It seems like a yearly exercise, but J.A. Happ gets overlooked almost every draft season. Last year, he finished fourth in the American League in wins (17), seventh in WHIP (1.13) and 13th in ERA (3.65). At the trade deadline, he joined the Yankees and re-signed with them in the offseason via free agency.

Happ logged 177.2 innings last year with 193 strikeouts against 51 walks en route to a career best 19.4 strikeouts minus walks percentage. His ground ball rate slipped by just under six percent along with his hard-hit percentage allowed rising by 4.2 percent. This will need to be monitored with his transition to Yankee Stadium for half of his starts. Happ’s been able to outperform his peripheral statistics, but hard-hit fly balls in home games will affect his ratios.

Before looking at his arsenal, Happ threw more fastballs last year while almost shelving his curve. He also used fewer sinkers which helped his swinging strike percentage. It will be intriguing to see how Happ will pitch in New York, but here are his arsenal results from last year courtesy of Statcast:

Happ should see some positive migration with both his sinker and change if they trend towards their expected averages. He also generated whiff percentages above 20 percent with three pitches underscoring his ability to produce strikeouts. Although Happ’s more of a compiler, he provides steady numbers in this regard.

In an effort to illustrate how Happ works above and at the bottom of the zone, here’s his pitch plot chart with his four primary pitches from 2018:

Within his zone profiles, Happ pounds the upper edges of the strike zone while burying his slider to right handed hitters and his change to left-handed batters:

Over the last three years, Happ’s won 47 games with 21 losses in 518 innings with 498 strikeouts, a 3.44 ERA and 1.20 WHIP. This sets a nice baseline for his projection sets due to his reliability. Using his expected statistics (xSTATS), Happ recorded a 3.69 bbFIP with an expected on-base average of .307 last year. This aligns well with his 3.98 xFIP which creates a sliding range for his potential ERA in the season ahead. However, given his new home, it could ebb towards the xFIP end rather than his kwFIP from 2018.

This also resonates in Happ’s projection sets:

Due to the lack of sexy upside, J.A. Happ ’s average draft position as the 35th starting pitcher and 51st pitcher at 136th overall in 12-team drafts the last month in NFBC data. But, sometimes knowing what to expect helps round out a staff. Just plan on a higher ERA and WHIP than last year, but if the Yankees play well, Happ could win 15 games as easily as the 12 projected above. Stable can be appealing too.

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Statistical Credits:

Fangraphs.com

BaseballSavant.com

xSTATS.org

THE BAT courtesy of Derek Carty

ATC courtesy of Ariel Cohen

ZiPS courtesy of Dan Szymborski

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