Earlier this month, I highlighted a couple of pitchers who improved their results by changing their pitch mix with a new team. With the positive results, I decided to apply the logic to this upcoming class of free agents. The reason I wanted to focus on free agents because I expect a pitcher’s current teams to keep the pitcher doing what he has always done. After going over 15 pitchers, four stood out with real upside.

I’m just going to focus on the each pitcher’s 2018 pitch mix. I can’t assume they’ll develop a new pitch, so I need to work with what they showed last year. The two most common ways for a pitcher to improve is to quit throwing a horrible pitch or drop their fastball usage. These changes don’t guarantee an improvement. For now, the focus is on pitchers with upside beyond their projection.

I collected the free-agent pitchers from MLBTradeRumors and took the youngest pitchers for this investigation. I didn’t include any pitcher who has any kind of option on their contract. I’ll go back and examine them once it’s known for sure who they are or aren’t a free agent.

After going through the pitchers, I found they fit into three main groups depending on if changing their mix could help. This list is in no way a ranking of pitcher talent but I’m sure someone will bring it up in the comments. These are just pitchers who I believe can improve by adjusting their current pitch mix.

Major Improvement Candidates

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Dammit. For a few years, I followed an old study showing hitters who played through an injury would outperform their next season’s projections, especially in relation to power. Last offseason, I collected a list of 26 such hitters. When I went to compare this group’s projections to their actual performance, I found no overperformance and I’m not sure how I’ll value them going forward.

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Blake Snell

The 25-year-old lefty should have been on several 2017 pre-season sleeper lists but almost everyone missed on him. He was basically a late-round “Why not?” I could see why owners wrote him off with a 4.85 ERA in 20107’s first half. even though he posted a 3.49 ERA in the second half. More importantly, his strikeouts and velocity were trending up and walks were heading down as the season went on.

His K%-BB% climbed from 5% to 16% which put him on par with Jon Lester or Gerrit Cole. Instead, his 196 ADP placed him near Aaron Sanchez, Danny Duffy, and Kevin Gausman.

Snell kept the gains from 2017 with an 18 K%-BB% for the season’s first half. Then, he improved throughout the 2018 season with his velocity climbing pushing his K%-BB% up to 31%.

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With steals becoming more scarce, owners were forced to reach for the few stolen base sources which could carry a team. In 2018, Dee Gordon and Billy Hamilton were supposed to be two such sources. Both disappointed their owners but the risk of a decline was evident even though their owners, which includes the author, ignored them. The owners were hoping for a stolen base panacea but ended up with burnt pancakes.

Going into the season, our Depth Charts projected Hamilton to have the most stolen bases at 52 and Gordon was third at 46. Both missed badly with Hamilton stealing 34 and Gordon with 30. In my Tout Wars league, 16 steals were the difference between 7th and 2nd in the category.

The reason for their decline didn’t involve their ability to steal a base. Both couldn’t hit enough to get on base and continue leading off. Both had on-base rates under .300 and OPS’s in the low .600’s. By the season’s end, both were deservingly hitting at the bottom of the lineup (Hamilton 106 times, Gordon 34 times). In all fairness, their projected OPS values (.674 and .648) were below the average catcher (.676).

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Mitch Haniger surprised about everyone this season with top-25 production when his average draft position was over 200 in NFBC leagues. In all fairness, he should have made several sleeper lists but the industry failed to pick up on his productive but ignored 2017 season.  He’s the type of hitter owners need to focus on rostering, late-round injured hitters.

His stats speak volumes. Here are some of Haniger’s projections and results over the past two seasons.

His projection coming into 2017 was decent with a 20 HR and 8 SB profile when prorating to 600 PA. The season started out great until he went on the DL with an oblique injury which lasted for over a month. He came back from the DL, struggled, got hurt a coup of times (finger and face), and finally turned it on over the last month. This profile screams sleeper and everyone slept on him.

By just prorating his 2017 season to 600 PA, he would be at 23 dingers and 7 bags with an acceptable .282 AVG. His results were similar to another pre-season unknown, Marwin Gonzalez (23 HR, 8 SB, .303 AVG). Gonzalez’s average ADP was 123, about 100 picks before Haniger went off the board.

As for Haniger’s 2018 season, he showed the value of a well-rounded player. A near .300 batting average, over 20 homers, and about 10 stolen bases placed him as a  top-25 overall batter. Unexciting stats can still be good.

Going forward, owners can take several lessons from this failure. First, dig into hitters after pick 100 who struggled with injuries but showed positive production when healthy. Most owners are going to hope the top names like Kris Bryant and Jose Altuve will rebound. They aren’t going to surprise anyone. Instead, players like Kyle Seager (toe), Steven Souza Jr.(pec), and Jorge Soler (rib) might be acquired for nothing and end up being a top-50 player.

Another item is to prorate each player’s previous season to 600 plate appearances to see if anyone pops up if given more playing time. With Haniger’s nearly identical pro-rated 2017 and 2018 seasons, his 2017 season would have stood out and owners could have taken notice. Instead, he was relegated to the reserve rounds.

Missing on Haniger’s points to some obvious projects for me later in the offseason. Until then, let me know of any players who the industry missed on and there was no obvious cause.

The offseason always gets my mind wandering and looking for coincidences that eventually lead to projection adjustments. In my contemplations, I stumbled on Christian Yelich and David Peralta exceeding expectations while posting groundball rates over 50%. To maintain this high groundball rate, they must use a fairly flat swing. This information by itself is completely useless but when combined with the latest pitching trend of high fastballs, I thought I may have something. I decided to mash these two ideas together to see if groundball (i.e. level swing) hitters are beating their projections as the league throws more high fastballs. For those wanting the condensed version, they don’t. For those who like numbers, continue.

Pounding the top of the strike zone helps to limit the damage done by hitters with positive launch angle swings. A high straight pitch means the bat’s barrel has limited time in the area of solid contact. Pitchers have figured out the greatness of the high fastball and have been throwing it more.

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When I hear or read about a hitter playing through an injury my interest perks up and he becomes an immediate draft target. Standard projections have no idea these players played hurt and the lower production keeps down future estimations. Savvy owners can give these players a small talent bump and reap some nice rewards. My current request to create a detailed list of hitters playing through injuries for 2019 preseason research and to test after next season.

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Looking back, Jesus Aguilar had so many forces working to hold down his pre-season value, I’m amazed some teams rostered him (566th in NFBC ADP). While he had the tools for a breakout, it’s tough to find actionable pre-season moves to prevent similar players from slipping through the cracks. Once he got the opportunity to play, owners should have jumped in to roster him.

The first item to consider in the miss is that Aguilar’s projections weren’t glowing. Of all projected hitters in our pre-season depth charts, he came in at 245th by OPS. Not the best ranking for a 1B, especially compared to his teammate Eric Thames.

Here are the pair’s various OPS projections coming into the season.

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Every season a few hitters come out of nowhere to become major fantasy contributors. And by nowhere, I mean no one targeted them at all during draft season, even in 50-man roster draft-and-holds. This past season, Max Muncy, Joey Wendle, and Luke Voit provided fantasy production for nothing. An interesting trait for each of these hitters is that savvy teams targeted them in trades before the breakout. In recent seasons, these breakouts include Chris Taylor. Jose Martinez. and Jesus Aguilar. While the general public doesn’t have the same resources, scouts, and data as major league teams, I found the general traits some teams are looking to acquire.

I asked for help in creating the list. I end up with many responses but I wanted productive hitters on no one’s radar. I removed a suggestion if the hitter was on any top-100 list (e.g. John Hicks) or if they were ever an MLB regular (e.g. Scooter Gennett). In the end, 12 hitters made the cut: Chris Taylor, Max Muncy, Luke Voit, Joey Wendle, Jose Martinez, Jesus Aguilar, Teoscar Hernandez, Adam Duvall, Daniel Palka, Eugenio Suarez, Mitch Haniger, and Justin Turner.

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In the #2earlymock drafts run by our own Justin Mason, Javier Baez is going 17th and Trevor Story is going 20th among all hitters. The picks are quite high considering Baez was the 58th hitter taken, and Story was 65th in NFBC drafts last year. The pair didn’t have must-draft preseason hype and their suspect plate discipline limited their perceived value. Both exceeded all expectations as they came in at 6th and 7th overall this year. This was a huge miss by the industry and I’m going to see if some traits point to why some low plate discipline players break out and others don’t.

For every Baez and Story, other bad plate discipline hitters failed like Byron Buxton (.383 OPS), Chris Davis (.539 OPS), Miguel Sano (.679 OPS) and Jonathan Schoop (.682 OPS). No obvious difference stood out. While Chris Davis is old, Buxton, Sano, and Schoop should be in their primes. To find out who may break out, I decided to start with the 2018 Bad Plate Discipline Class.

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