This article is part of our Collette Calls series.
Say it with me folks: JA Happ is going to garner several top 3 Cy Young votes.
— Up in the Air (@jasoncollette) August 11, 2016
That was not even a troll tweet because it is true. Since Happ left the Mariners in a 2015 deadline deal, he is 23-5 with a 2.62 ERA, a 23 percent strikeout rate, limiting batters to .226/.283/.353. I will pause to allow you to pick your jaw up off the floor because those are the number we expect from a Cole Hamels, not JA (Cr)Happ.
Back in December's hot stove piece, I had this to say about Happ:
You will hear pundits say that this is doomed to fail – a flyball heavy pitcher in a homer-happy park. Hell, I said the same thing last year about Marco Estrada when the Jays dealt for him. Oops. Happ's overall numbers look solid from last season thanks to the amazing run he had with Pittsburgh after he was traded from Seattle, but his return to Rogers Centre should not worry you. In 2014, Happ had a 3.15 ERA and 1.16 WHIP in 91 innings at home for Toronto but had a 5.67 ERA and 1.58 WHIP on the road. He, like Estrada, can pitch at home and now he has better run support to help him out. I'm bumping him up a notch in my 2016 draft
Say it with me folks: JA Happ is going to garner several top 3 Cy Young votes.
— Up in the Air (@jasoncollette) August 11, 2016
That was not even a troll tweet because it is true. Since Happ left the Mariners in a 2015 deadline deal, he is 23-5 with a 2.62 ERA, a 23 percent strikeout rate, limiting batters to .226/.283/.353. I will pause to allow you to pick your jaw up off the floor because those are the number we expect from a Cole Hamels, not JA (Cr)Happ.
Back in December's hot stove piece, I had this to say about Happ:
You will hear pundits say that this is doomed to fail – a flyball heavy pitcher in a homer-happy park. Hell, I said the same thing last year about Marco Estrada when the Jays dealt for him. Oops. Happ's overall numbers look solid from last season thanks to the amazing run he had with Pittsburgh after he was traded from Seattle, but his return to Rogers Centre should not worry you. In 2014, Happ had a 3.15 ERA and 1.16 WHIP in 91 innings at home for Toronto but had a 5.67 ERA and 1.58 WHIP on the road. He, like Estrada, can pitch at home and now he has better run support to help him out. I'm bumping him up a notch in my 2016 draft rankings.The home success for Happ has continued as he has a 2.76 ERA at home this season and a 3.15 road ERA. The bigger question is how has Happ changed from a end-game fantasy pitcher into a front-end fantasy ace?
Most of us, at one point prior to this season, had Happ on our fantasy roster. We would take him as a source of strikeouts and hope the other pieces would fall into place. The issue is, that rarely happened. While he had a 7.5 K/9 rate from 2009 until he was traded from Seattle last season, he was 54-58 with a 4.28 ERA and a 1.39 WHIP. The strikeout rate was mixed-league worthy, but those ratios were waiver fodder. Statistically, Happ has been a completely different pitcher since he left Seattle last year.
Enter Ray Searge.
Searge is the Yoda of pitching instruction of baseball. He has been the long-time pitching coach of the Pittsburgh Pirates and needed all of one start to help get Happ on a better course. Albert Chen of SI.com explained it a few months back:
Last year, for example, when J.A. Happ arrived from Seattle at the trade deadline, Searage spotted an inefficiency in the lefty's delivery in his first start. Instead of striding directly toward home, Happ rotated too much in his motion. That resulted in a lowered arm slot and inconsistent release point — things Searage dissected on TrackMan, a 3-D Doppler radar system that tracks players' movement. Searage had Happ slow down his motion to raise his release point. It was a subtle change that produced a not-so-subtle result: In Happ's next outing he hit 94 mph, his highest velocity of the season, and had his most effective start in two months.The higher release point for Happ is somewhat noticeable in his game log chart from Brooksbaseball, but the more consistent release point is very noticeable. First the game log of Happ's vertical release point:
Now, look at the difference in his fastball release point since Searge's instruction compared to the two years prior:
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The cluster on the right is much closer together than the shotgun-spray on the left. The tweaks allowed Happ's fastball to be delivered more consistently, and while the average velocity was practically the same, the pitch had more life. The spin rate jumped and his fastball added more horizontal movement so it was not as straight as it once was:
| PITCH | COUNT | VELO | SPIN RATE | HORIZ-MOVEMENT |
| 4-sm | 3394 | 92.0 | 2,292 | 5.4 |
| 4-sm | 1862 | 91.9 | 2,375 | 7.1 |
Fastball spin rate has a direct correlation to swinging strikes and flyballs as well as batters either swing through the pitch or elevate it more frequently as spin rate goes up. The fastball results for Happ have improved for the better with his mechanical improvements as well:
| SPLIT | AVG | SLG | SWSTR% | STRIKE% |
| 2009-MID 2015 | .258 | .438 | 8.5 | 66 |
| SINCE | .219 | .329 | 10.4 | 70 |
Naturally, Happ feels more confident with his fastball and is using it more frequently these days. Prior to leaving Seattle and Toronto the first time, Happ used his fastball 65 percent of the time, his breaking balls 20 percent of the time and his changeup the rest. Nowaways, Happ is throwing fewer changeups and more fastballs while maintaining a similar breaking ball rate but has a career-high whiff rate on the non-breaking balls this season:
It is surprising to see Happ doing this well, but he has followed the tried and true path to success. Someone helped him correct things he was doing wrong, and in the process of doing so, helped Happ throw more strikes and become more efficient with his pitches. If he were doing this over the course of half a season, we could raise eyebrows and call it a fluke. Yet, Happ has been on this run of success for 34 games now and nearly 3,200 pitches, so every sample size metric has been met. Happ is the real deal and is having a career season in a ballpark and division mostly made for hitters. In 12-team mixed leagues, Happ has earned the 12th-most dollars for starting pitches this season and is arguably one of the best pitching surprises in the 2016 season for both Toronto, as well as his fantasy owners.
| PITCHER | VALUE | GS | IP | W | K | ERA | WHIP |
| Max Scherzer | $31 | 24 | 163.7 | 12 | 208 | 2.80 | 0.91 |
| Clayton Kershaw | $30 | 16 | 121 | 11 | 145 | 1.79 | 0.73 |
| Madison Bumgarner | $27 | 24 | 163.7 | 10 | 181 | 2.20 | 1.00 |
| Stephen Strasburg | $25 | 22 | 143.7 | 15 | 176 | 3.07 | 1.04 |
| Jake Arrieta | $25 | 23 | 148 | 14 | 149 | 2.55 | 1.03 |
| Jose Fernandez | $23 | 22 | 137.7 | 12 | 198 | 2.81 | 1.09 |
| Chris Sale | $22 | 22 | 154 | 14 | 150 | 3.16 | 1.03 |
| Corey Kluber | $21 | 23 | 157 | 12 | 156 | 3.21 | 1.01 |
| Johnny Cueto | $21 | 23 | 160 | 13 | 146 | 2.93 | 1.08 |
| Justin Verlander | $20 | 24 | 160.3 | 12 | 170 | 3.42 | 1.06 |
| Kyle Hendricks | $20 | 21 | 133 | 11 | 112 | 2.17 | 1.02 |
| J.A. Happ | $19 | 23 | 143 | 16 | 124 | 2.96 | 1.14 |
While Sale, Kluber and Verlander have earned more dollars this season in the American League, it is Happ that could walk home with the hardware if he keeps pitching at the pace he is on lately because it very well could mean a 20-plus win season for a division winner. Don't laugh!
