The Athletics haven’t seen one of their starters post a sub-3.00 ERA in a season since left-hander Rich Hill accomplished the feat in 2016, albeit during a truncated run in their uniform. Hill fired 76 innings of 2.25 ERA/2.54 FIP ball that year before the out-of-contention A’s sent him and outfielder Josh Reddick to the Dodgers for a three-player package. Now, three years later, one part of the Athletics’ return is on track for the top season an A’s starter has put up since Hill’s exit.
When he joined the A’s in the Hill trade, right-hander Frankie Montas ranked as Baseball America’s 82nd-best prospect. Despite Montas’ high upside, it was already the third deal involving him since he signed with the Red Sox in 2010 as a free agent from the Dominican Republic. The Red Sox traded Montas to the White Sox in 2013 in a large, three-team swap which delivered righty Jake Peavy to Boston. Two years after that, the ChiSox flipped Montas to the Dodgers in yet another three-club trade – this time to land third baseman Todd Frazier.
While Montas has been somewhat nomadic as a professional, it appears the 26-year-old has found a home in Oakland. Montas didn’t pitch in his first year with the organization because of a rib injury, and he then registered inconsistent results between the majors and minors in 2017. However, in logging a 3.88 ERA/3.90 FIP in 65 major league innings last season, Montas pitched his way into the A’s 2019 rotation. They’re now the beneficiaries of an ace-like version of Montas, who has amassed 76 innings of 2.84 ERA/3.04 FIP ball to emerge as one of the majors’ breakout starters.
Montas’ quality run prevention last year came with fewer than six strikeouts per nine innings, but that figure has rocketed to 9.36 this season. Meanwhile, Montas is walking fewer hitters (2.37 per nine, down from 2.91), generating far more ground balls (51.4 percent now versus 43.7 in 2018) and inducing significantly more infield flies (11.7 percent, up from 4.5). Unsurprisingly given those numbers, home runs haven’t haunted Montas, who has yielded HRs on 10 percent of fly balls. So the A’s have a starter who racks up strikeouts, seldom walks anyone, keeps the ball on the ground and stops it from leaving in the ballpark. That sounds a lot like the 2016 version of Hill, which is a high compliment.
The question is: How is Montas doing this? Well, it helps when you’re one of the hardest-throwing starters in baseball. His high-spin four-seam fastball clocks in at upward of 97 mph, which ranks fifth in the game and just ahead of stars Gerrit Cole, Walker Buehler and Jacob deGrom. Hitters have mustered an unimposing .279 weighted on-base average versus Montas’ four-seamer, and they’ve done even worse against his slider (.198) and splitter (.243), according to Statcast. Montas throws each of those pitches at least 17 percent of the time, but he relies primarily on his sinker (38.6 percent). It’s a drastically different repertoire than Montas offered in 2018, when his sinker (55.4 percent) was his go-to pitch. He also occasionally featured a changeup that’s no longer in the picture.
Of course, altering your pitch mix doesn’t guarantee stardom. You’d better be able to command those pitches, too. Montas has to this point. Heatmaps via FanGraphs (2018, 2019) indicate he’s doing a better job keeping his pitches down and locating fewer of them in the middle of the plate compared to last season. In the process, Montas has thrown more strikes in general, raised his swinging-strike rate from 8.6 percent to 11.1, fooled more hitters into chasing his offerings outside the zone and dropped his contact rate against by nearly 5 percent. When hitters have made contact off Montas, it hasn’t been particularly damaging, and that doesn’t look as if it’s going to change. After all, his xwOBA against (.283) is even better than the nonthreatening .292 wOBA batters have managed so far. Beyond that, there’s nothing unusual in the .306 batting average on balls in play Montas has surrendered.
When Oakland unexpectedly earned a wild-card berth in 2018, it used reliever Liam Hendriks as an opener because it was lacking a front-line starter. Hendriks ended up enduring a rough outing during a loss for the Athletics, who are once again in wild-card contention. And if the A’s make it back to the one-game playoff this year, they just may be able to turn to an ace-like hurler in Montas.
Regardless of how the team’s season shakes out, it looks as though it has a long-term building block in Montas. The fact that Montas will make a minimal salary through next season and isn’t scheduled to become a free agent until after 2023 is all the better for the low-budget A’s, who also have no shortage of other promising starters. While Sean Manaea, Jesus Luzardo A.J. Puk, James Kaprielian and Jharel Cotton have all dealt with notable injuries of late, the ability is evident in each case. With at least some members of that group eventually slated to join Montas in Oakland, the club may be on the cusp of boasting a controllable, talent-rich rotation.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
If they can stay in WC contention til the ASB, they will be in good shape with all of those pitchers coming back. Defense is good, hitting has been good so far, just need starters to save the always depleted pen from ruining everything.
Hitting still has some work to do. They don’t get the big hits they need to be getting. They can pack the bases all they want, but that doesn’t matter if they can’t situational hits.
You just described the padres season.
That would be good for their fans … both of them! 🙂
Original joke, solid contribution.
26 teams have seen attendance decline this year.
The A’s are one of the 4 teams to INCREASE attendance.
Not true! Their reported “home” attendance is down vs last year by 2% … BUT, this includes 2 “home” games in Tokyo which drew 46k each … wo these their true home attendance is down 11% from an already paltry 2018 rate.
Daulton Jefferies is laying waste to AA right now, he should be at AAA by the end of the month, and MLB possibly soon after that. They could use him like Puk, as a RP, or even a long-man/post-opener type. Super under the radar guy but with potential big impact. Parker Dunshee is also really close to cracking the bigs.
Yeah Jefferies was almost lights out in his last start. Longest outing since the start before he had TJS in 2017, walked none, struck out 6 I believe, including 5 in a row before finally surrendering a long ball, which was one of only 2 hits he allowed in 3 2/3 innings. Kaprielian was also lights out on Saturday night. 3 hitless, struck out 2 I believe, so they could both move up a level. Both could very easily provide us with relief pitching depth while they get stretched out.
Dunshee has had a rough time in his first look at the Triple A level, but our division is full of hitters parks. He’s walking more than he was too, though, so he’s probably not going to be ready this season.
I kinda doubt it with those two since that would start there clock and require 40 man moves. There are just a lot of more proven guys above them who are on the 40 man already. It sounds like Puk and Cotton will be brought up as relievers while Luzardo will be stretched back out to start as will Manaea around the ASB. I like Tanner Anderson so far in his debut today vs Tampa he was good this spring as well, and I wont fault any pitcher in LV for some bad stats since that place seems like a colorado esq launching pad.
Manaea, Luzardo, Anderson, Montas, Fiers in the 5 at the break with Puk, Cotton, Wendleken, as the Pen help. Those guys are all or will all be 40 Man by the start of 2020.
Puk and Luzardo are both pitching tomorrow in Stockton.
Gotta take all AAA numbers (both hitters and pitchers) with a grain of salt this year. Really wish they’d move all the fences back in that lg.
Also: A’s need to send Trivino down, he’s lost the plot entirely. Can’t afford to let a guy play through it in a pennant race.
And call up who? There’s no one else. JB Wendelken, but he’s gotten destroyed in Triple A. Park factors or not, 9 ERA is no good.
Puk and Cotton for the pen while you try and iron out Dull Wendlekin
I’m goin to Stockton to see the big men pitch tomorrow
I had a feeling when the White Sox moved Montas alongside Trayce Thompson and Micah Johnson, that Montas was the guy we’d regret giving up. He really never got a shot on the south side or with the Dodgers. He looked to be at minimum, a high-upside bullpen arm. Although, I can’t say I ever thought he’d be an ace for anyone; maybe a good no. 3/4 starter.
Glad he’s doing well.
He broke a rib early with the Dodgers and with their extreme end of the win now spectrum there wasn’t time to wait 3 years for him to breakout. Montas is a great guy and its been a long time coming.
Mark was asked about Mike Soroka in his chat a few days ago and his response was “Nice start for Soroka so far, but the statistics indicate some regression is inevitable.” Two days later you guys write an entire article about The Oakland Ace, who is 5 years older, has a 2.82 ERA vs a 1.38 ERA, 1.6 WAR vs. 2.5 WAR, WHIP of 1.184 vs 0.872, and an FIP of 3.04 vs 2.70. Soroka’s peripherals made him barely worth a mention in a chat, but Montas required an entire article? Consistency is key!
I’m not responsible for the opinions of somebody else. That said, Mark’s right that Soroka’s in for regression (with a 1.38 ERA, of course he is). However, I have no doubt that Mark sees Soroka as an excellent building block for the Braves. Soroka is hands down one of the best young starters in the game.
Of course he’s due for regression, it’s highly unlikely he pitches to a sub 2.00 ERA all season. My only problem was that he stated it was because of his peripherals. His peripherals are all much better than Montas’ and he’s putting together one of the greatest rookie seasons in history with little to no publicity, yet Montas gets his own 500 word research paper. Sorry that I’m on my soapbox on your article, it was very well written.
No problem. Thanks for reading.