ones I didn't get to see live, I'll throw one more out there: the back-to-back-to-back-to-back home runs that tied a game against the Padres in 2006 (plus the walk-off from Nomar Garciaparra in extra innings) was an all-timer. Obviously, the impending Dodgers World Series will quickly jump to the top of this list...
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