40 Man Roster Review: Josh Fields

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The next player in my 40 man roster review is one of the more underrated players on the Houston Astros. Josh Fields was a selection in the December 2012 edition of the Rule 5 draft.

Brooks Baseball credits the 6'0" right-handed pitcher with a four pitch offering. His most used pitch is a cut-fastball in the mid-90's. A slider, curveball, and change-up are also deployed in efforts to keep opposing batters off balance.

Through parts of three seasons with the MLB club, Fields owns a 4.27 earned run average across 143 1/3 innings of work. That figure, to me, is vastly misleading. In the 2014 and 2015 campaigns, Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP, for short), credits Fields with marks of 2.09 and 2.19, respectively.

To further illustrate how Fields has outperformed his earned run average, I set certain parameters into Fangraphs. Since Fields has tossed 104 2/3 innings in this last two innings, I felt that American League relievers with 100+ innings should be qualified. Of the 43 pitchers that met these requirements, Fields' combined FIP of 2.14 ranked 5th overall.

These highly successful relief pitchers included Wade Davis, Andrew Miller, Jake McGee, and Dellin Betances. These four men ahead of Fields posted a significantly better mark on Batting Average on Balls In Play (BABIP). Josh posted a mark of .327; the highest of the bunch ahead of him was McGee's .279 statistic.

Mark Appel via Twitter

Using the same parameters, I took a look at his strikeout per 9 innings ratio. I suppose that it does make sense for Fields to rank so well in this category. Fields' 11.71 K/9 rate ranks him 8th among 43 qualified relief pitchers.

Lastly, while evaluating Fields among his peers, I felt that home run/fly ball percentage is yet another good tool in analyzing his performance. This was, personally, the most surprising metric of Fields past two years.

Only Blaine Hardy (Tigers) and Wade Davis (Royals) have posted a better HR/FB ratio. In the long run, 3.2% of Fields' fly balls batted against him will have left the yard, as compared to Hardy's 3.0% and Davis' 2.9%. Incredible.

My findings were drawn to confirm my bias that Josh Fields is one of the most underrated members of the Houston Astros bullpen. It seems that Fields is an above-average option for the Astros in the later stages of baseball games.