Real or Fake? Standout Starting Pitchers for Fantasy Baseball (April Edition)

Jon Anderson looks at a handful of early-season standout SPs to see if their performance is real or fake for the rest of the 2023 fantasy baseball season.

Strong outings from starting pitchers have been hard to come by so far in 2023. The rule changes have really had an impact, and that has affected starting pitchers a ton.

You have probably noticed all of this with your own fantasy rotation. Unless you've been very fortunate, you've had more than a couple of disastrous outings so far that have wrecked your weekly ratios.

But it hasn't been all bad. Some aces are still living up to the hype, and it's not like we're sitting here with no breakout SPs that have popped up. Let's go through a handful of names that have looked quite impressive early on after being lightly drafted coming into 2023. We'll check under the hood and give our best guess about whether or not they can keep the good times rolling.

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Standout Starting Pitchers In April

Josiah Gray, Washington Nationals

The one-time Dodgers top prospect had not made Nationals fans very excited since the acquiring him in the Trea Turner and Juan Soto trade in 2021. He posted an ERA of 5.48 in 2021 and a mark of 5.02 in 2022, and neither time was it the result of bad luck as the ERA indicators weren't very encouraging either.

The young righty has overhauled his pitch mix a bit and come into 2023 throwing more sliders and fewer fastballs:

Josiah Gray Pitch Mix by Year

The early returns on that change have been great. He has pitched to a 2.67 ERA with a 1.28 WHIP and he's dropped his walk rate a full point to 9.2%, which is right around the current league average.

Throwing the slider more has resulted in the SwStr% dropping by a few ticks (down to 17.2%, still a solid mark but short of spectacular). However, the fastball being used less has turned it into a more effective pitch as well with a really high 13.5% SwStr%. He's also wildly improved in the quality of contact allowed with a small 5.3% Brl% so far after two straight years of seeing that in double-digits.

So what do we think about the future? If you check the xFIP, you might not be very encouraged because that currently sits at 4.72, which is actually worse than his 2022 output. His strikeout rate hasn't come up either with a current mark of 22% which is worse than his last two seasons as well.

So it seems like he's made a trade here. Potentially give up some strikeouts for fewer walks and fewer homers allowed. Nobody knows if that trend will continue moving forward, but it's reasonable to think that this was the approach coming into 2023 since the home run ball was really the thing that crushed him every year so far in the Majors.

I am not overly confident that Gray can keep it going, but as far as I'm concerned he does deserve a serious look in most fantasy leagues. The slider and curveball are good pitches for him, they always have been, and it's good to see him using them a bit more in place of the fastball. It's also great to see the fastball improving. The fact that he's giving up fewer homers makes perfect sense since most homers are hit on fastballs (that's true even when you account for the frequency of the pitch use), so I think it was the right move for Gray to do what he did, and at the very least he should be on your watch list.

Verdict: Be cautiously optimistic, add in 12+ team leagues, but don't hold on too long if we don't see some continued improvement in the K-BB%.

Vince Velasquez, Pittsburgh Pirates

If you are a DFS player and have been playing for a few years now, you know that two of the pitchers you most wanted to stack against were Josiah Gray and this next guy, Vince Velasquez. That is because in 2021-2022, double-V gave up a wild 11.6% barrel rate and surrendered more than 1.5 home runs per nine innings. He wasn't the league's worst strikeout pitcher (23 K%), but the walk rate was high (9.6%) enough to offset that. Velasquez was just bad.

Another reason to know that Velasquez was not looked at as a good pitcher coming into 2023 is the fact that he ended up on the Pittsburgh Pirates. No offense to my hometown favorite team the Buccos, but they aren't exactly a destination spot for free agents.

This year, however, Velasquez has pitched quite well in the black and gold. He has a 3.06 ERA with a 1.18 WHIP and he's allowed just a 0.8 HR/9 rate. He has now rattled off four straight quality starts after a bumpy start to the year, beating the Cardinals (in St. Louis), Rockies (in Coors), Reds (at home), and Nationals (in DC) all in a row.

Team ERA Leaders, 2023

You probably just noticed that those four teams he's done his damage against are not good. I'm certainly not willing to call the Cardinals a bad offense, but they have not been playing well this year (a team slash line of .261/.333/.414).

Let's get to the point now. Very little has changed with Velasquez besides the fact that he's allowing way fewer homers. His K% is about where it has been, the walk rate is about the same, and he still has a poor 14.6% K-BB% on the year. His ground ball rate is actually down to 31.5% and the HR/FB has been quite low at 10%.  It would seem to me that this is just a run of good luck for Velasquez, and he should be left on the waiver wire. Chances are that more home runs are coming against Velasquez, and we shouldn't be subjecting ourselves to that huge risk.

Verdict: Leave him on waivers.

Roansy Contreras, Pittsburgh Pirates

It has been a magical start to the year for the Pirates, and that is largely because of the starting rotation. Much like Velasquez, Roansy Contreras has also started the year with significantly better numbers than most people expected.

The Pirates' young righty has pitched to a 3.58 ERA with a 1.34 WHIP and has won three of his first five starts. He has yet to allow a home run in 27.2 innings and has pitched at least six innings in his last three outings, two of those being against the Cardinals and Dodgers.

Unfortunately for Pirate fans (me), that is about the end of the good news in his profile. He has just 24 strikeouts and 12 walks in 27.2 innings, and the SwStr% is down to 11.2%, a full point below the league average. He has clearly benefited from not having allowed a homer yet, and that has come without him even posting a high ground-ball rate of 35%.

His K-BB% is just 10.3% right now and that is just not going to do it. Maybe Roansy can improve and get more swinging strikes like he has in the past, but for right now it would seem that he's massively overperforming.

Verdict: Sell high/avoid.

Yusei Kikuchi, Toronto Blue Jays

Ding ding ding! We have finally found a good K-BB%! Through 27 innings, Kikuchi has struck out 28 hitters and walked just six. That's good for a 26.4% K% and a 5.7% BB%, a 20.8% K-BB%! That is the 23rd-best K-BB% in the league.

Kikuchi has allowed a high home rate at 2.0 HR/9, but most of them have been solo shots and that has kept his ERA at a useful 3.00. It would be easy to say that Kikuchi is due for some positive regression with his ridiculously high 28.6% HR/FB, however, we can't be as confident in that given that he gave up a 28.1% HR/FB in 2021 and a 36.5% in 2022 – so this seems to just be a problem for him.

But again, with a K-BB% over 20%, you can afford to give up some homers, and the most likely outcome is that he still allows fewer homers moving forward since he's just so high above the league average in HR/FB. You love to see his 13.8% SwStr% and the sub-6% BB% is by far the best mark of his career. Kikuchi has fooled us before, but I'm picking him up and starting him as long as the K-BB% is above 18% or so.

Verdict: Pick up Kikuchi, but monitor that walk rate.

Braxton Garrett, Miami Marlins

The Marlins lefty did not start the year in the rotation, but has since entered it and has pitched well. He has thrown 22 innings with the Major League club and posted a 2.45 ERA with a 1.27 WHIP on a 20.4% K% and a 3.2% BB%. That's a 17.2% K-BB% which is pretty darn close to where we really want it to be. The 20% K% is more than four points below what we saw last year from him, so there is plenty of room for growth there. Let's have a look at his pitch arsenal:

The slider is insanely good, too.

Highest SwStr% on Sliders, 2023 (100+ pitches)

So that gives Garrett a real weapon to get strikeouts with provided he can get into some two-strike counts. The problem he may have is most of the time when he's throwing a fastball, it's either a ball or being put into play. His numbers on the four-seamer and sinker weren't any better last year, so it does seem like he doesn't have a very good fastball – and that's a real problem for a starting pitcher. The silver lining is that he does generate ground-balls with the sinker, which you saw above, so it's possible he can manage a low home run rate which will help a ton.

If you're in a deep league, Garrett is a good find on waivers. He's a talented pitcher and is capable of having some big-time outings (he has two starts last year with 11 strikeouts and just two walks. However, I don't see him stepping into fantasy stardom this year, and he doesn't even have a solidified spot in that Marlins rotation if things go south for a few starts.

Verdict: Add Garrett in deeper leagues, but don't go overboard with what you're giving up for him. 

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