The fantasy community expected big things from Willson Contreras in 2018. While Gary Sanchez was the consensus No. 1 catcher overall on draft day, Contreras was usually the second or third catcher off the board, getting drafted roughly on a par with Buster Posey. In 2017 — Contreras’ first full season in the majors — he helped owners with batting average (.276), home runs (21) and RBIs (74), which is a rare combination for a catcher. If not for missing time with a hamstring injury and an oddly-low total of 50 runs, he would have offered even more.

As a 25-year-old set to hit in the heart of a potent Cubs lineup, Contreras seemed like nearly a sure thing to finish the 2018 season as one of the top three catchers in fantasy. Even with Sanchez and Posey struggling, Contreras wound up ranking just 11th in Roto value (per ESPN), three spots behind Posey.
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The Hot Stove Season has not really begun in earnest yet, but with the Nationals reaching an agreement with Kurt Suzuki on a two-year deal on Monday morning, we have our first fantasy-relevant player movement since the five-player swap between the Mariners and Rays back on Nov. 8. The move could bode well for Suzuki’s value in 2019, as he currently has less competition for playing time in Washington than he did in Atlanta. Reportedly, his deal will pay him $10 million over the two years, so it is conceivable that the Nationals could have the resources to dip back into the catcher market for more help.
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Tuesday’s decision deadline for players who received qualifying offers came and went, and Hyun-Jin Ryu was the only one of the seven recipients to accept. Ryu will get to follow up on a stellar, albeit injury-shortened, 2018 campaign by remaining with the Dodgers for another year, and he will earn $17.9 million while gearing up for another run at the free agent market.

Despite missing more than half the season with a strained groin, Ryu finished as a top-50 pitcher in Roto value (per ESPN), largely on the strength of a 1.97 ERA and 1.01 WHIP. While FIP, xFIP and SIERA all agree that he should have had an ERA in the 3.00-to-3.20 range, they don’t directly take into account Ryu’s history as an above-average strander. His 85.4 percent LOB% from 2018 is bound to regress, but his career rate of 77.5 percent is more than four percentage points above the typical major league average.
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I’m bending the rules a bit to include Taylor Rogers in our Half Season Heroes series. He spent all of 2018 in the Twins’ bullpen, appearing in 72 games and tossing 68.1 innings. However, he wasn’t really the same pitcher he was in August that he was in April. Rogers did not start throwing a slider until May 31, and two-and-a-half months later, his curveball went from good to nearly unhittable. While Rogers was still a work in progress around the time of the All-Star break, fairly early on in the second half, he had transformed into a dominant reliever — arguably the most dominant reliever in the majors. It’s this version of the lefty who will be the focus of this column.
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In the first significant trade of the offseason, the Rays sent Mallex Smith and outfield prospect Jake Fraley to the Mariners for Mike Zunino, Guillermo Heredia and minor-league lefty Michael Plassmeyer on Thursday. Smith was a key part of the Rays’ surprising 90-win season, and in finishing as the 15th-ranked outfielder in Roto value (per ESPN’s Player Rater), he was a revelation for fantasy owners as well.

As is the case for many breakout players, Smith’s rise had much to do with playing time. 2018 was his first full season in the majors, and Kevin Cash penciled his name into the starting lineup 127 times. An increased role was not the whole story, as the 25-year-old did improve his skill set in a couple of important ways. Smith became a better contact hitter, which enabled him to reduce his strikeout rate from 22.1 percent over his first two seasons to 18.0 percent in 2018. That, along with a .301 batting average on ground balls, helped Smith to bat a career-high .296 overall.
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Next Monday, a new AL Rookie of the Year will be crowned, and it won’t be Jaime Barria. Though he made 26 starts in his first major league season, giving the Angels 129.1 innings of much-needed solid pitching, Barria did not grab many headlines. He made only moderate waves in fantasy circles. In CBS leagues, which tend to run deep, Barria’s ownership and activation rates peaked in early September, when he was rostered in 55 percent of leagues and started in 36 percent.

Even though the Angels’ righty finished with 10 wins and a 3.41 ERA, he ranked just 73rd among starting pitchers in Roto value (per ESPN’s Player Rater). Barria’s ERA was slimmed down by an 82.1 percent strand rate and .271 BABIP, so fantasy owners can’t be blamed for thinking he was not truly a top-75 starter. Pitchers with an 18.3 percent strikeout rate tend to not draw much interest in fantasy, and Barria did not overcome his relative lack of Ks with an avoidance of walks or homers. His walk rate was 8.8 percent, and he finished with a 1.18 HR/9. Suspicions about Barria’s value were validated by SIERA, FIP and xFIP, all of which exceeded 4.50.
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Even though Jose Peraza had only a little more than a full season’s worth of major league playing time entering 2018, it seemed fair to think we had a strong grasp of what kind of hitter he was. In his major and minor league past, he had been an aggressive hitter with good contact skills but with little power. Speed was his top tool coming up as a prospect, but in his first full season in the majors in 2017, Peraza merely tied for 17th in the stolen base rankings with 23 and tied for 40th in infield hits with 16. It was easy to see why he was often ignored until after the first 200 players were picked on draft day.
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Among starting pitchers who finished in the top 20 in Roto value this season, few were further under the radar on draft day than Blake Snell and Mike Clevinger were. Though Snell was the fourth-most productive starter in terms of Roto value (according to ESPN’s Player Rater) and Clevinger ranked 17th, neither were among the top 190 players in ADP in NFBC or ESPN drafts.

In addition to a surge in their totals of innings pitched, both Snell and Clevinger experienced surprisingly strong improvements in their walk rates. Free passes were a weakness for both of them in 2017, but this season, Snell trimmed his walk rate from 10.8 percent to 9.1 percent, and Clevinger lowered his from 12.0 percent to 8.3 percent. Both pitchers were already proficient at getting strikeouts and had done a fair job of avoiding homers. With even stronger skill sets heading into 2019, fantasy owners could see Snell and Clevinger as particularly appealing options in a pitching pool defined by uncertainty and risk.

But should we?
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By the end of this weekend, we may have seen our last innings of baseball for this season, but we will almost certainly get at least one more chance to watch Nathan Eovaldi. (I am personally just rooting for more baseball.) He has grabbed the spotlight this postseason, excelling in a pair of starts and in three relief appearances in which he set up for Craig Kimbrel. If needed, Eovaldi could be used as the bridge to Kimbrel again in Game 3, but if not, then we may see him as the Red Sox’s Game 4 starter.

It’s not only for the potential of postseason heroics that it’s worth taking one last peek at Eovaldi in 2018. It’s been a breakout season for the 28-year-old, though his 6-7 record and 3.81 ERA would suggest otherwise. In his first season back from his second Tommy John surgery, Eovaldi was better than ever in just about every regard aside from ground ball and home run rates and ERA, and the latter was inflated by a 67.3 percent strand rate. His walk (4.4 percent), swinging strike (10.7 percent) and O-Swing (33.9 percent) rates were all career bests, and his 22.2 percent strikeout rate was nearly four percentage points better than his previous high water mark (18.5 percent in 2016).

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An extraordinarily deep and effective bullpen was a key part of the Brewers’ run to the NLCS and coming within a win of going to the World Series. While they got just 20.1 innings from their starting pitchers in their series against the Dodgers, Josh Hader and Corey Knebel each tossed at least seven innings apiece, allowing a combined one run between them.

Jeremy Jeffress was as much a part of that vaunted bullpen throughout the regular season, but he faltered in both the NLCS and the NLDS against the Rockies. Despite collecting 11 strikeouts in eight postseason innings, Jeffress allowed six runs on 16 hits (including two home runs) and four walks.
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