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Riley Mrack looks at starting pitchers who busted in 2019 and are likely to disappoint fantasy baseball owners again in 2020, making them overvalued in drafts.
The term “bust” in fantasy baseball can have a few different definitions. The obvious meaning is a player whose lack of production stinks so bad we have to cut bait on him early in the season. The more common definition is a player who doesn’t live up to his draft-day value. Whether it’s a decline in strikeouts, inability to keep the ball in the yard, or failure to tally wins, these players are a burden to any roster. If one of your late-round picks busts, your investment wasn’t as costly, but when it’s one of your first handful of picks, it’s a detriment to your team and a hard obstacle to overcome.
Pitching seems to have the most volatility when it comes to letdown players. Part of the reason has to do with injury since it seems like every year one or two aces go down early in the season. In other bust scenarios, hurlers will suddenly lose effectiveness with one of their pitches or struggle with mechanics, making it nearly impossible to foresee these shortcomings in the preseason without some data to analyze. Avoiding pitching busts in your draft is difficult, but you can still spot candidates by looking at the previous season's data.
In this article, we’ll look at hurlers who burned their owners in 2019 and will likely keep the trend going into the 2020 campaign. These pitchers will still hold some fantasy value, but by comparing their cost to RotoBaller’s Expected Draft Values (EDV), we can more easily spot who will continue to mislead managers into an unexpected return in numbers. Some of these players are easier to spot than others, so let’s take a peek at some analysis.
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Chris Sale - BOS, SP (36.4 ADP)
Chris Sale disappointed owners who took him with their first or second pick in fantasy drafts last season. Going as the third pitcher off the board, the left-hander threw a career-low 147.1 IP while posting an uninspiring 6-11 record, 4.40 ERA, and 1.09 WHIP. His arm broke down late in the 2018 campaign and never seemed to get right in the early part of the 2019 season since his four-seamer averaged a lifetime low 92.4 MPH in April. Hitters took advantage of the lack of speed by clubbing out five homers to a .405 BA in this month, numbers that would foreshadow his poor year-end results.
While he did pick up his fastball speed to the mid-93 MPH range the rest of the way, he still couldn’t get it back to his customary 94-95 MPH velocity from year's past. Sale was subsequently shut down in mid-August with elbow inflammation and has done minimal throwing due to his recovering elbow and bout with pneumonia at the start of camp. With Opening Day already ruled out, managers are walking a tight rope drafting the 30-year-old in the third round of drafts.
The upside may not outweigh the risk even though Sale still managed to strike out 218 batters last year, which was a top-20 mark. If we look at our EDV chart, we see a pitcher drafted at an ADP of 36.4 will need 15.6 wins, 213 K, a 2.93 ERA, and a 1.07 WHIP through 191 IP to return a profit. The strikeouts are a relatively easy threshold to surpass, and the ratios are achievable if he returns to his Cy Young candidate self, but will he throw enough innings to get to 15 wins? Victories are held in high regard in this age of fantasy baseball, so the value between a 10-win pitcher and a 15-win pitcher is vast. Even if Sale's ADP drops a round or two, there's major bust potential with his deteriorating arm.
Aaron Nola - PHI, SP (54.4 ADP)
Going one pick behind Gerrit Cole at an ADP of 25 last season, Aaron Nola gave owners fits after his ERA spiked a full run and a half higher than his 2018 mark to 3.87 in 2019. His WHIP also rose from 0.97 to 1.27 while shaving five wins off his previous total down to 12 in 34 starts for the Phillies. The good news was he set a new career-high in strikeouts (229), although it came at the expense of a career-low in walk rate (9.4% BB%). Nola may have fallen victim to the juiced ball since his HR/FB sat at an uncharacteristically high 17.4% rate, but his underlying metrics show he wasn’t all that unlucky.
Nola’s 4.03 FIP and 4.14 SIERA both suggest his ERA should have actually been a bit worse. His expected batting average and slugging numbers of .236 and .395 were also right in line with his actual marks (.233/.393) since he sat below the league average in Barrel% (6.8%) and Hard% (39.5%). Nola didn’t show improvement in the second half either, holding a 4.03 ERA, 7.3% Barrel%, and 9.5% BB% post-All-Star break.
Using our EDV chart, a pitcher with an ADP of 54.2 needs to sport a 3.03 ERA, and a 1.09 WHIP with 199 strikeouts and 13.7 wins to return value. The wins and punch outs are feasible for the 26-year-old who is on a short list of players with back-to-back 200 IP seasons, but returning those dominant ratios seems unlikely. Nola may see some positive regression in home runs, but with a lifetime 1.17 WHIP and 3.49 ERA, he’s closer to the 2019 version of himself than the 2018 All-Star version. Drafting Nola at his current ADP may lead to another letdown season for owners in 2020.
Noah Syndergaard - NYM, SP (71.8 ADP)
Noah Syndergaard was the 12th pitcher off the board in 2019, getting selected less than a half a pick below Walker Buehler at an ADP of 38.9. His results certainly didn’t warrant that selection after setting career-worsts in ERA (4.28) and WHIP (1.23) in his 10-win season. He still struck out over a batter per inning with 202 punchouts in 197.2 IP, although his 27.0% Whiff% also sat at a new lifetime low.
Syndergaard's most elusive delivery is his slider, which lost nearly three MPH resulting in a 39.6% whiff rate, a far cry from his usual marks in the 44-48% range. Not only was Thor missing fewer bats with the slide piece, but hitters launched five of these offerings over the fence after he surrendered just one long ball off this pitch over his entire career. His home run susceptibility as a whole worsened to a new low (1.09 HR/9), which isn’t a terrible mark but one he wasn’t familiar with owning. A juiced ball wasn’t totally to blame either since his flyball rate and pull rate rose over 3% from his lifetime levels to 20.8% and 38.1%, respectively.
Syndergaard is far removed from the lat injury that forced him to miss nearly the entire 2017 campaign, but we still tend to worry about his high-velocity arm holding up for a second consecutive 30-start season. With a healthy year, he’ll need to record 14 victories and 189 K, with a 3.16 ERA and 1.11 WHIP to return value according to our EDV chart. The 27-year-old has never hit both of these ratios in a season other than in his 30-inning 2017 campaign, but his lifetime 3.31 ERA and 1.16 WHIP are relatively close. Asking him to put it all together for a bounce-back 2020 season is attainable, but hard to believe if his swing-and-miss ability and flyball propensity continue to trend in the wrong direction.
German Marquez - COL, SP (177.2 ADP)
After a brilliant 2018 campaign, German Marquez found his way into the top-80 selections entering the 2019 season, where he unfortunately couldn’t live up to expectations. During his 12-win season, he matched his 1.20 WHIP from the year previous but sported a paltry 4.76 ERA in 174.0 IP. Marquez kept striking out a batter per inning (175 K), but his K-rate dove down nearly 4% to 24.3%, simultaneously falling from 11th in the league in 2018 to 23rd last season.
The glaring concern with Marquez is his unfavorable home ballpark, and his 2019 numbers undoubtedly showed the discrepancy. His 6.26 ERA at Coors Field was nearly three runs higher than his 3.67 road clip, while his home/road FIP was almost identical at 4.00/4.10. The right-hander did struggle to keep the ball in the park no matter where he pitched (1.60 HR/9 home/1.43 HR/9 away) since he placed in the bottom 6% in both Exit Velocity (90.2 MPH) and Hard% (43.1%). It got worse for the 25-year-old throughout the season as his troublesome 2.31 HR/9 finished as the highest mark among hurlers in the second half.
Marquez’s 4.06 FIP and 3.85 SIERA suggest he’s a much better pitcher than what his year-end numbers dictate, but the fact remains that he’ll have to pitch half of his games at Coors Field in 2020. His underlying metrics vastly outproduced his real results in 2018 as well, so as long as he’s got his nightmarish home park, his ERA will suffer. Marquez is better suited as a road streamer, but at his current ADP, we need the innings and the strikeout total to earn his draft-day price. Our EDV tool indicates he’ll need to post a 3.51 ERA across 166 innings at his cost to provide value, which are lofty expectations for a pitcher who’s averaging a 4.23 mark over the last two seasons.
Masahiro Tanaka - NYY, SP (227.9 ADP)
Masahiro Tanaka was the only Yankees hurler to have enough innings to qualify in 2019, although his sluggish year-end numbers were not welcomed along with them. He posted a woeful 4.45 ERA and 1.24 WHIP during his 11-win campaign while setting a new low in K-rate (19.6%) with 149 punchouts in 182.0 IP. Tanaka’s 5.2% walk rate remained a top-12 number, but he was his most hittable self with bottom-15 marks in Z-Contact% (88.0%) and BA against (.261).
Tanaka has relied heavily on his splitter throughout his career, but in 2019 it no longer had its same swing-and-miss ability. The vertical movement on this offering went from 34.0 inches of drop to 31.9, which was his lowest mark since 2016 and -1.5 inches below average. As a result, the veteran cut his whiffs on this pitch nearly in half from his 2018 clip of 36.2% down to a measly 18.5% last season while surrendering eight homers and a .261 BA, his worst mark to date.
With a 4.46 SIERA supporting Tanaka’s down season, it appears the 31-year-old is no longer the ace he once was, and his fantasy stock has plummeted accordingly. We can’t lay the blame on a juiced ball either since his 1.38 HR/9 and 15.1% HR/FB were three-year bests and right around his career average. With no strikeout upside or dominant ratio numbers, owners will look to find value chasing wins behind one of the league’s best offenses. It’s a dangerous game to play to rely on an unpredictable outcome, making Tanaka a bust candidate even at his low cost.
