Jair Jurrjens may be in the conversation for the National League Cy Young but he is due to regress. His value will not get higher so it is time to sell high and I’ll tell you why.
Analysis: Jair Jurrjens may be sporting a sub two ERA but he is one of the luckiest pitchers in the bigs this year. Jurrjens’ ERA-FIP is a staggering -1.23, second “best” in the major leagues. What is also concerning is his absolutely unsustainable 84% LOB rate, once again second best in the major leagues. We can also look at Jurrjens’ BABIP against which sits at .256, fifteenth luckiest this year among all starting pitchers. Jurrjens actually has his lowest strikeout rate since his rookie year with the Tigers in 2007. All signs point to a pitcher waiting to blow up and lose tons of trade value. He’s a solid pitcher but he isn’t and will never be a SP1 in fantasy baseball.
Projection: Expect an ERA over three in Jurrjens’ remaining starts. His xFIP is actually 3.76 right now so it might get ugly, at least for him. Jurrjens is still just a three pitch pitcher and although his fastball has been great this year it still doesn’t average 90 MPH. If his command suffers just a bit due to fatigue down the stretch it won’t be pretty and don’t say I didn’t tell you so.