162-Game Pace Stars to Draft: Logan Henderson

“Billy, we’ve got 38 home runs, 120 RBIs to make up for…”

“Guys, you’re still trying to replace Giambi. I told you we can’t do it. What we might be able to do is recreate him. Recreate him in the aggregate.”

It’s so tempting to head into draft prep season thinking like this. We all have our GM hats on, though we may not all pull it off quite so well. 

We scour over projections, building out potential lineups based on how many of each Roto categories we need to fill to finish near the top of the table. Or we look at certain hitters with disdain when they fall underneath our perceived thresholds when it comes to counting stats.

There’s, of course, a lot more that goes into it. Otherwise, what would we be doing here?

But the so-called “back of the baseball card” numbers still matter to us, it’s how we were trained to think about players.

In this series, I’ll point out two starting pitchers and two hitters who I think could fall victim to a bias away from low volume players, depressing their draft day costs for 2027. 

While it’s still too early to tell what their cost will be, I’d argue that given their numbers, paced out to 162 games, they are some of the best players in fantasy, and they’re unlikely to cost what they’re worth. After Logan Henderson, I’ll look at Troy Melton, Oneil Cruz, and Jeremy Peña to round out the list of low volume players with studly per-game numbers this season. 

Logan Henderson, 16 Starts – $18.55; 162 Game Average – $39.43

For starting pitchers, Baseball Reference calculates a 162 Game Average by assuming a full starter’s workload is 34 starts. BRef will take the sum of games pitched and games started for a full workload and divide that by the sum of games pitched and games started a pitcher has made to get to the 162 Game Average. We’ll use Logan Henderson as an example. He’s pitched in 16 games, making 16 starts in 2026.

(34 G + 34 GS) / (16 G + 16 GS) = 2.125

To find Henderson’s 162-game pace, you’d multiply his counting stats by that 2.125 constant. 

Henderson’s 88.1 innings and 99 strikeouts project to 187.2 innings and 210 strikeouts over 34 starts. By the Player Rater, Henderson had been worth $18.55 heading into Wednesday night’s start. Multiply that by 2.125, and over 162 games, he’d be worth $39.43. 

Here’s the top ten starting pitchers by the Player Rater for 2026. Pacing Henderson’s 16 starts out to a full season, he’d be the second-ranked starter by the Player Rater. 

Even assuming he gets bumped into the top 20 starting pitchers drafted, putting him somewhere between 45 and 85 in ADP, he may be undervalued next season. Like Jacob Misiorowski, Chase Burns, Nolan McLean, and Cam Schlittler last season, and like Bryan Woo in 2024, Henderson is proving in an abbreviated sample that he can pitch like an ace. We should draft him like it next year. 

Henderson has made good on everyone who wishcasted on his 25.1 innings as a rookie last season, where the then-23-year-old righty had a 1.78 ERA and 11.72 K/9 across five starts, despite averaging just 93.1 mph with his fastball. 

While his ERA has gone up to 2.34, he’s clearly improved this season. At 24 years old, Henderson has a BB/9 under 2 and a 68% first pitch strike rate. He has a 108 Location+. This level of command at such a young age is an incredibly impressive facet of his game that projects well long term. And his low velocity style makes it more likely that he’ll consistently reach 30-plus starts year after year.

Despite his low velocity, Henderson still racks up strikeouts, with a K/9 of 10.09 this season. His fastball has the sixth highest pitch value in the majors, minimum 80 innings, right above Chris Sale and Tarik Skubal. 

And he does this despite not being a standout at garnering Shadow Zone or Chase Zone swings with any of his pitches. Instead, he just throws more or less down the middle.

To both lefties and righties, he throws his low velocity heater right down the pipe, paired up with changeups that are mostly down the middle too. 

He can’t keep getting away with it! Except like Heisenberg, he absolutely can. 

Henderson has the fifth-best Z-Contact% this season among starters with at least 80 innings pitched. He regularly makes some of the league’s best hitters whiff on meatballs.

Beating Freddie Freeman middle-middle with 94mph has got to be one of the rarer feats in baseball. And he has also shown the ability to rack up whiffs out of the zone too. Check out this 0-1 pitch to Jordan Walker. It’s one of the biggest miss distance pitches from Henderson this season. 

All Star Jordan Walker missed this changeup by 15.6 inches. He thought he was getting an 0-1 fastball presumably, and he most certainly did not get that. 

But Henderson is not a standout in average miss distance, getting swings over the top of his pitches, or underneath them. He isn’t a standout in garnering “flawed swings” either. 

So while he is one of the best at limiting contact in the zone and getting swings (not swings and misses) outside of the zone, one of the areas where he stands out most is in limiting “perfect contact.”

If you look at Henderson’s Savant page, this may not be immediately noticeable. Henderson allows an average barrel and hard hit rate. He has one of the lowest groundball rates in the majors. He gives up a mediocre average exit velocity. But his xBA is one of the best in the majors. Because he doesn’t allow “perfect contact.” 

Savant describes perfect contact as a swing where the barrel of the bat is centered with the ball, where the bat meets the ball “on time” as opposed to being early or late, and where the bat is lined up with the ball, as opposed to being on top of it or underneath it. 

The top of the “Perfect Contact” leaderboard looks pretty good. 

For Henderson, the majority of his imperfect contact comes on flailing, early swings where the hitter gets under the ball.

This has helped him garner an IFFB% of 12% and weather what would otherwise be an imposing 27.2% pull air rate allowed. He’s not allowing many dangerous fly balls. When he does allow pulled balls in the air, he has gotten hit hard, to the tune of a .465 xwOBA. But with his high K% and low BB%, these events are rare and frequently occur without many runners on base.

Henderson doesn’t allow for comfortable at bats against him, even though he throws 93 mph right down the middle more often than not. His changeup and four-seam both have much more arm side run than would be expected, given his extension and release angle, and his cutter and four-seam also get much more drop than expected. 

Irregular fastballs have long been a calling card of Brewers’ pitchers, from Corbin Burnes to Freddy Peralta. Henderson fits the bill. 

He’s an elite strike thrower, elite optimal contact suppressor, and elite bat misser, all rolled into one. He’s demonstrated the ability to strike out major league hitters and have an ERA under 2.50 that is backed up by all of the peripherals. 

Now all we need is ace volume.