Sanitathunde

The term means “ambulance dogs.” It’s what the World War I Germans called the dogs they sent into No Man’s Land during lulls in the fighting to find the survivors. And that’s where we are and what we’re doing right now. Our draft and auction battles are over. (Don’t know about you, but it started to feel like a war of attrition to us.) The in-season strategizing hasn’t really begun yet. All the able-bodied players, so it’s thought, are on someone’s roster. Meanwhile, No Man’s Land is littered with the corpses of the guys that nobody wants—the 25th men, the back-of-the-bullpen mop-up pitchers, the mid-level prospects, the 5th starters on bad teams. Can there possibly be, sheltering in some muddy and verminous shell hole, somebody who doesn’t just have a pulse, but is actually fit enough to be on the front lines of tomorrow’s combat?

How about Matt Wisler? Wisler is owned in only 2% of Yahoo leagues and 2.3% of ESPN leagues. Fewer than a quarter of NFBC standard-issue leagues (30 rounds, 15 owners) got around to drafting him. Even on the surface of the stats, it’s a little hard to explain why he wasn’t taken more often. Wisler’s a 23-year-old right-handed pitcher who was universally recognized as one of the top 50 or so prospects in baseball a year ago. He’s got a full repertoire of pitches, though he’s mostly a fastball-slider guy. Originally drafted by the Padres, he was the key to the Craig Kimbrel trade at the start of the 2015 season. He began that season in the minors, got called up to Atlanta in June, and performed creditably if not Fantasy-usefully in 19 starts (8 Wins, 5.94 K/9, 4.71 ERA, 1.46 WHIP), including 4 Quality Starts in his last 5 outings. It’s a no-brainer to project improvement across the board. You like Anthony DeSclafani? What round did you take him in? The 16th or 17th round, we’re guessing. If you got him at an auction, what did you pay? $3, are we right? Well, Steamer projects about the same season for Wisler as it does for DeSclafani.

So what’s wrong with this pitcher? True, he doesn’t miss many bats, though he should miss more of them this season. Those 6 strikeouts per 9 should be more like 7-plus, which is what everyone projects and what they’ve been since Spring Training started. Still, he’s a control guy. He doesn’t get hit especially hard—less hard than average, says Fangraphs–but he does get hit. He needs a decent defense, and he should have one.

How can that possibly be, you ask, given that the Braves traded away Andrelton Simmons, who’s the best shortstop in baseball? A couple of reasons. Simmons’s replacement, Erick Aybar, is competent, and it can only help Wisler to have Tyler Flowers rather than A.J. Pierzynski (for whom we hear the bell tolling, which is too bad, because it means he’ll have more time to deface broadcasts) calling games for him. But mostly it’s because of the Braves’ improved outfield defense. Wisler’s a fly-ball pitcher, so his outfield is crucial. Nick Markakis, with a not-bad glove, is a holdover in right field. New center fielder Ender Inciarte is superb, and Hector Olivera, in left, has a good enough glove to have been a second baseman back in Cuba. He’s got to be better than last season’s cavalcade featuring Jonny Gomes and Nick Swisher.

But the big reason to like Wisler is that he seems to have learned how to get left-handed hitters out. His record against them last season was arguably the worst of any starting pitcher (.320/.416/.569), and none of the guys who were arguably worse (Michael Lorenzen, Kyle Kendrick, Jeremy Guthrie) is on an active major-league roster at the moment. This year, though, he was unhittable for lefties in spring training (.053/.173/.200 in 23 batters faced), and he did better against them than it looks like he did in his first start of the season last Friday. He made it into the 7th inning having given up only one hit to a left-hander, and that was a soft fly ball that was misplayed (all right, misplayed by Olivera). He damn well should have been taken out at the start of the 7th, but he wasn’t, which enabled him to give up a pinch-hit home run to Jeremy Hazelbaker and a solid hit by Matt Carpenter. No shame in that, since Carpenter is Carpenter and Hazelbaker is channeling Ted Williams at the moment.

We suspect Wisler’s improvement against lefties is real, but we don’t know what accounts for it. During the run-up to the season, we saw perhaps a dozen articles and blogs mentioning that Wisler “worked with” Tom Glavine on his changeup over the winter. Glavine, as you no doubt know, is in the Hall of Fame because of his changeup. But we have no idea what his pedagogical skills are, and we have no idea what “worked with” means. Were they out on the practice field with a catcher-for-hire every day? Did they, conversely, just meet for a quick brunch at the golf course one Sunday?

It doesn’t really matter. Maybe it was Glavine, or maybe it’s the protection of Artemis, Greek goddess of pitching (well, she had an unerring spear). Suppose, for whatever reason, that Wisler has transformed himself from hopeless to merely below-average against left-handed hitting. Suppose, more concretely, that he has transformed himself into the below-average Anthony DeSclafani against lefties. Wisler’s already lights-out against righties. What does this merger produce, statistically? Approximately the stats you can expect from Wisler’s teammate Julio Teheran: double-figure wins, 3.50 ERA, 1.25 WHIP, 7+ K/9—a $6 player.

A couple of final notes. First: the Braves may not win 70 games this year, but it won’t be because of their starting rotation. Teheran’s a quality starter, Wisler we just told you about, Mike Foltynewicz we told you about a couple of months ago, and Jhoulys Chacin is a capable pitcher when he’s not in Coors, which he won’t be more than once this season. Second: Do we really propose that you grab Wisler right this second, i.e. in time for tonight’s start against Washington, i.e. against Bryce Harper? Perhaps not. But it will be an interesting game to watch.