Misjudging Luke Jackson – Atlanta Braves’ most underrated players

The Hiccups

Unfortunately, Jackson did have the fourth-worst home run per flyball ratio of relievers with 50 or more innings pitched. Hopefully, there was some bad luck involved there. While he gave up a few too many dingers, he still had several blown saves that could be credited to seeing-eye singles.

The combination of these factors led to Luke finishing tenth in blown saves among this same group, drawing the ire of the fans.

Jackson showed a wipeout slider with a four-seamer that routinely hit 96-97mph. He had an unfortunate .386 BABIP, adding to the bad luck from last season. Although I keep harping on bad luck for otherwise elite statistics, he still finished with a respectable 3.84 earned run average.

By the way, despite finishing near the top of the 149 qualifying relief pitchers in K-rate and FIP, Jackson was DEAD LAST in BABIP.

xFIP figures are based on Fielding Independent Pitching but instead of actual homers allowed, it uses the league average to help show the pitcher’s expected FIP based on the league average homer/flyball ratio.

Luke Jackson finished fifth in xFIP in 2019, out of the 149 qualifying relievers, four spots ahead of Will Smith.

Of Braves’ relievers with at least twenty innings pitched, Jackson led the Braves in the following categories:

• Saves
• K-BB%
• xFIP
• K/9
• K%
• Total Strikeouts (and it was not even close)
• Josh Tomlin and Luke Jackson were the only two Braves to pitch over 70 innings in relief for Atlanta.
• Wins
• Appearances
• Fangraphs highest rated slider in the Pen.