Friday Focus: Buy Or Sell Pitchers?

May 14, 2021

Kyle Bishop evaluates early-season breakout pitchers and whether fantasy managers should trust them moving forward in this edition of the Friday Focus.

Last week, we took a look a few position players who have greatly exceeded expectations in the season's first month and change. This time around, the focus is on pitchers who fall into that bucket.

There are always a handful of players who blow away our expectations in the early stages of any given season. Whether due to questions about skills, health, playing time, or role, they go late or overlooked entirely in drafts. One day nobody wants them, the next they're the subject of fierce bidding wars on the waiver wire.

Correctly identifying which of these players will continue to produce at a high level and which will return to irrelevance is a big part of how championships are won and lost in fantasy baseball.

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Pitchers To Acquire

Trevor Rogers, SP, Miami Marlins

My (excessively) bold prediction about the Marlins' rotation may have been dead on arrival thanks to Sixto Sanchez (shoulder) and Elieser Hernandez (biceps) getting hurt almost immediately, but Rogers has been everything I thought he'd be and then some. An early frontrunner for National League Rookie of the Year honors, the big lefty turned in another excellent performance on Thursday to run his season line to 5-2 with a 1.84 ERA, 1.07 WHIP, and 57 strikeouts in 44 innings.

While he hasn't appreciably cut down on walks, he has done a much better job than in his 2020 debut of keeping the ball in the yard. He ranks in the top five among qualified starters in swinging strike rate, ahead of guys like Max Scherzer and Gerrit Cole. A probable innings cap is the only concern at this point. End of season prediction: 160 IP, 14 W, 200 K, 3.00 ERA, 1.15 WHIP

Carlos Rodon, SP, Chicago White Sox

After taking that little victory lap, it's only right to eat a little crow as well. For years I've scoffed at Rodon's fantasy potential and the managers who continued to buy-in even after several disappointing seasons. In my defense, besides his poor results, he had also dealt with numerous injuries and never shown the ability to limit walks even as a prospect.

He's doing that now, along with striking out batters at a rate that's easily a career-best. It helps that he's averaging 95 mph on the fastball after sitting at 93 mph in prior seasons. Obviously nobody's good enough to maintain an ERA that starts with a 0 over 150-plus innings - Rodon's .180 BABIP and 92.9% strand rate will both regress, and more balls will leave the yard as the weather warms - but after teasing managers for half a decade, he sure looks like an ace. End of season prediction: 160 IP, 15 W, 190 K, 3.25 ERA, 1.15 WHIP

Pitchers To Move

Danny Duffy, SP, Kansas City Royals

The correction has already begun on Duffy's unsustainable early run; he's allowed seven runs in his last 11.2 innings, losses to a pair of bottom-tier lineups in Cleveland and Detroit. The overall numbers remain shiny: four wins, 1.94 ERA, 1.13 WHIP, and a 28.2 K%. But Duffy has run a 1.3 HR/9 or worse in four of the last five seasons, and nothing in his batted ball data suggests he's made changes to support his current 0.43 rate.

His three most-used pitches (four-seamer, slider, and changeup) all have significantly higher expected wOBA versus their actual marks. The strikeouts might persist, buoyed by a career-best 41.8% whiff rate on the slider, but the ratios will continue to rise. End of season prediction: 150 IP, 11 W, 3.90 ERA, 1.25 WHIP

Kyle Gibson, SP, Texas Rangers

Gibson faced eight batters on Opening Day. Seven of them reached base, with five coming around to score. Since that ignominious debut, the veteran has allowed only seven runs in 47 frames. He's given up more than a single run just once in those seven starts, all of which covered at least six innings. It's just hard to see him keeping this up. ERA estimators are split on Gibson, with his 2.97 xERA and 3.20 FIP looking a lot stronger than the 4.01 SIERA.

Without much jumping out in his underlying metrics to suggest he's a markedly different pitcher, we should expect his home run rate to regress to its typical lackluster level. Even during this run of success, he hasn't been racking up a ton of strikeouts so when his BABIP and strand rate also bend back toward the mean, the worm could turn in a hurry. End of season prediction: 180 IP, 10 W, 160 K, 4.15 ERA, 1.30 WHIP

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