Tigers: What to make of pitcher Buck Farmer?
By Bill Pivetz
The Tigers brought up Buck Farmer to fill their rotation at the end of May. With two good starts and a bad start under his belt, what can we make of him?
The Detroit Tigers have a good roster on paper but haven’t been able to put it all together this season. The offense hasn’t been fully healthy at any point this season and the pitching staff hasn’t put up the same numbers as last season. However, one pitcher with some promise is Buck Farmer.
Farmer made his first start on May 27 against the Chicago White Sox. You couldn’t ask for a better first game matchup. Farmer pitched 6.1 shutout innings. He allowed three hits and two walks while striking out 11 on his way to his first win.
Farmer followed that game up with an even better second game. While he didn’t strike out as many, only five, Farmer went 6.2 shutout innings and gave up three hits and one walk against another poor offense in the Los Angeles Angels.
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Unfortunately, his success didn’t last long. Farmer ran into trouble in the form of the Arizona Diamondbacks. He lasted just 2.1 innings after giving up six runs on nine hits and struck out four.
The Diamondbacks rank second in the league against right-handers with a .348 wOBA (weighted on-base average). If you’re not familiar with wOBA, it “combines all the different aspects of hitting into one metric, weighting each of them in proportion to their actual run value.”
This is a more complicated way of saying home runs are more valuable than singles. The weights for each hit change every year based on the yearly performance. Fangraphs has a nice write-up of wOBA and how to use it here.
Anyway, despite being 16th in batting average, the Diamondbacks are fifth in runs scored in June.
Farmer will have another tough matchup in his fourth MLB start. He faces the Tampa Bay Rays on June 18. The Rays are fifth in wOBA against RHP at .341. They are 19th in runs scored,14th in average and sixth in home runs so far this month.
Farmer has been a popular waiver add as his ESPN league ownership up 26.4 percent over the last week. With the number of injuries to pitchers this season, Farmer is worth the add in all league formats.
Farmer isn’t a big strikeout pitcher, 8.7 K/9 in the minors, but is capable of the occasional double-digit punch out game. If you do pick him up, he isn’t someone to start for every game. You have to play the matchups. Though, at the point in the season, that’s your best option.