This week, I’ll be doing a series of players to avoid leading up to your draft. Today, we’re going to focus on the top 100 pitchers in ECR (Expert Consensus Rankings). When I say avoid, I mean to say “avoid at their ADP.” I’m not drafting James Paxton at his current cost, but if he fell below say, Robbie Ray, I would scoop him up easily.
We’re going to dive a bit deeper than just the “already injured” guys, although getting the most recent news is imperative prior to your draft. I heard on The Black Book podcast a funny, albeit very true, saying: “Injuries always find you; don’t go finding injuries.” If a guy is already hurt, then why would you want to pick him up in the first place? For guys like Clayton Kershaw or Luis Severino, there is a price I am willing to pay, but it is substantially after their consensus ADP, and even ECR.
For any pitchers not discussed here, I either like where they are going, or they are outside the top 100. There are obviously plenty of risks and rewards with each player, but anyone outside the top 100 is essentially a dart throw (unless that guy is Matt Barnes, who should be going in the top 100). If you have strong feelings on a particular player outside the top 100, let’s hash it out (@cmaiorano3) on Twitter. All statistics are from FanGraphs unless stated otherwise.
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The Walking Dead
Let’s knock the injured guys out first.
James Paxton (SP – NYY)
ECR: 13, Pitcher ADP: 16
Bobby Sylvester has gone to the well and back again on Paxton, and I’m here to echo the same thoughts. Oh wait, I already did over three months ago. Long story short: Both Paxton’s fly-ball and HR/FB rates doubled last year. Already not known as a ground-ball pitcher, only 40% of balls in play were grounders. That is a terrible recipe for pitching half of his games in Yankee Stadium, as well as pitching against all the big boppers in the AL East.
The silver lining is that he pitched a career high in innings last year. Oh wait, that was just 160.1! Even if Paxton can get his fly-ball problem under control, you can’t bet on more than 160 frames from him. He’s simply too injured, too often. The best predictor of injury is prior injury, as they say. I would not consider drafting him until Mike Clevinger is off the board, a drop of 22 spots in the overall ECR.
Luis Severino (SP – NYY)
ECR: 19, Pitcher ADP: 19 (and dropping)
Back-to-back Yankees hint at a real-life issue fans didn’t see coming. In addition, CC Sabathia is also injured and suspended for the first five games. They signed left-hander Gio Gonzalez to a minor league deal for insurance. Of course, Severino has dropped from an ECR inside the top ten after getting shut down with shoulder inflammation. The most recent news shows that he won’t be ready until May at the earliest.
Given this recent update, I expect him to move further down, potentially outside the top 25. I’m less concerned about him tipping his pitches in the second half or having a rough postseason. You don’t want your SP1/2 to already start the season injured, simple as that. As Sylvester alluded to on a recent podcast, why not draft Rich Hill 100 picks later?
Clayton Kershaw (SP – LAD)
ECR: 23; Pitcher ADP: 17
Kershaw is trending in the right direction, but he still won’t start on Opening Day. While this particular injury is arm-related, you know his chronic back pain will creep up yet again this year. Kershaw is an easy guy to root for, but in the world of fantasy baseball, you just can’t trust him. His strikeout rate plummeted from 30% in 2017 to 24% in 2018, and his swinging-strike rate went from 14% to 11% (still pretty darn good).
According to FanGraphs’ pitch values (pVals), Kershaw’s fastball did him in, as it went from 8.5 (well above average) to -0.2. All of his pitches have been trending downward since 2016. It appears that Kershaw may be past his prime, and I’m not paying a top-55 pick for an injury-prone, innings-managed pitcher with a decreased ceiling. I would take Kershaw 50 picks later, but someone else in your league will get him first.
Injuries and Helium
Mike Foltynewicz (SP – ATL)
ECR: 51; Pitcher ADP: 34 (and dropping)
Folty is looking at a late April return at the earliest as a result of a sore elbow. Even if his injury is actually dropping him to where he should be, I still don’t want to draft a guy with elbow soreness two weeks into spring training. Foltynewicz has had several other arm injuries, so we can’t say this is his first health bout. While he had a 2.85 ERA in 2018, his xFIP and SIERA (each 3.77) showed almost a full run higher.
The xFIP jump is a direct result of his high walk rate. FanGraphs rates his BB/9 rate of 3.34 somewhere between below average and poor. This is not an outlier — his walk rate was even higher in 2017 (3.45). His SIERA is a result of his seemingly lucky .251 BABIP. While SIERA is complex to calculate, it measures balls in play to an extent, something that FIP/xFIP does not do. To put it in perspective, his BABIP was over 70 points lower than his .324 mark in 2017. His 10.3% swinging strike rate is fine, but it does not translate to a 27.2% K rate. In short, all the signs point to Folty being a slightly above-average pitcher. I’d rather have Shane Bieber, Hill, and Yu Darvish this year.
Eduardo Rodriguez (SP – BOS)
ECR: 57; Pitcher ADP: 56
Rodriguez has undeniable talent. There’s no doubting that. With a strikeout rate of 26.4% and swinging-strike rate of 11.4% last year, he clearly has the ability to miss bats. However, there are some holes in his game, starting with an 8.1% walk rate. That number has been higher than average his whole career, so we can’t expect it to come down any time soon. Furthermore, his 38.7% ground-ball rate is just too low to trust in Fenway and the AL East.
These metrics seem to be the key driver in a couple of projection systems (Depth Chart, Steamer) having his ERA above four. Perhaps more importantly, Rodriguez has had several lower-body injuries throughout his career, most recently a sprained right ankle in July that caused him to miss six weeks. While he is only about to turn 26 in April, his season high is 137.1 innings. Again, I’m not banking on E-Rod to work more than 150. Even if you are executing a strategy to target above-average ratio pitchers, such as the Moneyball Method, Rodriguez’s walk and ground-ball rates make that difficult. I’m not paying a top-150 pick for a guy with a career 4.12 ERA in limited innings.
Closer-itis
Edwin Diaz (RP – NYM)
ECR: 14; Pitcher ADP: 15
If you didn’t read this article by Alex Fast of Pitcher List yet, read it immediately. Basically, we are all drafting closers way too early, and Diaz is the perfect example. Yes, he was incredible last year, but save opportunities are volatile. The Mariners far and away led baseball in one-run games, giving him an inordinate amount of save opportunities. We can’t bank on that happening again.
Furthermore, everyone seems to have recency bias with Diaz. Does anyone remember that he had an 11.5% walk rate in 2017? His 1.96 ERA sure looked great in 2018, but his 3.27 ERA (and 4.02 FIP) in 2017 aren’t as shiny. In short, you are passing up on phenomenal talent — such Lorenzo Cain, Adalberto Mondesi, and Eugenio Suarez — at his ADP of 47. Don’t start the closer run.
Pedro Strop (RP – CHC)
ECR: 95; Pitcher ADP: 90
Everyone is super excited about Strop being the Cubs’ closer for at least April, if not a lot longer, as Brandon Morrow works his way back from an elbow injury. I’m starting to doubt that Morrow’s 2018 injury actually came from taking off his pants (i.e., was it an arm injury?), but that is another story for another day.
Anyway, Strop suffered another hamstring strain earlier this week. Yes, I said another. If you remember, he suffered a hamstring strain during the pennant chase against the Nationals by running out a ground ball while hitting. He then proceeded to come back a week or two early to pitch a scoreless inning in the NL Wild Card Game. He wasn’t affected then, but maybe it’s coming around to bite him now. Since it is still bothering him, I am very concerned that he is going to go on and off the IL all year.
You can expect articles on position players later this week. Best of luck drafting until then!
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Carmen Maiorano is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Carmen, check out his archive and follow him @cmaiorano3.