Just read the Capitol Avenue Club's response to a hilariously inadequate and ignorant* criticism of the CAC's post on Jonny Venter's performance this year.
*LOL at the first line (and then all of it)
Although the CAC is right that Venters's peripherals for the year are similar to his peripherals from the previous two years, after looking into it a little more, I found that those numbers are bolstered by his dominant April, where he gave up a total of 0 earned runs, held microscopic 0.87 FIP and a 1.21 xFIP and fanned batters at a 44.7% clip.
But the day April ended was the day something changed. Since May 1st, when he gave up 4 hits and 2 earned runs against the Phillies, he has been pretty damn bad. Since May 1st, his K% has dropped to 15%, his FIP and xFIP have jumped to 6.67 and 4.25, respectively. So I disagree with CAC's determination that Jonny Venters is totally fine - his most recent numbers show that he has been much worse than his entire 2012 numbers indicate. On the flipside though, this is not a reason for RO to spurn or disregard xFIP or other stats - its simply a reason to look at it more closely. FIP and xFIP, in fact, work perfectly fine in this instance.
As for the cause of Jonny Venters recent struggles, it doesn't seem to be one of command because his walk rate hasn't changed very much. It might be that his mechanics are off, as his most commonly thrown pitch, the sinker, has lost a lot of its devastating movement.
If the solution is simply a fix in mechanics, its definitely possible for Venters to bounce back to dominant self
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