Recency bias has a strong pull on fantasy owners. It is our instinct to treat a player’s most recent performance as the most relevant indicator of his future outlook as a fantasy asset.
But with pitching, in particular, being so sensitive to the vagaries of luck and injury, it’s important to look past last year’s stat line when parsing a given pitcher’s value for the season to come. Such due diligence can help us take advantage of the market inefficiencies that come with recency bias, allowing us to locate potential Draft Day values in talented pitchers whose subdued recent stats have depressed their current value. Here are five pitchers whose positive outlook and modest Draft Day cost should make them prime targets.
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After his breakout season in 2015, Tampa’s prized young hurler appeared to take a step back in 2016, with his homer-per-nine (1.34) jumping to a career-high level and his ERA (4.02) following suit. But long ball troubles aside, most of Archer’s other 2016 stats look to be right in line with his strong 2015, with his strikeout rate (10.72 in 2015, 10.40 in 2016), walks per nine (2.8, 3.0), and ground-ball-per-fly-ball rate (1.36, 1.38) hardly displaying a notable skills decline.
Indeed, Archer was pretty clearly the victim of some bad fly ball luck in 2016. His fly ball rate barely increased last year (34.5 percent compared to 33.9 in 2015), and, in fact, his line drive rate notably decreased (down to 17.7 percent in 2016 from 20 percent in 2015), yet his homer-to-fly rate skyrocketed, reaching a 16.2 percent mark that was tied for 10th worst in the majors among players who tallied at least 150 innings pitched. That number should regress closer to Archer’s career rater around 11 percent, and in turn his ERA should lean closer to 3.00 than to 4.00. As the 15th pitcher off the board per FantasyPros ADP, Archer is one of the cheapest starters in fantasy to carry pure ace upside.
No one expected Greinke to sustain the near-unhittable run that we saw during his 2015 season with the Dodgers. At the same time, no one could have predicted the extent to which the veteran righty fell back to earth during his first season with the D-backs in 2016.
The drop off from Greinke was indeed steep and ugly, with a three-season streak in sub-3.00 ERA production giving way to last season’s unsightly 4.37, with associated spikes in walk rate, hard hit rate, homer-to-fly rate — name the metric and Greinke performed poorly by that standard last year.
To diagnose the downfall here, we need look no further than Greinke’s fastball, which got absolutely murdered in 2016. Notice how that pitch graded last year compared to the year previous in terms of strikeout rate (K%), on-base plus slugging percentage (OPS) and batting average on balls in plays (BABIP).
| Season | K% | OPS | BABIP |
| 2015 | 23.1 % | .583 | .209 |
| 2016 | 14.5 % | .959 | .341 |
The contrast here is stark. Then again, it seems overly pessimistic to write a pitcher of Greinke’s skill and intelligence off as a bad fastball guy going forward, especially when he was acclimating to a new, more homer-prone environment in Arizona. It won’t cost much more than a pick just inside the overall top 100 to find out if Greinke can tweak his arsenal and rejoin the upper tier of fantasy starters.
The young fireballer began his tenure as Astros closer quite inauspiciously, pitching to a bloated 4.11 ERA over 70 innings after two straight sub-2.00 ERA seasons for the Phillies. Giles’ struggles were largely front-loaded, though, with April and May being a waking nightmare in which he amassed a 6.33 ERA while surrendering 1.7 homers per nine.
As bad as Giles was in those first two months (and he was bad enough to temporarily cede the Houston closer role to Will Harris), he was excellent the rest of the way, pitching to a 3.05 ERA from June on while cutting his OPS against from .804 to .657. And despite the uneven season-long results, Giles posted the most prolific season of his career in terms of strikeout rate, punching out nearly 14 per nine innings compared to a previous career high of 12.61. With the Houston closer job once again his to lose, Giles is a potentially elite relief option whose unsightly final 2016 lines ensures that he can be drafted just outside of the overall top 100.
Keuchel’s last four seasons have had a certain Jekyll-and-Hyde flavor to them. He followed up a forgettable debut turn as a full-time starter in 2013 (150-plus innings of 5.15-ERA work) with a breakthrough sub-3.00 ERA season the year following. Then after his Cy Young turn in 2015 (232 innings with a 2.42 ERA, along with 20 wins), Keuchel’s 2016 was an abject disaster, with the lefty losing his command and adding over two runs to his ERA.
By all accounts, Keuchel pitched through a shoulder injury that very likely played a role in his struggles with location, leading to a ballooned walk rate (2.57 walks per nine, compared to under two the year previous) and, more importantly, a compromised ability to induce weak contact, which was Keuchel’s bread and butter during his Cy Young run.
Assuming Keuchel is fully healthy heading into 2017, a reigning in of that near-30-percent hard hit rate from 2016 should be in order. And even if he can’t reclaim his sub-3.00 ERA form, the innings-eating lefty should still provide 200-plus frames of valuable ratio help. This sort of high-volume ratio boost is usually reserved for the very early rounds of fantasy drafts, but Keuchel can be had for a relative bargain, with his recent struggles pushing him outside of the overall top 120.
Nola must have crossed a few black cats last summer, because the young Phillies hurler went from being an unexpected fantasy boon to an utter albatross over the span of two months. Look at how the two halves of Nola’s injury-shortened season line up in terms of strikeout minus walk rate (K-BB%), OPS against, expected fielding independent pitching (xFIP), and ERA.
| Sample | K-BB% | OPS | xFIP | ERA |
| April + May | 22.2% | .540 | 2.75 | 2.88 |
| June + July | 14.6% | .926 | 3.69 | 8.31 |
There is certainly some skills decline here, as evidenced by the K-BB%, but there also seems to be a heck of a lot of bad luck, with Nola’s June and July ERA outpacing his xFIP by almost five full runs. Ultimately, the less-than-inspiring final line (a 4.78 ERA with a mere six wins) has depressed the market on a pitcher who for the first two months of last season seemed on his way to becoming a fantasy mainstay. Being drafted on average just inside the overall top 175, Nola is a strong back-end rotation piece with upside to burn.
- 10 Middle Relievers to Target
- Six RP-Eligible Starters to Target
- 10 Low-Cost Hard Hitters to Target
- 5 Bounce-Back Infielders to Target
- 5 Bounce-Back Outfielders to Target
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Tom Whalen is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Tom, check out his archive or follow him @drillguitar.
