For all of the unexpected injuries and frustrating setbacks that have befallen the upper echelon of fantasy starters, there is no shortage of impressive up-and-comers poised to take the reigns. The question, of course, is which breakout starter performances are legitimately sustainable and which might face the specter of negative regression.
This week’s Regression Report digs beneath the surface stats to explore whether four young starters can continue providing robust fantasy returns — and whether one former top prospect could have some post-hype magic hiding beneath his forgettable early results.
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Garrett’s twelve-strikeout performance against the Orioles last week certainly pumped up the volume on what had until then been an intriguing but unassuming breakout. The former two-sport college stud has well-exceeded expectations as a fill-in for injured starter Anthony DeSclafani, as Garrett boasts both strong results (a 1.83 ERA and 9.61 strikeouts-per-nine across just under 20 innings) and solid supporting peripherals, with a 2.67 xFIP indicating that his surface success might not be mere smoke and mirrors.
Still, Garrett’s minor-league track record suggest that his current profile as a high-K, strong-command starter, if sustained, would entail quite a sudden, anomalous step forward in terms of skills growth. Garrett’s current 4.1-percent walk rate represents a tremendous improvement on his high-minors work, which saw him routinely post walk rates between 9 and 10 percent. Garrett’s K-rate has spiked a bit as well, though not as notably, adding a half-strikeout-per-nine to his peak minor-league rates.
A lot of what makes Garrett’s success so mysterious is his lack of primo velocity at the major league level, with his two- and four-seam fastballs both resting firmly in the low-90s. But it’s not the fastball that has spelled Garrett’s success thus far–it’s his curveball, a pitch that has proven nearly unhittable, quite literally, surrendering a comically low .059 OPS across a 48-pitch sample.
The current statistical profile on this curveball is truly absurd, with the gaudiness of its 31.3 percent swinging strike rate and 76.5 percent overall strikeout rate seeming quite clearly the product of small sample size compression. The fact that the pitch shows neither plus movement nor substantial velocity distinction from his changeup should indicate that the dynamite returns here will fall back to earth quite profoundly. The sub-35-percent zone rate on the curve might also be a red flag, suggesting that once hitters start sitting on Garrett’s breaking stuff, he’ll see his walk rate skyrocket if he doesn’t adjust along with opposing hitters.
Which, of course, he very well could. This isn’t by any means an overly pessimistic take on Garrett’s future prospects, but perhaps it is a sobering splash of cold water. The Reds’ youngster is a promising talent and an all-leagues hold for sure, but the prospect of him being this good for the duration of 2017 is a remote one indeed.
Fantasy owners who pegged Pittsburgh Pirates youngster Jameson Taillon as an ace-in-waiting might be feeling vindicated by the early 2017 returns, with the 25-year-old righty boasting an immaculate 2.13 ERA over 25-plus innings.
But you won’t have to look too far down the boxscore to encounter trouble on the horizon for the young starter, whose 1.22 WHIP and 3.55 walks-per-nine rate don’t exactly look like the earmarks of a fully blossomed frontline stud.
Truth be told, getting a bead on what exactly to expect from Taillon in terms of command is hard to do given his up-and-down track record in the minors. Indeed, Taillon’s walks-per-nine rates across his extended (60-plus innings pitch) minor-league samples fluctuated wildly, reaching a high of 3.89 in the season just before he went under the knife for Tommy John and dipping as low as 0.88 in the year he returned from surgery.
What’s especially concerning for Taillon is that in his major league career thus far, his most troublesome pitch in terms of command is his two-seam fastball, his most frequently used pitch by far. Taillon’s two-seam simply isn’t fooling hitters at all, carrying 8.2-percent rates in both the walk and strikeout column and surrendering a .182 ISO across an 180-plus pitch sample.
Excellent results on Taillon’s four-seamer and curve has thus far made up for the lousiness of his stand-by two-seamer, but you have to wonder how long the young righty can sustain sub-3.00-ERA excellence with so much hittability at the center of his arsenal. If one of your league-mates is taking Taillon’s ERA at face value, I would not be opposed to selling at top dollar before the regression hits.
On the surface, Orioles righty Dylan Bundy presents a very similar case to that of Taillon, with his spotty minor-league command history and his hittable primary fastball offering seeming to call for negative regression.
And sure, Bundy’s four-seamer has clearly been his most mortal pitch, boasting a .356 BA against compared to a combined .128 on his slider, curveball, and changeup. Yet that fastball’s .067 ISO against confirms that Bundy isn’t exactly throwing beach balls — of the 16 hits surrendered by Bundy’s four-seamer, only 3 have gone for extra bases, and all three were doubles.
Another thing that sets him apart from Taillon is Bundy’s utterly paralyzing slider, which grades as one of the elite breaking pitches in all of baseball per Fangraphs’ weighted pitch values, ranking slightly better than sliders from Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer, and Chris Archer.
We’re bound to see some push back on Bundy’s dead-zero homer-to-fly rate and unprecedentedly low 1.37 walks-per-nine, but even so, the early peripherals from the Orioles youngster suggest that the regression here might entail, at worst, a fall from “awesome” to merely “excellent.”
Speaking of electric sliders, you’ll notice Ray’s breaker not far behind Bundy’s on the weighted values leaderboard. Indeed, the D-backs’ lefty has his slider working to devastating effect thus far, amassing a near-23-percent swinging strike rate across a not-insignificant 127-pitch sample.
But the underside of Ray’s profile is unseemly, with a 5.32 walks-per-nine that is hair-raising even by his standards, to say nothing of a 47.4-percent hard contact rate that represents a near-11-percentage-point spike from last year’s mark.
It may be the case that Ray throws so darn hard that a certain high baseline of hard contact is inevitable. That premise doesn’t necessarily mean that a positive regression of Ray’s near-19-percent homer-to-fly rate is necessarily inevitable; what it means instead is that, as reliable as Ray will be as a strikeout pitcher, he will be equally volatile as a ratio asset–it will only be a matter of time before Ray walks a couple on, only to have the next hitter guess right on his heater and hit it out. The splits on Ray’s four-seamer confirm as much: that pitch gives up both a 15-plus percent walk rate and a .300-plus ISO.
All of which is to say that this sub-3.50 ERA start is probably a high-water mark for Ray, given his underlying uncertainties. Strikeouts are catnip for fantasy owners, so if I owned Ray, I’d be targeting the owner in my league who is behind in Ks and making an aggressive play to cash out.
One doesn’t think of a pitcher boasting a 6.00-plus ERA as a breakout candidate, but Trevor Bauer’s much-more-palatable 3.21 xFIP suggests that the batted-ball-luck gods have not been smiling kindly on the 26-year-old righty.
Under the hood, Bauer is posting his strongest pro season in terms of skills, with major spikes in strikeout rate, a substantial crater in walk rate, and small but notable dips in contact rate both in and out of the zone.
Bauer’s struggles with command have made it easy to forget that he was once an elite prospect, drafted third overall by the D-backs in 2011 and met with eager anticipation when he debuted in the majors the year following. If Bauer’s command is indeed on the upswing (look at that walk rate trend on his four-seam — 24.3 percent last year down to 7.1 percent so far this year), he could be in line for a nice post-hype breakout campaign. I’d be adding him wherever I could in 12-teams leagues or deeper, on the off chance that his fortunes correct and his solid skills trends stabilize.
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Tom Whalen is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Tom, check out his archive or follow him @tomcwhalen.
