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 disappointments? Let’s continue to take a closer look at the guys who are most likely to delight, or disappoint, fantasy owners in 2016. Today I will take a look at American League starting pitchers who may cost more on draft day than their return on investment.

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 AL Starting Pitcher Bust Candidates

Sonny Gray

There's no doubt that Gray is an excellent pitcher. In two-plus seasons and nearly 500 innings, he’s put together a 2.88 ERA and 1.13 WHIP with solid, if unspectacular, strikeout and walk rates. That ERA is the 10^th best mark among qualified starters since his debut in 2013. Gray uses his friendly home park and a ground ball heavy approach to great effect, regularly outpitching his fielding independent numbers.

But here’s the thing:

Is Gray really that much better than the perennially overlooked and underrated Quintana? Not enough to justify that huge ADP gap, especially if the White Sox ever figure out that it’s okay to score runs when Quintana is on the mound. I’ll take Quintana and Corey Seager; you can have Gray and Elvis Andrus.

Masahiro Tanaka

If you had only the numbers to go on, you’d never guess that Tanaka was pitching with a partially torn ulnar collateral ligament last season. In 154 innings, the Japanese import again showed the impeccable command he’d displayed as a rookie, riding that minuscule walk rate to a K/BB north of 5.00 and a WHIP just under 1.00.

But we don’t just have last year’s numbers. We have the medical reports. We also have the previous year’s numbers, and together it all paints a rather concerning picture. His strikeout rate dropped and his home run rate spiked, leading to an increase of nearly a run in his ERA. And it could’ve been worse if not for a .242 BABIP.

Tanaka is a fantastic pitcher, and he deserves all the credit in the world for gutting his way through and finding a way to be effective with an elbow that’s less than 100 percent. But if he can’t get the homers under control, the likely regression in his BABIP is going to sting. That’s without considering how unlikely it is that he’ll pitch a full season; even if his UCL doesn’t disintegrate, the Yankees will likely and prudently be cautious with his workload. They’re already noncommittal about whether he’ll be ready to start the season after having surgery to remove a bone spur from the elbow.

Tanaka is being drafted just outside the top 30 pitchers and top 100 overall. For the amount of risk attached, that’s a high price to pay for his services.

Marco Estrada

At his current price, Estrada isn’t likely to torpedo your season if he struggles. But being drafted at all in the majority of leagues is a step up for Estrada, who’s been strictly a streamer for most of his career. He set career bests in innings (181), wins (13), and ERA (3.13) while pitching for a high-profile Blue Jays team, and that’s put him on more owners’ radar than ever before. It also got him a nice chunk of change – $26 million over two seasons, to be precise. That’s the parade. Now here comes the rain.

Estrada’s success last season was built almost entirely on the back of a .216 BABIP, the lowest of any qualified starter in 2015. Or 2014. Or 2013, or 2012, or any other season since 1988. Going by that metric, and ERA-FIP, he was the luckiest pitcher in baseball. It’s true that Estrada has made a career out of posting below-average BABIP marks, buoyed in large part by his extreme flyball tendencies. But you know what’s also true? His strikeout and walk rates have been trending in the wrong direction for the last four years, and by both SIERA and xFIP, he just had the worst season of his career.

Whiffing on a late-round pick or $1 guy isn’t the end of the world, but consider the opportunity cost associated with wasting a pick on a low-upside, high-risk player like this instead of rolling the dice on a young talent, or even grabbing a boring vet with a higher, established floor.

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