With each player that lands on the DL, our standards for what constitutes a rosterable fantasy starter can’t help but adjust accordingly. There was a point where we might have once rolled our eyes at the mediocrity of, say, Ricky Nolasco, but with our rosters and waiver wires now littered with red “DL10” markers, the Angels veteran and his 3.86 ERA over 21-plus May innings seems rather palatable, if not downright essential.
Indeed, desperate times call for us to dig much deeper into the player pool, so on this week’s Regression Report, let’s look at five lesser-owned starters (all are available in more than half of ESPN leagues) who show notable friction between their surface results and their underlying skills.
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It says something rather condemning about the shape of Velasquez’s 2017 season that he is now a decidedly fringy player in standard fantasy leagues. Indeed, it was little over a year ago that Velasquez struck out 16 Padres in a complete-game gem that sent his fantasy stock soaring. That highlight now seems centuries old, with the hard-throwing Philly carrying a 5.02 ERA in about 160 innings since, with a near-6.00 ERA on the current season.
In one sense, diagnosing the trouble for Velasquez is simple, as his homer-per-fly rate (HR/FB) has doubled over each of the past two seasons, currently sitting at a hair-raising 21.4 percent on the current year. What’s odd, though, is that while his hard-contact numbers are slightly up, his fly-ball rate is down significantly, from 41.2 percent last year to 33.9 percent this year. So sure, Velasquez has been very hittable, but he’s also been a bit unlucky.
A lot of that misfortune stems from his changeup. Granted, that pitch has been an absolute nightmare for Velasquez, surrendering a whopping 1.294 OPS across a 105-pitch sample. But along with those awful results on the change comes, get this, a 100% HR/FB. Indeed, every fly off of a Velasquez changeup that has left the infield has also left the yard.
There’s just no way this holds over the course of the full season, which is significant because four of Velasquez’s nine homers on the year have come off of that changeup, more than he gave up all of last year on that pitch. It’s also clear that Velasquez is tweaking the chanegup. It’s showing more movement while coaxing way more grounders and infield flys, along with the eye-popping spike in homers.
A gamble on Velasquez seems like a gamble on him either finding this pitch or ditching it altogether, and it’s a gamble that shouldn’t cost you too much given his current numbers. Even if he pitches to a 4.00 ERA and 1.30 WHIP the rest of the way, those numbers are close to league-average in the current SP landscape, and that’s not even accounting for the fire-balling righty’s sky-high strikeout upside.
Once a reliable innings-eater during his tenures with the Tampa Bay Rays and Chicago Cubs, veteran righty Matt Garza has been persona non grata for standard fantasy rosters since transitioning to the hitter-friendly confined of Miller Park in 2014, with diminished velocity and dwindling strikeout totals leaving him to post a 4.57 ERA across his first three seasons with the Brewers.
But this season the results are much more respectable. In May, the veteran righty has been thriving, sporting a top-15 ERA among starters on the month and a sub-3.00 mark on the season overall, positioning him as a strong fantasy contributor regardless of the pitching-starved landscape.
It helps that Garza has chiseled his walk rate way down, from over three walks per nine across his previous three seasons to under two so far in 2017. It would seem that Garza has improved his fastball command, with his two- and four-seam both showing notable dips in walk rate compared to his recent trends.
But a closer look at Garza’s zone rates show that he isn’t exactly pounding the plate with his fastball. Instead, he’s generating more movement and thus coaxing more swings out of zone. The adjustment is understandable, given that Garza surrendered career-high contact rates on his fastball last year. Still, he’s walking a bit of a tightrope, especially considering that the walk rate on his slider is through the roof.
Once the book on Garza’s new fastball circulates, you can expect his walk rate to regress substantially. The 33-year-old could still carve out sustained standard-league relevance, but expecting anything beyond league-average contributions seems overly optimistic.
A once-promising arm besieged with injuries, Cobb has been quietly rebuilding his reputation as a solid fantasy asset, with the 29-year-old sporting a 3.67 ERA on the young season despite a middling strikeout rate.
It’s notable that Cobb is returning to some semblance of productive form without the help of his changeup, a pitch that was a staple of his approach during his early-career peak but which has been a disaster thus far in 2017, allowing a bloated .968 OPS compared to the sub-.600 marks that the pitch surrendered in 2013 and 2014.
Cobb has adjusted accordingly, shelving the change for a knuckle curve that has earned a near-25-percent strikeout-minus-walk rate while tracking a measly 52 wRC+ across a 318-pitch sample. If Cobb can tweak the changeup and work it back into his arsenal along with the knuckle curve, we might see his strikeout rate return to respectability–recall that the pitch has a 20-plus-percent swinging strike rate on over 800 offerings in 2014.
So while Cobb’s 2.78 ERA across 32-plus May innings might represent a high-water mark, it’s fair to hope that Cobb’s regression won’t be especially dire. Cobb’s checkered injury history makes him a questionable asset, but it might also make him easier to acquire than his upside should allow.
At the top of the May starting pitcher xFIP leaderboard, just behind studs like Chris Sale and Chris Archer, you’ll be surprised to find the name of Luis Perdomo, the young San Diego righty who sports an impressive 3.01 xFIP on the month.
Of course, none of us play in xFIP leagues, and the actual 6.43 ERA that Perdomo has managed across May is far less attractive for fantasy purposes.
But the gap between those two numbers might mean that the young Padre is performing a bit better skills-wise than his surface numbers indicate. The 8.68 strikeouts per nine is certainly impressive, buoyed by a plus cutter that has shown major gains in swinging strike rate.
Meanwhile, his two-seamer, despite touching 97 MPH, has been hit rather hard, or so it seems. Sure, the OPS against that fastball is up compared to last season, but the isolated slugging in notably down, with 25 of the 33 hits surrendered by Perdomo’s fastball being singles. The .421 BABIP on that pitch confirms that Perdomo and his bloated ERA have been the victims of some batted-ball-luck misfortune.
Of course, a fastball that coaxes so many grounders might be destined for high BABIP and thus high variance. Even so, Perdomo’s excellent cutter and favorable home environment should make him an appealing back-end fantasy starter, one who you can probably acquire for next to nothing.
Promising young righty Mike Clevinger didn’t make a strong impression during his short taste of the majors last season, flashing solid strikeout totals but ultimately washing out to the tune of a 5.26 ERA across 53 innings.
This season’s 1.56 ERA over four starts seems, on the surface, like the precursor of a breakout in waiting, but Clevinger’s underlying numbers don’t show any sort of skills overhaul–if anything, he’s taken a step back, despite the impressive results.
While Clevinger has built on his swinging strike rates from last season, he’s also walked close to six batters per nine, upping his already-bloated walk rate from last season, a tendency that hasn’t yet hurt him in the earned-run column thanks to a suspect .171 BABIP against. It’s also notable that Clevinger hasn’t yet allowed a homer, a trend that should correct in a hurry, especially if he continues to fall behind in counts thanks to that sub-44-percent zone rate on his fastball.
Clevinger’s slider is a very nasty pitch indeed, but his trouble with locating his fastball make him an extremely high-variance player going forward. Even with the starter position in such dire straights, you’d have to be wearing rose-colored glasses to see Clevinger as a difference-maker for the duration of the season.
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Tom Whalen is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Tom, check out his archive or follow him @tomcwhalen.
