Three Lefties Flashing Star Upside

There are over 30 starting pitchers on the disabled list right now. I tabbed about 29 of them as fantasy viable, while understanding that the viability ranges substantially from 10-team mixed to 12-team AL or NL only. The point is that the pool has taken a hit in the first 2.5 months, as it does every single year. We haven’t seen the spate of Tommy John surgeries that struck the league the past couple of years, but there are plenty of injuries that can be severe without being TJ. The piling up of injuries takes its toll on waiver wires everywhere and lowers our barrier for entry to tab a guy worthy of bidding.

In April, an exemplary start from someone available on the wire isn’t instantly going to draw attention. You might not have anyone you’re ready to cut to make for him and if a guy wasn’t worthy of being draft a week or two ago, one strong start isn’t likely to change that opinion. Now 2.5 months in, you’ve got high-strikeout middle relievers bridging the gap on your latest injuries and all of a sudden you’re making eyes at Jered Weaver because he has a two-start week.

First things first, don’t pick up Weaver. Five relievers have more strikeouts than Weaver’s 46: Dellin Betances (59), Andrew Miller (51), Seung Oh, Kyle Barraclough, and Brad Hand (47). Hand’s 35.7 IP is the high in that group and still less than half of Weaver’s 75.7. Beyond avoiding Weaver, you really have to be ready to act fast on pitchers. Magnitude takes on a bigger role at this stage in the season when we aren’t afforded the luxury of waiting for a reasonable sample. Truth be told, this act first, ask questions later model is just the new way to play, even early in the season. But as options dry up, decisions have to be even quicker.

This method will produce some duds. We’re using small samples and picking up guys who are still on the wire in June for a reason (or reasons), but if you’re going to find this year’s Cody Anderson (3.05 ERA in 91.3 IP after coming up on 6/21 last year) or Erasmo Ramirez (joined rotation in mid-May, but had 4.96 ERA at this time last year before finishing with a 3.17 in 110.7 IP), you have to be ready to pounce. Here are a few pounce-worthy arms who may still be on your wire depending on league size.

James Paxton | Seattle Mariners

This past weekend was the one to get him at CBS leagues he rose from 22% roster rate to 76%, but he’s only at 26% at ESPN and 39% at Yahoo! so he may still be on your wire in shallower leagues. I’ve been on the Paxton train many times before and while it has been underwhelming in terms of volume, the actual performance is never really bad (3.16 ERA in 165 IP from 2013-15). Health has been the issue. The last time he eclipsed 100 innings was 2013. I’ll admit to not paying a lot of attention to him when he came up on June 1st, especially after the Padres roughed him up.

But when Eno told me that he was hitting 100 and painting with it, I was back in. He has always had strong velocity, but this was something else. This was 3 MPH of heat, notable even in a small sample. This is on Thor’s level from the left side! While we are less-driven by sample sizes at this juncture of the season, we don’t ignore their relevance. I understand it’s all of 16 innings, but the changes behind the surge, as outlined by Eno, help offset some of the penalty applied for the dearth of innings. His lower arm slot is yielding more velocity and control, a deadly combo.

We discussed him again on yesterday’s podcast in a trio with Jameson Taillon and the next guy in this article and Eno underscored the chief concern with Paxton: he may not have a guaranteed spot when Felix Hernandez returns. Wade Miley hasn’t been great, but even with a 5.28 ERA, I don’t think he’s pitched his way out of the rotation just yet. Of course, we had the discussion before Taijuan Walker’s outing which he then left with a foot injury. In other words, I wouldn’t let a perceived block be an impediment to picking up a super-talented arm. In this case, Taillon and our next guy are both also super-talented so it was a worthy tiebreaker to point out.

Danny Duffy | Kansas City Royals

Duffy was drafted in 2007 and has been in the majors since 2011. He only amassed 443.3 IP in his five seasons before this year because of injuries and underperformance. It’s not that his 3.80 ERA and 1.36 WHIP are so awful, but the 1.9 K:BB had his FIP nearly a run higher and always made him feel to difficult to trust, especially in a starting role. He started the season in the bullpen, but the shortcomings of the Royals rotation predicted by many for the last couple of seasons finally came to fruition. And even the continued excellence of the bullpen hasn’t been enough to mitigate some of that failure so after 16 relief appearances, Duffy was stretched back out for the rotation.

In 31 innings, he’s been an absolute revelation. The 2.90 ERA and 0.97 WHIP actually have strong support even though his FIP is just over a half run higher (3.55). Homers are definitely the reason behind that as he’s allowed five, a third as many as he allowed in 136.7 IP last year. However, the 31% K and 4% BB rates really catch my eye. We’ve never seen anything like this from Duffy for anything close to a worthwhile sample.

He has four starts with 9+ strikeouts, two of them this year. He has seven starts of 6+ IP and 0 BB, two of them this year. Like Paxton, he’s always had a live arm from the left side, but he’s operating at near career-best levels right now. If you click the link, you’ll see a figure that stands as the high watermark at 95.7, but for the sake precision I’ll note that he’s at 95.2 MPH as a starter, which is negligibly lower than the 95.3 he averaged in 2012 (six starts).

The key for Duffy has been getting and staying ahead. Since he joined the league in 2011, starters have averaged a 60-61% first-pitch strike rate. His career mark is just 57% even with this year’s 67% rate factored into the mix! As Jeff Sullivan points out, he’s tops in first-pitch strike rate if you bring the innings threshold down to 20 in order to get him in the sample. This difference between 1-0 and 0-1 is 223 points of OPS when looking at what happens after each count. For Duffy, it’s been 300 points over his career.

The fastball is far and away the best it has ever been. He’s using it a career-high 71% of the time (combining four-seamers and sinkers) and the .590 OPS is nearly 200 points lower than last year’s .778. It’s also well below the .725 career mark. He’s generating a lot more swings and swings-and-misses as the two rates sit at career-highs: 59% and 18%, respectively. When dealing with small samples, I’m always pleased when fastball improvement is the driving force. It’s great to have a killer secondary arsenal, but without fastball command, a pitcher can’t always get to the secondaries enough to make them impactful.

He has also leaned on the changeup more, to remarkable results. The added fastballs and changeups come out of his slider usage, which is down from 24% to 14% usage, but up 4 MPH in velocity. It has held batters to a .136 AVG in 25 PA with a 52% K rate, but 2 of the 3 hits are homers so the OPS is inflated. In short, his entire arsenal has jumped a level and he’s commanding the ball better than ever.

I will dampen the blanket a touch just to keep expectations in check: he’s faced the Braves, Rays, and Orioles once each and the White Sox three times during this run. The Rays are the only good offense against lefties in that group. They slot 1st in wRC+ while the White Sox are 17th, Orioles 27th, and Braves 30th. Another similarity to Paxton is that he’s jumped to nearly 2/3rds ownership at CBS, but still remains widely available at ESPN (30%) and Yahoo! (51%) so check your wire, shallow leaguers. Some of you in deeper leagues might have the opportunity to buy and it’s something I’d strongly consider doing it.

Brandon Finnegan | Cincinnati Reds

Finnegan is more of a speculative pick than the other two. Whereas they are on the incline and headed toward a peak, Finnegan has been steadily humming along this year without too much variance on either end. He has a couple bad starts, as any pitcher would in a 14-start sample, but he has mostly ranged from solid-to-above-average if you go by Game Score. The starting point is 50, a 45 is usually a “keep-the-team-in-the-game” start, and a 60 is always a strong effort. There have been 654 starts of 60+ Game Score and only three saw the pitcher allow more 3 ER (and they were all 4 ER). Finnegan has 9-of-14 at 45+  and five of those are 60+ efforts.

The 1.5 K:BB ratio is downright bad. It’s not just the 4.2 BB/9, but also the modest 6.3 K/9 which feels way too low given his raw stuff. The walks are mitigated some by the .226 AVG, good for 28th among qualified starters. The strikeouts seem like more of a sequencing issue than a lack of stuff. He has just a 35% K rate in two-strike plate appearances. The league average is 41%. The slider had an 18% swinging strike rate last year (average is 15%), but it’s down to 13% this year. He has subsequently seen a 17-percentage point drop in strikeout rate with the pitch. The sample is small enough for that to be noise meaning we could see the slider as an avenue for more strikeouts in the future.

While his skills profile does contain warts, he has a trustworthy three-pitch arsenal that includes a quality capable of stifling any substantial platoon issues. Lefties are actually seven points better in OPS against Finnegan in his career, though with a figure that low, we’ll just call it neutral. This year righties are 58 points better, but his .708 OPS is still better than the lefty-versus-righty average of .729. There are 37 lefties with at least 150 PA against righties and Finnegan slots 14th in OPS.

Unlike the other two, Finnegan is widely available at all three major venues. He’s at 51% at CBS, 21% at ESPN, and 19% at Yahoo! so check your wire. The 23-year old only threw 105 IP last year and he’s already at 82 so innings will be limited, especially on a Reds team going nowhere. I can see another 70-80, leaving him with a reasonable 50-60 IP gain over last year. I haven’t seen anything regarding a limit out of the Reds, but they’re usually tight-lipped on this kind of thing. It was tough to get any sort of read on Raisel Iglesias’ limit last year before shoulder fatigue forced their hand in mid-September.

The other two have more obvious cases for pickup even with small overall samples this year, but Finnegan gets more to my point about buying in on skills and figuring it out afterwards. He’s a great case where watching tells you something different than the base skills. He has a 2.41 ERA in his last five starts, but just a 4% K-BB rate which is horrible. However, even after watching the worst of those starts (6.3 IP/4 ER), I came away understanding how he can still generate standout results despite modest skill support. Keep in mind that both Paxton and Duffy sat at 2.1 and 1.9 K:BB, respectively, prior to this year and they too pulled down decent results despite that. Finnegan is at 1.9 through 137.3 career IP.