February 27, 2015

Fantasy Players to Avoid

Starting Pitchers

by BP Fantasy Staff

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Previous articles in this series:

• Catchers to Avoid
• First Basemen to Avoid
• Second Basemen to Avoid
• Third Basemen to Avoid
• Shortstops to Avoid
• Outfielders to Avoid

You should probably just avoid all pitchers forever but we’ll try to be more specific.

Andrew Cashner, Padres
Another year, another way-too-high ADP for Andrew Cashner. Ho hum. 2014 was the third season in the last four that Cashner has missed at least 70 games with an arm injury. His blue-plate special is the shoulder, but last year he threw in an elbow strain for good measure. I get the allure on paper, I do. He’s the size of a redwood sapling, he’s got a double-plus heater, and he pitches in Petco. Our own mechanics guru Doug Thornburn has openly gushed about Cashner’s efficiency of motion. The stuff and pedigree of a frontline starter is there, and he’s shown just enough glimpses of it in actualized form to tantalize owners.

One of these days he may just make the leap. But two things about that. One, it’s not entirely clear what “the leap” might look like for Cashner. He’s now pitched over 300 career innings as a major-league starter with a strikeout rate that stands at a pedestrian 6.8-per-nine. And his swinging-strike rate dipped to a below-average eight percent when he took the ball last summer. The fastball is an undeniably excellent pitch that works really well as a pitch that induces weak contact. But it doesn’t produce an outsized number of whiffs on its own, and he lacks a true secondary put-away pitch to augment it. The strikeout deficit keeps his ceiling in check, and it puts that much more pressure on his batted ball profile in front of a Padres defense that projects as mediocre at best.

The other issue is that re-drafters are currently paying an awfully expensive premium to gamble on his arm holding up for an entire 30-plus start season. Cashner’s currently going 37^th among starting pitchers in the middle of the 10^th round of NFBC drafts. In his one reasonably healthy year, 2013, Cashner returned $10 of mixed-league value on the strength of a 3.09 ERA and 1.13 WHIP over 175 innings. Those are decent numbers indeed, and they were good for 41^st among starters. But at that draft position you’re paying full retail to assume he’ll make it to back into that innings range (or exceed it, really), and that’s a poor use of resources. Chances are you’ve already got a couple strong starters at this point in the draft, so do yourself a favor: stock up on a couple more bats and grab Jose Quintana four rounds later. —Wilson Karaman

Nate Eovaldi, Yankees
This is probably not as groundbreaking as it may seem, but despite being fairly consistent in his mediocrity, Eovaldi continues to drum up support in many leagues. It's easy to see why, as he throws in the mid to upper 90s and can hold that velocity deep into games. Generally you barely need a palatable second pitch to have moderate success and two pitches to mix in mean you're a solid starter, with that type of heat.

Unfortunately for Eovaldi, this isn't much the case. His slider can flash above average, but lacks consistency and given how little he throws his changeup, if he has an off night with the slider there are problems. I looked at Eovaldi in the midst of his hot start last year, and came away with the prediction that he was due to backslide severely, as the degree to which he was suppressing right-handers was unsustainable. Eovaldi doesn't miss bats, and while he improved his walk rate significantly last season, he's going to need to hold those gains just to survive in Yankee stadium. He's always kept the ball in the park, but then he's never been good despite that ability, so trading the spacious confines of Miami for the short porch in New York is unlikely to help matters. Unless a 4.00 ERA and middling strikeouts intrigue you, you can do better in the late rounds. —Craig Goldstein

Matt Harvey, Mets
I like Matt Harvey. I really do. I feel bad putting him in this group. With that being said, he’s being valued much too highly for my liking, and I’d be surprised if I come away with him in any leagues this season. There’s just too much downside to justify taking him in the grouping he’s going with right now.

Obviously, he was amazing a couple years ago when he struck out 191 batters in 178 innings while putting up a 2.27 ERA. The problem is that 2013 season was the last time he pitched. There’s going to be rust here, and it likely won’t all be shaken off by the time spring training ends. We all know that Tommy John surgery isn’t nearly the death sentence that it used to be, but that doesn’t mean pitchers automatically come back right away and return to dominance. Right now, all the reports out of Mets camp are good, but it’s not even March yet. No one has bad reports right now. There is also a lot of talk about the Mets not worrying about his innings too much, with a chance he’ll be able to go 200 in 2015. That’s much easier to say now than it is later. If their season doesn’t go according to plan and they’re falling out of contention in July or August, I would expect his spot in the rotation to be skipped every few times through to keep him ready for 2016.

According to FantasyPros.com, Harvey is being drafted as the 17^th-best pitcher and the 66th best player overall. That is crazy optimistic, and there are a ton of quality pitchers you can get that are currently going later than him. Guys like Julio Teheran, Alex Cobb, Sonny Gray, Jake Arrieta, and James Shields are going directly after Harvey. While they’re not number one guys, you can justify heading your fantasy rotation with some of those pitchers if you prefer to load up on hitting early. I’d even prefer guys like Hisahi Iwakuma, Gerrit Cole and teammate Jacob DeGrom, and they’re going a full two rounds later. Matt Harvey is a really good pitcher with a chance of being dominant in 2015, but he’s being valued like it’s a given he’ll be close to his 2013 self. I’d like to play it a little safer and take the names going directly behind him, who have some solid upside themselves. —Matt Collins

Phil Hughes, Twins
It seems the collective fantasy baseball community is cautiously optimistic about Hughes. His ADP isn’t obscenely high (46th starter), but it’s still above solid-upside contributors like Chris Archer, Jose Quintana, and Homer Bailey. Hughes burst onto the fantasy scene last year with a minuscule 1.9 percent walk rate, 16 wins, and a 3.52 ERA. For me, the question boils down to whether the walk rate can be sustained, as I’m willing to let the extreme drop in home-run rate slide due to the move to Target Field.

The league-average starter allowed opposing teams to hit .252 on the season. Phil Hughes owned a .265 opponent batting average. His strikeout rate also roughly mirrored his career average, which is solid but unspectacular. Thus, I’m comfortable suggesting that Hughes’ main fantasy value stemmed from his stingy walk rate. By limiting free passes, he ultimately allowed fewer baserunners than average, minimizing the damage of his above-average batting average. The walk rate must remain small for Hughes to truly be an above-average fantasy option.

The 28-year-old wasn’t benefiting from increased velocity or a new pitch, though he did revert back to his cutter and scrapped the slider he featured in 2013. Nor did he induce more swings-and-misses than in the past. Instead, Hughes simply got opposing hitters to swing more often and swing at poorer pitches. Opposing hitters swung at 38 percent of pitches outside the zone, a massive increase over his career average of just 30.8 percent. Furthermore, opponents swung at 57.1 percent of his pitches. That ranked no. 1 among qualified starters by almost five percent—Clayton Kershaw ranked second with 52.8 percent. Part of that surely had to do with Hughes’ reputation in 2014 for pounding the zone and limiting walks, but those numbers are vastly out of whack with his career norms, especially considering the steady strikeout and swinging-strike rates. If the swing rates normalize and everything else remains similar to 2014, the picture isn’t quite so rosy. The walk rate rises, the WHIP rises, and the high opponents' batting average starts to mean something more sinister. And if the home-run rate increases from 0.69 HR/9 to his career norm of 1.16 HR/9, things get worse.

In short, Phil Hughes was a nice feel-good story in 2014 and someone who helped anchor many fantasy rotations; however, it is unreasonable to assume opposing hitters will swing so often when nothing about his repertoire appears to have changed. The AL Central will have an offseason to adjust, too, which also speaks to the unlikelihood of a repeat performance. —J.P. Breen

Masahiro Tanaka, Yankees
I get it. Surgery isn’t the preferred option; in fact, it is generally the best policy for any injury to see if rest and rehabilitation work before going under the knife. For Tommy John surgery, it is especially understandable why a pitcher would not want to lose an entire season or more to recovery, particularly if that pitcher isn’t a 20-year-old pup who has an entire career in front of him. Furthermore, Tanaka could be one of those rare pitchers who does recover and never needs the surgery.

This recommendation is less about the negatives and more about the unknowns, and the price points on Tanaka so far. He is currently being taken in the late ninth round of drafts (using NFBC, 15-team rankings) and went for $20 in the CBS, AL-only auction this past Tuesday. There is no doubt that the upside is tremendous if Tanaka is healthy. He put up a glittering 2.77 ERA with a 1.056 WHIP and 141 strikeouts in 136 1/3 innings last year, earning $21 in AL-only. However, most of these numbers were put up pre-injury. Tanaka only had two starts post-injury, and the results were mixed, at best.

And while it isn’t responsible to speculate on whether or not Tanaka can recover, or to pontificate on the severity of his injury without access to his medical records, as fantasy players we have to place our bets. “Minor tear” is one of those squishy euphemisms that doesn’t offer aid or comfort when you are trying to put together your draft lists or auction prices. Tanaka is being drafted at the moment like a back-end no. 2 in mixed leagues and a backend #1 in AL-only formats. For him to return this level of value, he is going to have to pitch the way he did in 2014 for another 140 or so innings. For Tanaka to exceed this, he will have to pitch something close to a full season. The safer bet is to pay him like a no. 3 in AL-only and a no. 4 in mixed. The temptation to look for upside is great, but there are better places to look for said upside than on a risky medical situation. —Mike Gianella

BP Fantasy Staff is an author of Baseball Prospectus. 
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