4 years agoOakland Athletics starter Chris Bassitt may not be a household name, but the 31-year-old righty quietly posted the third-lowest ERA in the American League last season, behind just Shane Bieber and Dallas Keuchel. Unlike Bieber and Kuechel, Bassitt doesn't have any Cy Young hardware to his name. In fact, Bassitt has only made more than 13 starts once in a season, which has fantasy players understandably skeptical of his long-term sustainability. Not only is Bassitt unproven, he also lacks the skills traditionally valued by fantasy managers, chiefly the dominant strikeout rate we fantasy players crave. Bassitt had just a 21.1% strikeout rate in 2020, which is underwhelming in the current strikeout-heavy era. Instead, Bassitt gets it done with a solid five-pitch mix of a four-seam fastball, sinker, cutter, changeup, and curveball to induce weak contact and groundballs. That's Bassitt's aim, and while his 88.2 MPH average exit velocity and 43.8% groundball rate are good, they aren't the elite number we'd expect to see to go along with his sparkling 2.29 ERA from a year ago. His career 6.4% barrel rate and 0.93 HR/9 should be enough to keep Bassitt from imploding and losing his spot in Oakland's rotation, but he won't sniff an ERA below 3.00 in a full season. It wouldn't be surprising to see him come crashing back to earth with a final ERA above 4.00 in 2021 either. Pair that with a poor strikeout rate, and his best asset as a starter is stability, which isn't too promising since he's never made it above 150 innings in a single season. He isn't a horrible pick at 193.09 (per NFBC ADP), but lacks the upside we hunt for late in drafts.--Elliott Baas - RotoBaller