Fantasy Baseball Busts: Zac Gallen, Jacob deGrom, Edwin Diaz, Yoshinobu Yamamoto

Most players are worth drafting at a certain point. If some of the following pitchers fall below their average draft position (ADP), they would be worth selecting. Yet, some of the forthcoming pitchers might also be undesirable at any cost for the damage they can potentially do to your squad’s pitching statistics. Here are a few fantasy baseball draft busts to avoid at the pitcher position.

Fantasy Baseball Busts: Pitchers

Yoshinobu Yamamoto (SP – LAD) | Pitcher 15/51.4 ADP

Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s first season in MLB was a success. He had a 3.00 ERA, 3.44 xERA, 2.86 xFIP, 3.14 SIERA, 1.11 WHIP, 6 walk rate, 28.5% strikeout rate and a 30.4 CSW%. Yamamoto’s pitch modeling was also rock-solid, which included 100 Stuff+, 105 Location+ and 106 Pitching+.

However, he made only 18 starts, totaling 90 innings in the regular season, two starts spanning four in the Minors and four lasting 18.2 in the playoffs. Yamamoto was out from the middle of June until the middle of September with a shoulder injury.

The righty’s velocity was fine after he returned from the injured list (IL). However, Yamamoto pitched five innings or fewer in his four regular-season starts in September and recorded more than 15 outs only once in the playoffs.

On the plus side, one of his best starts and the longest turn was in the World Series, allowing only one earned run on one hit (a homer), two walks and four strikeouts in 6.1 innings. Still, in four playoff starts totaling 18.2 innings, Yamamoto had a 3.86 ERA, 4.14 xFIP, 0.96 WHIP, 8.1% walk rate and a 20.3% strikeout rate.

The righty’s short starts after the IL stint and solid but unspectacular postseason number were slightly underwhelming for a player drafted as a high-end SP2 with a fantasy ADP in the fifth round of 12-team mixed-league drafts.

Los Angeles’ supremely talented rotation has a pair of high-upside starting pitchers I’d prefer outright to Yamamoto, and they have lower ADPs. Readers can probably accurately guess which teammates I’m talking about, but I’ll leave some mystery since I’ll likely include them in a forthcoming article about must-have pitchers.

Jacob deGrom (SP – TEX) | Pitcher 16/54 ADP

The analysis for fading Jacob deGrom at a ludicrous ADP of 54 overall is as straightforward as possible. DeGrom hasn’t cleared 100 innings since before 2019. He pitched 10.2 innings for the Rangers and 10.2 in the Minors last year after returning from Tommy John surgery in 2023.

The operation was deGrom’s second Tommy John procedure, and he’s also previously dealt with a shoulder injury. The 36-year-old hurler can’t help fantasy teams if he’s not healthy. His goal for this year is 30 starts, but deGrom has made just 35 starts total since 2021. I wouldn’t touch deGrom in drafts until around pick 100, meaning he’ll be long gone to an optimist.

Edwin Diaz (RP – NYM) | Pitcher 23/74.2 ADP

Edwin Diaz successfully returned from a patellar tendon tear suffered in the World Baseball Classic in 2023. Still, his 2024 campaign resembled his 2021 season more than his lights-out 2022 season.

Diaz’s ADP isn’t egregious. However, he’s included in this piece because the gap is too large between him and Raisel Iglesias (86.6 ADP) and Felix Bautista (101.2 ADP), saying nothing of Jhoan Duran (113.4) or Andres Munoz (119.8 ADP) being more desirable choices at their respective costs. The following table shows the 2024 stats for Diaz, Iglesias, Duran and Munoz, as well as their pitching value-base ranking (VBR).

Diaz is an unappetizing selection unless he falls a round beyond his ADP.

Zac Gallen (SP - ARI) | Pitcher 36/95.2 ADP

Zac Gallen was the 65th-ranked pitcher last year. The righty's 3.65 ERA wasn't especially lucky. It was slightly higher than his 3.62 xFIP but lower than his 3.85 SIERA and 3.97 xERA.

There are some flies in the ointment beyond his ERA, though. Gallen's 8.7% walk rate was his highest since 2021, and his 25.1% strikeout rate was the lowest of his big-league career. Gallen's 1.26 WHIP was also the worst mark of his career. He also had his highest zone-contact percentage (89.9 Zontact% versus 85.2% for the league average in 2024) in his career.

According to Statcast, Gallen's runs above average on fastballs improved yearly from 2019 through 2023, climbing from 4.9 to 8.2 to 9.6 to 19.3 to 25.4. In 2024, his fastballs were -6.4 runs above average.

Moreover, opposing hitters had a 99 wRC+ against his changeup, 139 against his slider, 141 against his four-seam fastball and 167 against his slider. Gallen's knuckle curve had a 27 wRC+ against it, making it a lethal pitch — but his only elite pitch.

Gallen's pitch modeling last year was also discouraging. He had the lowest marks of his career across the board in stuff+ (101), location+ (101) and pitching+ (101). Gallen is a fringe top-110 player getting selected inside the top-100 picks.