Felipe Rivero

Age:26
Bats/Throws:L/L
Height/Weight:6'2", 209 lbs
Position:Relief Pitcher

When a much anticipated breakout occurs, it’s terrific. As a Felipe Rivero truther last year, his ascension to the closer role with the Pirates justified the skills over role epithet adopted by many saves chasers. While many took Tony Watson for saves, Rivero drifted in drafts and proved to be waiver wire gold. Due to his tremendous season in 2017, Rivero’s moved from the 78th reliever taken on average to the seventh in this year’s average draft position. Will he be worth it?

Starting with last year’s data, Rivero won five games with three losses, 14 holds, 21 saves and two blown saves in 73 appearances. Rivero increased his ground ball percentage to 52.9 percent, up over three from the year before and reduced his hard contact allowed by six percent. Keeping his contact rate allowed and O-Swing stable (chase rate), Rivero improved his swinging strike percentage from 14.5 in 2017 to 15.8 last year.

Shifting to his ratios, Rivero finished with an ERA of 1.67, a 2.47 FIP and 0.89 WHIP, pretty impressive. His strikeout minus walk percentage of 22.7 ranked 25th of al qualified relievers. Rivero’s weighted numbers also rank well. For those unaware of ERA- or FIP-, this chart should illustrate numbers to target, courtesy of Fangraphs.com:

Rivero’s ERA- last year of 38 ranks eighth of all qualified relievers and his FIP- of 58 also keeps him in elite company. In fact, Rivero’s sparkling first half yielded an ERA- of 18 compared to Kenley Jansen’s 25 and Craig Kimbrel’s 26 in the same time frame. Prior to the All-Star break, Rivero pitched 47.1 innings with a 55:12 K:BB, 0.76 ERA, 2.33 FIP and 0.72 WHIP with a 57.8 ground ball percentage limiting hard contact to 19.1 percent.

Unfortunately, the Pirates did use Rivero pretty heavily in the first half with 11 of his 42 appearances (over 25 percent) were for more than three outs. Perhaps this took a toll on Rivero or it could have been regression to the mean. Either way, Rivero already generated numbers worthy of a breakout. It would appear fatigue did play a role in the second half with Rivero’s ERA jumping to 3.21 with a 2.69 FIP and 1.18 WHIP along with his hard contact allowed rising to 37.2 percent. But, this could depress his overall valuation.

Rivero owns the skills which catapulted him atop the ERA- rankings in the first half of the season. He also increased his velocity during the season as this chart from Brooks Baseball illustrates:

With the knowledge Rivero used his fastball almost 61 percent of the time last year yielding a batting average against (BAA) of .201 and an isolated power (ISO) of .055, there could be another level to Rivero’s strikeouts if he can maintain the velocity gains and use his arsenal more often. Freq represents frequency or percent he threw the pitch.

It can be difficult to buy into a closer’s breakout, especially given the volatility of the position. His second half can be a warning of what may happen if he struggles, but the first half should plus the strength of his secondary pitches could unlock a tremendous season. Even with some regression, there’s room for growth if the strikeouts increase and Rivero can keep his WHIP below one.

For those noting some regression, xSTATS looks into weighted numbers for insight. Rivero allowed a BABIP of .234 last year and his xBABIP of .278 reflects some pending conflation of his numbers. He also limited hitters to a .170 batting average against last year with an xAVG of .206, a difference of over 30 points. Of most interest, Rivero’s xbbFIP (weighted batted ball FIP) of 1.97 could translate to an ERA below two with a few more hits against but more strikeout if he uses his secondary arsenal more to mitigate the damage to ratios and fantasy value.

All in all, Felipe Rivero will be the closer on a potentially not very good baseball team but one which will compete. His first half highlighted the level he could reach, but Rivero will need to piece together a full season of these numbers in order to reach elite closer status.

As long as the Pirates manage his workload better, Rivero’s in line to take another step forward in his development and ascension towards being a  top five closer. Perhaps, as soon as this year. If passing on the top five in average draft position, Rivero makes a terrific player to target at the end of the first tier of closers with something many lack, job security.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Statistical Credits:

Fangraphs.com, BrooksBaseball.net, xSTATS.org, Baseball-Reference.com