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The wait is finally over – spring training is in full swing. Of course, here at RotoBaller we’ve been cranking out tons of preseason content for some time now. We might be a little obsessed with baseball ‘round these parts. But that’s okay, because so are you!
And what better way to celebrate the advent of draft season than to profile potential breakouts and busts? Let’s continue to take a closer look at the guys who are most likely to delight, or disappoint, fantasy owners in 2016.
Be sure to also head over to our fantasy baseball rankings assistant. We recently launched this handy new rankings tool - you can easily filter, sort, and export all sorts of rankings for mixed leagues, AL/NL only, top prospects, dynasty formats, keeper values and more! It's all in one place, and all free.
2016 NL Starting Pitcher Bust Candidates
Miller put together a solid bounceback season in 2015, regaining some of the strikeouts he’d lost during his sophomore slump and cutting his home run rate in half. Most of his success came in the first half of the season, as he entered the All-Star break with a 2.38 ERA. However, the dominant story was his hard luck in the wins column. On May 17, Miller tossed a two-hit shutout of the Marlins to move to 5-1 on the season. He didn’t get another win until the season’s final day, despite allowing two runs or fewer in 13 of the intervening 24 starts. Miller lost 16 (!) consecutive decisions, tying him for the ninth-longest streak in baseball history.
A big part of that streak was the ineptitude of the Braves, but Miller also struggled as the season wore on. His walk rate spiked and he barely kept his second-half ERA under 4.00. Being traded to the Diamondbacks should help him win a few more games, but he’ll also have to contend with a park that’s much less forgiving. There are plenty of pitchers being drafted later who offer more upside for a similar level of risk – Raisel Iglesias, Luis Severino, and Carlos Rodon, just to name a few.
By many measures, Shields has been remarkably consistent over the years. Since becoming a fixture in the Devil Rays’ rotation back in in 2007, he’s pitched at least 200 innings each year. Only twice during that span has his ERA or FIP been more than half a run removed from his career marks, and his xFIP has been between 3.24 and 3.87 every time out. You could expect a good, if not great, strikeout rate, excellent control, and a few too many home runs. It’s little wonder that in Steamer’s 2015 projections, Shields’s projection had the highest reliability score of any pitcher.
That’s why they play the games, as they say. Shields had a season that could only be described as “bizarre.” Moving to the National League and Petco Park, nobody would have expected career-worst marks in walk and homer rate. This would have been odd enough in itself, but Shields also posted by far the best strikeout rate and the highest strand rate of his career.
For whatever reason, Shields dramatically altered his approach in 2015, pitching out of the zone with much greater frequency. The results were decidedly mixed, and typically these changes are made as a result of diminished stuff, fatigue, or injury. Shields has been a workhorse, but he’s entering his age 34 season and lost a tick and a half on his fastball last year. Fantasy owners don’t seem too concerned judging by his ADP. Perhaps they should be.
In most seasons, going 19-3 with a 1.66 ERA would guarantee a Cy Young Award, and probably by unanimous vote. As it happened, there was a strong case to be made that Greinke wasn’t even the best pitcher on his own team. Only two pitchers had a larger differential between their ERA and FIP than Greinke did; the sub-2.00 ERA was due largely to an insanely low .229 BABIP and insanely high 86.5% strand rate. Both numbers figure to regress in 2016, it’s just a matter of how much.
There’s also the question of how much Greinke will be impacted by changing teams. The Diamondbacks outscored the Dodgers last season and were a significantly better defensive team by both UZR and DRS, but Chase Field is much more of a hitters’ park than Dodger Stadium.
Greinke is a great pitcher and has been for some time. Just don’t pay as though last year was the new normal.
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