January 31, 2019

After several disappointing seasons, Anibal Sanchez seemingly found his old groove with the Atlanta Braves in 2018. A hamstring injury impeded his season early, but the right-hander finished with seven wins, a 2.83 ERA, 1.08 WHIP, and 135 strikeouts over 136.2 IP. A pretty impactful season for the veteran, these were by far his best numbers since 2013 so what changed? He threw a cut fastball more often jumping from 8.7% in 2017, he upped it to 22.5% of the time, and it worked as he limited batters to a .197 AVG against the pitch. Still possessing his devastating changeup, he produced soft contact (26.3%) almost as much as hard contact (27.7%), and his marks would have finished first and fourth respectively among qualifying major league arms. Now a member of the Washington Nationals, Sanchez will fill the back end of their rotation and should put up double-digit wins on a still above average team. Entering the 2019 season as a 35-year-old, maintaining a strikeout per inning pace will be difficult, and he’s also only eclipsed 155 IP once in the last five years, so an abundance of punch-outs likely won't materialize. The added cutter is a good sign moving forward, and Sanchez should see results in the high-threes for ERA and a WHIP in the range of 1.20-1.30. Going at an ADP of 280, it’s a fair price for the hurler as he’ll provide decent stats, but there’s not as much upside as some of the other arms going at that same cost.--Riley Mrack - RotoBaller