AL Starting Pitching Sleepers for 2020

April 4, 2020

Eric Samulski looks at starting pitchers coming off disappointing seasons that could be prime bounce-back candidates and undervalued draft targets in 2020 fantasy baseball leagues. The reason for the disappointing season ranges from injuries to poor performance.

The shorter 2020 MLB regular season has led to a few shifts in fantasy strategy but perhaps nowhere is that more evident than in the starting pitching landscape. We're used to constructing fantasy rotations around strikeout pitchers and ratio arms or high-upside flyers and solid innings-eaters. However, with a shorter season, there will likely be no major innings eaters. The guys who we were counting on for only 120 innings now might be no different from the guys that usually throw 200 innings.

This applies particularly to players coming off an injury or with lengthy injury histories. If the fully healthy starters are only going to get 140 innings (a total guess right now), then an injury-risk pitcher who might throw 100 innings is no less valuable if the counting stats and ratios will be strong. It means that we can take more risks on high-upside arms that might not have made it through a full season. However, those risks still should be calculated. With fewer innings and fewer starts, a string of blow-ups from your starting pitching corps could be even harder to overcome in Roto leagues.

The names below are high-upside pitchers that should provide solid value based on where they're being taken in drafts. These are also arms that won't crush you with bad starts. Also, since you're investing so little draft capital, you can simply cut the pitcher after one or two outings if you don't like what the performances suggest. (ADP numbers are from March 1st to March 26th using Online Championship data on NFBC. My rankings are for standard 5x5 formats)

Lance McCullers Jr. (HOU, ADP: 181)
James Paxton (NYY, ADP: 150)

I'm lumping McCullers and Paxton together because both of them had injuries that were causing them to be drafted later than their talent would suggest. With a shortened season, much of that risk no longer applies.

McCullers missed all of 2019 while recovering from Tommy John surgery, but the talented right-hander went 10-6 with a 3.86 ERA and 1.17 WHIP in 2018 before the injury. When he's on the mound, McCullers has begun using an off-speed-heavy approach, almost fully abandoning his four-seam fastball. He features a curve and changeup that both have a PutAway% of 25 or greater with the changeup registering a 6.8 pVAL in 2018. His SwStr% rose to an elite 13.5% in 2018, and his K-BB% was a solid 17.5%, which is further evidence of McCullers' strikeout upside when he's healthy.

The only concern for the 2020 season had been that the Astros said they'd cap McCullers' innings around 120. That no longer concerns me with most pitchers likely unable to throw much more than that.

Paxton, on the other hand, is a bit trickier. He was out at the beginning of this season due to back surgery. Though he began throwing before the season was postponed, back injuries can often linger, which puts Paxton at a high risk of re-injury. However, he's another arm who has been incredibly successful when on the mound, upping his cutter usage to 20% last year, which is good news since the pitch had a 43.3 Whiff% and 25.3 PutAway%. His curve, which he throws 19% of the time, limited hitters to a .173 xBA, giving him two quality secondary offerings to pair with a 95 mph fastball that has only been slightly above average recently. Despite his oft-injured past, Paxton has thrown at least 121 innings in each of the last four seasons. You won't need much more from him this year.

Dylan Bundy (LAA, ADP: 216)

Dylan Bundy has been a favorite of baseball twitter this offseason. At first, it seemed to start as a joke, taking a renewed interest in him solely because of his move out of Baltimore, but then the stats started coming and the humor turned to genuine intrigue.

Despite his K-BB% decreasing by 2.5% and his ERA still at a bloated 4.79, there were some interesting developments for the 27-year-old. Bundy limited hard contact, gave up fewer barrels, and pitched to career lows in all the x-Stats (xBA, xSLG, XOBA, etc.). Then, Alex Chamberlain sent the Bundy debate into a new stratosphere but showing his remarkable similarity to rising star and Twitter-favorite Shane Bieber.

Despite having an average fastball, Bundy throws two excellent off-speed offerings in his changeup and slider. The change registered a 32.5 Whiff% while the slider had a 47.9 Whiff%, 24.2 PutAway% and limited hitters to a .158 xBA. Now that he's started throwing his fastball less over the past two seasons and relying on his off-speed more, there is potential growth for Bundy that he started displaying during the spring. In his seven innings pitched, he hadn't given up a run while striking out 10, walking one, and allowing one hit.

Now that Bundy has moved to a better pitcher's park, with a better defense, and a team more likely to give him an increase in wins, it's fair to wonder if the former top prospect could become a useful fantasy option. At his current price, it's certainly worth taking a chance, but if he keeps creeping closer to 200, it might be too rich for my blood.

Dylan Cease (CHW, ADP: 260)

The White Sox have a few young arms of intrigue in Cease, Michael Kopech and Reynaldo Lopez; however, Cease may have the most upside for 2020. He has elite stuff, with a curveball that seemed electric last season and, according to FanGraphs, had the fourth most drop of any curve in the league. He also had positive pVALs on both his change and slider, which is a good thing because, despite his velocity, his fastball was not great last year, registering a -15 pVAL. The good news is that Cease seems to know that and spent all offseason reportedly working on improving his fastball command.

Command, in general, remains his biggest issue. Cease had a 1.55 WHIP supported by an ugly 10.7% walk rate. It was only 73 MLB innings at age 23 but some of Cease's spring starts exhibited the same tendency to unravel when he's unable to put batters away. In the few at-bats I saw, he went from 0-2 to 2-2 to walks far too quickly to instill confidence.

However, Cease is a young, dynamic arm with a much better catcher in 2020. According to BaseballProspectus’ Framing Adjusted Metric, the 2019 White Sox offered their emerging pitching talents James McCann and his -7.6 score (101st out of 113 catchers tracked) or Welington Castillo and his -14 mark (112th). Now Cease will throw to Yasmani Grandal, who had the third-best score with 20.9. Apparently Grandal had already spent time in the fall working with Cease on “Just being more efficient. Knowing what we’re going to do and how we’re going to do it [and]... knowing how to turn it up a bit and then turn it down."

With a young pitcher who notched 81 K’s in 73 innings spending his first full MLB offseason focused on improving his weaknesses, and now working with an elite veteran catcher, it's easy to see how Cease could follow Lucas Giolito in 2020. What's more, you'll know really quickly if it's time to cut bait on the youngster since his success will be so closely tied to his command. If it's not there in his first few starts, it might be time to unload in such a short season.

Nathan Eovaldi (BOS, ADP: 289)

Speaking of small sample size, Eovaldi threw 67.2 unsuccessful innings for the Red Sox last year while battling injury. However, he did show the same dynamic stuff which led his K% to jump between 2018 and 2019. In 2018, Eovaldi used his cutter to get ahead and then set up his 97-98 mph fastball as a put-away pitch. For some reason, while battling injury in 2019, Eovaldi massively cut back on his cutter usage in favor of his curve, which had a 41.1 Whiff% but has only been a marginally successful pitch for him throughout his career.

When spring began, not only was Eovaldi using his cutter more, but he had also begun throwing a splitter far more often. Last year, the pitch only had a 24.7 Whiff% and 15.5 PutAway%, but it did limit batters to a .192 xBA. If the splitter becomes another pitch Eovaldi can use with the cutter to set up his fastball as a strikeout offering, then there's reason to get excited about his spring success (eight IP, four hits, one BB, zero runs, 12 strikeouts).

There's no reason he can't repeat 2018 with an ERA under 4.00 and a K/9 north of eight while pitching for a team that should put him in a good position for wins. Plus, if new Red Sox GM Chaim Bloom brings his old Tampa Bay philosophy of the opener to Boston, Eovaldi would be the perfect pitcher to use as a "Follower," throwing five innings to limit his overall wear-and-tear and still be in line for victories. That's a chance I'm willing to take this late in drafts in an injury-shortened season where I'm essentially investing nothing and can move on easily if he falters.

Spencer Turnbull (DET, ADP: 383)

Last but not least, a pre-season darling of mine. While Turnbull seemed to struggle last year with a 3-17 record and a 4.61 ERA, he showed enough flashes of success to instill confidence that he can compete at this level.

His xFIP for the season was 3.99, his WAR was 2.9 (43rd among pitchers), and his first-half ERA was only 3.31. All of this suggests that his end of season numbers, particularly the gaudy loss total, may present a level of struggle that is not indicative of Turnbull's overall performance.

For starters, he brings two plus secondary offerings to the table in his slider and curveball. They had a 31% and 37% strikeout rate, respectively, while both also registered Whiff% higher than 32.3% and PutAway% north of 21.3%.

In order to get the most of his repertoire, Turnbull needs to ditch a sinker that he threw around 20% of the time but allowed a .335 xBA and .509 xSLG. The good news is that Turnbull seemed to also pick up on that, drastically cutting down the use of his sinker in favor of his slider towards the end of the season.

As a young pitcher who has shown the ability to make adjustments, it's smart to be on Turnbull's potential, especially picking this late in the draft. With proven strikeout upside and, per The Athletic’s Eno Sarris, a command+ metric that ranks ahead of pitchers like Trevor Bauer and Yu Darvish, Turnbull is a perfect roll of the dice at the tail-end of drafts. Just know that you're not going to get many wins out of him in Detroit.

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