Ever since 2012, I’ve been waiting for Johnny Cueto to put up a monster season. At the time, I had identified some markers that compared favorably with Roy Halladay. That’s not to say I expected Cueto to become a true beast like Halladay. However, having traits in common with such an elite pitcher probably improves the likelihood of a fantasy breakout.

We were finally treated to glory with a 20 win, 242 strikeout, 2.25 ERA, and 0.96 WHIP season worth $34. He was the second most valuable pitcher per Zach Sanders, and he was arguably the most profitable (Corey Kluber is the alternative). According to FantasyPros, owners paid just $7 to acquire Cueto this season.
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When a rookie starting pitcher posts a 2.69 ERA and earns Rookie of the Year honors, despite owning an unexciting 3.62 career ERA in the minor leagues, the natural knee-jerk reaction is to raise both eyebrows. When that pitcher also struck out 25.5% of the batters he faced in the Majors, after posted an underwhelming 19.5% strikeout rate in the minors, you would raise a third eyebrow if you had one. But despite his mediocre minor league track record that fails to foreshadow the type of success he enjoyed during his Mets debut, Jacob deGrom is for real. Here’s why:

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Carlos Rodon

Why I watched: One of the 2014 draft picks who is nearly ready to join the big league level club.

Game(s) Watched: 8/30/14 vs Gwinnett Braves

Game Thoughts

• Tough camera angles and this was from one of the better MiLB cameras.

• The lefty is a big boy (6’3 234)

• Used the angles coming from 1B side with a straight fastball. He should be able to own lefties with this pitch.

• Slider just has the same action as his fastball, but moves down with some glove side run. It is a swing and miss pitch with no ability to throw for it for strikes.

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Hughes ranked 22nd in Zach Sanders’ rankings among starting pitchers.

I have to admit, as a Twin Cities native I was super psyched to hear about Phil Hughes signing with the Twins while I was on Thanksgiving vacation in Montana. No jokes, please.

The Twins had been talent poor in the rotation a couple years running, and even with Hughes’ obvious warts was a much better option to make starts than Pedro Hernandez, Andrew Albers, and a post-apocalypse Scott Diamond. Hughes was basically everything the rest of the Twins staff wasn’t. Projectable, talented with a pretty good fastball, and for crying out loud not a pitch-to-contact guy.

It stood to reason that Hughes would be a good fit for Target Field, too. Not necessarily the Twins with their collection of cast iron outfielders, but still for a park with expansive dimensions and its difficulty for left-handed hitters, Target Field appeared to be a match made in heaven for Hughes. Read the rest of this entry »

For me personally, I’m not sure there was a bigger pitching surprise in 2014 than Dallas Keuchel. I saw a handful of Keuchel’s Triple-A starts in 2011 and 2012, and I had a hard time envisioning him carving out any meaningful role on a major-league pitching staff. As a lefty who topped out around 90 mph, Keuchel was also essentially a two-pitch pitcher.

To be fair, they were two pretty good pitches. Keuchel has always had a strong changeup, paired with a two-seamer with very nice dual-plane break. The problem was that his other pitches were basically junk. He threw some sort of slurvey breaking ball that didn’t fool anyone, and rarely found the strike zone. He had a four-seam fastball, but it was extremely flat and virtually lifeless.

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On the surface, Brandon McCarthy wasn’t much of anything last season. His 10 wins, 175 strikeouts, 4.05 ERA, and 1.28 WHIP over 200 innings marked him as a fantasy replacement level pitcher. Which, in a sense, was fine. Nobody was spending money on him headed into the season. He performed exactly as expected, right? Not so much.

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This 30-part series will look at the projected Top 5 freshman contributors for each big league club for the year ahead. The rankings take into consideration a mixture of ceiling, readiness and potential playing time allocation, which is to say some players with lower ceilings may be ranked ahead of others with higher ceilings because they project to have a greater impact in the coming season.

In a Nutshell: The Brewers enter 2014 with few question marks in the field and a strong starting rotation. However, no team has too much pitching, so there’s always a need there… and the bullpen is a potential weaknesses.

1. Taylor Jungmann, RHP: Jungmann is an underrated pitcher because he doesn’t throw as hard as he once did and because he prefers to put the ball in play (on the ground) rather than chase the “sexier” out via the whiff. With that said, the right-hander out of Texas did see a significant spike in his K-rate in 2014 (while maintaining his strong GB rate) thanks to a change in approach (including pitching more off his fastball). The strong-bodied Jungmann has a chance to be a mid-rotation workhorse for the Brewers beginning in 2015.

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Only seven starters had changeups with better whiff rates than Chase Anderson in 2014. That’s enough to put him on my radar in the coming year. But how excited we should actually be about him depends on more than just that one fact.

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As our own Brad Johnson stated today, one of the reasons pitchers are difficult to evaluate in their inconsistencies. One of the biggest reasons for the inconsistencies is pitcher health. While a few hitters can lose an entire season because of injury, it is just a fraction compared to pitchers who have to sit out.  To help understand each pitcher’s injury risk, I will release my 2015 starting pitcher rankings.

I have been releasing the values for a few seasons with accurate results. Last season, I estimated 50 of the 128 pitchers who threw 120 innings in 2013 would end up on the DL. I was a little low since 53 starters made a least one trip. It work out to 41% or 2 out of every 5 starters. The percentage always seems to hover around 40%.

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This might be something fantasy baseball players accept. Jon Lester posted a 2.46 ERA, a 1.10 WHIP, and 220 strikeouts in 2014. He finished as the sixth-best starting pitcher, per Zach Sanders’ end-of-season rankings at the position.

But maybe some rotisserie and head-to-head managers don’t. After all, Lester was the preseason consensus No. 44 SP at RotoGraphs. He outdid his FIP, xFIP, and SIERA by more than half of a run. This past season was awesome. Its awesomeness is distinctly different from the results in his past couple of seasons. He hadn’t been about this awesome since 2009 and 2010 – coupling 220-plus strikeouts with an ERA that was at least 25% better than league average. His numbers have never looked as good as they did this year. His average velocities dropped a tad this past season. There’s room for doubt.

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