Sleepers and busts. That’s the nature of fantasy baseball, isn’t it? Not every player is like Albert Pujols in his prime, with month-to-month splits that are virtually carbon copies of one another. Production ebbs and flows for every player, not only month-by-month and half-by-half, but also season-by-season. Sometimes we can see a breakout coming; a guy might have suffered through a season with a lower-than-expected BABIP or a line drive rate which didn’t match his production.
Similarly, we can also forecast with decent accuracy pitchers who may possibly bust. There are a myriad of reasons for a pitcher not to live up to their draft slot, and we think we check off quite a few of those boxes this time around. So here we bring you the starting pitcher busts for the 2017 season.
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Carrasco is coming off the board 14th among starting pitchers in NFBC drafts (No. 59 overall). There’s cause for concern in selecting him, though he does fall into a boom-or-bust category among fringe fantasy aces. The company he keeps in this range includes Chris Archer (down year in 2016), David Price (already battling arm issues), Carlos Martinez (inconsistent) and a few others who we’ll mention later in this piece. In that sense, if you miss out on the first 10 or so “aces” you’re wading into a minefield that won’t easily be navigated. So why are we “out” — so to speak — on Carrasco right now? It certainly isn’t due to the quality of his pitching. In the last two seasons — since he moved to the rotation on a full-time basis — he’s got a 3.49 ERA (3.23 FIP) with scintillating rates of 10 K/9, 2.1 BB/9 and a 1.11 WHIP. The trouble is, he doesn’t really have a track record of longevity that goes with putting that much pressure on someone who is going to anchor your rotation. He’s thrown more than 180 innings just once in seven MLB seasons — to be fair, he was a horrible starter, a good reliever and then a good starter, so he should be graded on a curve — but at age 30 (happy birthday, Carlos!) he’s not terribly likely to turn over a new leaf, either. Furthermore, his elbow is already barking this spring. With Cleveland not needing a fifth starter until April 15, Jordan Bastian of MLB.com has already intimated that the team might play it slow with him early in the season. That’s going to make 180 innings a tough bet again this season.
Strasburg is going one spot ahead of Carrasco among starters and 53rd overall in drafts. Again, that feels mighty high for a guy who, when healthy is absolutely fantastic, but there’s also a reason for the caveat. He’s thrown just 127.1 and 147.2 innings in the last two seasons, and in seven big league seasons has crossed the 180-inning threshold just twice. Again, Strasburg is just part of the minefield in this area of drafts, but he’s also going just one pick behind Archer, who finished last season with a flourish (4.66 first-half ERA before finishing with final three month marks of 3.38, 3.03 and 3.62) and has thrown 190-plus innings for three straight seasons. There’s a reason why renowned fantasy analysts like Ray Flowers of SiriusXM tell people to stay away from Strasburg. There’s also a reason why he comes up every year; that talent is absolutely tantalizing. This is a guy with a career ERA of 3.17 (2.85 FIP), 10.6 strikeouts per nine innings and a WHIP of 1.09. But he’s also pitched for seven years in the majors and still hasn’t thrown 1,000 innings.
Hendricks was absolutely fabulous for the World Champions last year, but I believe he’s fool’s gold coming off the board as the No. 16 starter with the 66th overall pick. On average he’s going one pick ahead of Jacob deGrom, who I think is a much better pitcher with a much more sustainable track record. Hendricks posted an unbelievable 2.13 ERA last year and won 16 games — both huge totals for fantasy players — but he did so with merely very good peripherals as opposed to ones that might belong to Clayton Kershaw or a healthy Strasburg. A guy fanning 8.1 batters per nine and walking a quarter of that with a 48 percent groundball rate should have an ERA roughly a run to a run-and-a-half higher than that. Steamer has him pegged for a 12-9 record with a 3.59 ERA this coming season with the rest of his peripherals right in line with what he did last year. That’s what you should expect from someone who you take more along the lines of 50th among starting pitchers, those like Jake Odorizzi, Carlos Rodon and J.A. Happ.
Roark is like the poor man’s Hendricks, in that he does pretty much everything Hendricks does but not quite as well. That was especially true last season. Take a look:
- Hendricks: 16-8, 2.13 ERA (3.20 FIP), 8.1 K/9, 2.1 BB/9, 48.4 percent GB rate
- Roark: 16-10, 2.83 ERA (3.79 FIP), 7.4 K/9, 3.1 BB/9, 48.7 percent GB rate
Those are fairly solid numbers, but is that enough to take Roark as the No. 32 starter (142nd overall)? He’s going three picks behind Felix Hernandez, who is admittedly coming off a rough year, but I’d probably take the following pitchers going behind Roark first:
…and those are all guys going between 1-31 picks behind Roark. The breakout for Roark wasn’t exactly out of the blue. In 2014, Roark went 15-10 with a 2.85 ERA, but fanned just 6.3 batters per nine with a 1.8 BB/9 rate. That’s a fairly solid season, right? Well in the meantime (2015), he was a swingman in 40 appearances (12 starts) with a 4.38 ERA (4.70 FIP) and was actually a negative fWAR player (minus-0.2) for the Nationals. Sure, being jerked around like that obviously didn’t work in his favor, but this isn’t a guy with an ironclad past to fall back on. It wouldn’t be wild for Hendricks to be the new Roark, and Roark to fall back as a guy with a .500 record and an ERA approaching 4.00. That’s still a perfectly solid pitcher, but you’re going to be sad you took him as your No. 2.
- Fantasy Baseball Busts: 1B
- Fantasy Baseball Busts: 2B
- Fantasy Baseball Busts: 3B
- Fantasy Baseball Busts: SS
- Fantasy Baseball Busts: C
- Fantasy Baseball Busts: OF
- Fantasy Baseball Busts: RP
Brandon Warne is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Brandon, check out his archive and follow him @brandon_warne.