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Rick Porcello Is Looking For A Bounce Back Season
7 years agoRick Porcello was the American League Cy Young Award winner in 2016. His performance before and in 2017 seems to be indicative of his true expectations. Despite most of his underlying stats of 2017 being similar to 2016, Porcello’s results were not the same. Since he has been in Boston, Porcello has had the highest annual strikeout rate of his career, culminating in a career high in 2017 of 8.01 K/9. When hitters did hit it, they hit him hard as he allowed a career high hard hit of 38.3%. Porcello was also victim to the league-wide epidemic of drastically increased fly-ball rate, 39.9%, giving up 1.69HR/9. Porcello’s pitch usage also resembled that of 2016. However, he did suffer from an unfortunate .324 batting average on balls in play. The results of 2018 will be dictated by Porcello’s ability to limit hard contact and reduce his fly-ball percentage. Porcello would be best chosen in round 19 or later. In dynasty leagues, you might be able to still get trade value for him if you market both the Cy Young award and steady production.
