Today’s Comps for Tomorrow’s Aces: Part 1

In the immortal words of Sugar Ray, sometimes, all we need is to “turn tomorrow into yesterday.”

For many of us, that time is right now. Our fantasy baseball seasons are effectively over. It wasn’t our year. But instead of sulking, something many of us do so well is to immediately turn to draft prep and the next season. 

Which of your waiver wire adds will you want to bring back next season? Who were you envious of that you want to target in drafts next year? You’ll spend the offseason asking yourself these questions. So will I, and it will be my goal to help you answer some of these questions. 

But before the season ends, I want to slow down just a hair, to enjoy the rest of this season. Late Wednesday night, I found myself falling asleep to highlights of Kade Anderson’s first truly successful outing for the Mariners, holding the Rangers to one run over six innings and collecting his first win in the majors. 

Watching these highlights made me think of Max Fried. The association in my brain came without trying. The big looping curveball dotting the outside corner. The fastball thrown with supreme confidence at the bottom of the zone. Of course, all of this packaged in a “spindly” frame (as described by Ryan Blake), coming to hitters via a three-quarters arm slot with a driving back leg that leads to plenty of extension from the left side.

And it made me wonder, are the similarities real enough to be actionable in fantasy? In what is somewhat an outdated method of prospect and player evaluation, are physical, arsenal, and outcome comps a worthwhile way of identifying potentially successful young pitchers?

I think so.  

Hunter Brown’s association to Justin Verlander foreshadowed the former’s rise to ace status. Many in the industry connected Parker Messick’s arsenal and style of pitching with Hyun Jin Ryu, and Messick has had similar results so far. Chase Burns’ reliance on the fastball and slider was compared to a young Spencer Strider’s, prior to the former’s debut, and Burns has been almost as good as the vintage version of Strider. 

Over the course of the next few months, I’ll provide a handful of potentially instructive comps we can make to help illuminate this growing crop of young starting pitchers.

Max Fried & Kade Anderson

Today, we’ll start with a closer look at Max Fried and Kade Anderson.

Their arsenals truly are similar, especially when comparing Anderson’s fastball, curveball, and occasional changeup with Fried’s when he debuted back in 2017. Fried made four starts and five relief appearances for the Braves in his first taste of the majors at 23 years old. He covered 26 innings with a 3.81 ERA, but he had less than a strikeout per inning and poor peripherals backing that ERA up. Sound familiar, Mariners fans?

Right now, it may be hard to see Anderson and think of him like Fried, the highest paid left-handed starting pitcher in baseball history with nearly a decade of low ERAs and memorable postseason performances, boasting a devastating mix of not only a fastball and curveball, but a wipe out changeup and bat-busting cutter, too. 

But as Fried laid out in his interview with FanGraphs’ own David Laurila last summer, it wasn’t always that way. Like Anderson, Fried was an early first rounder in the draft. But he came straight out of high school and made it to the majors following an AJ Preller trade and Tommy John surgery, both hurdles Anderson avoided in his LSU-to-Seattle journey.

The lessons to be learned may come in the length and shape of development. For Fried, he experienced diminished fastball velocity as he ramped up his professional workload. He struggled to find consistency with his changeup, so much so that he mentioned tinkering for years until he found something more repeatable between 2019 and 2020. 

Today, Fried has one of the best changeups in baseball by run value every year. Fried’s velocity increased with age, starting around Anderson’s current 93mph average and increasing up above 95mph, a considerable jump for a left-handed starter moving into his mid-thirties.

That fastball velocity played up for Fried from the beginning though, thanks to his elite extension. Anderson’s fastball will benefit from the same level of extension. For both pitchers, this was one of the only traits displayed in red on their rookie Savant pages. Since it’s fun to see fresh-faced Fried, here’s shots of both pitchers (as rookies). 

Fried’s arsenal also expanded dramatically, starting from a mostly fastball/curveball mix and gradually growing into a six-pitch mix that now includes a four-seam fastball, sinker, and cutter each thrown around 20% of the time, his signature curveball and changeup, and a sweeper he throws more than 10% of the time. 

Right now, Anderson already mixes three offspeed offerings behind his fastball, which he throws only 40% of the time, with his changeup, slider, and curve each seeing roughly 20% usage rates.

Back in 2017, despite being incomplete, the young Fried still drew comps to Cole Hamels, the reliable lefty ace of that era. Fried grew into that comparison. I think the smart money would say that Anderson can grow into his lofty comparison too. 

For fantasy, especially heading into draft prep season, I think this is particularly instructive. If Anderson wraps up the regular season with an ERA above 4 and mediocre peripherals, his draft cost come Spring will likely be well outside the top 100 players drafted, and should fall somewhere after pick 150. I think he’ll be considered similarly to Bubba Chandler last offseason, where the in-season hype and prospect pedigree didn’t overcome suboptimal in-season performance as a true rookie on draft day.

It bears reminding that prospect growth is not linear. For Fried, his cup of coffee in 2017 was followed by a nearly full season in the minor leagues before coming back up for another five starts in 2018 that preceded his 2019 breakout, where he reached 165.2 innings with a 4.02 ERA, but peripherals all indicating the ceiling that was to come. As an older prospect, and given the Mariners’ recent track record with young arms, it is unlikely Anderson goes back to the minors to marinate. Instead, he may be in for a 20-30 start run in the majors. And a 4-ish ERA with solid peripherals and increased K% would be a welcome sight. And also worth a pick in the 150-200 range in most drafts, given the chance that a full season pitching in Seattle could help bring his ERA down into the mid-3s. 

In looking for my next comparison to dive into, I considered going a few different directions. There are so many elite young arms in the game right now, and many are finding success in unique ways. 

Logan Henderson has been painting corners with relatively low velocity heaters all season, reminiscent of Fastball Freddy Peralta. Payton Tolle is the friendliest lumberjack in the game today. Nolan McLean almost exclusively throws gif worthy pitches with incredibly aesthetic shapes and horizontal movement. Chandler and Trey Yesavage came into their fame in very different ways, and with sharply contrasting arm angles, with the latter having one of the most unorthodox over the top deliveries in baseball.

And speaking of unorthodox, have you seen rookie Ryan Johnson with the Angels, who carved up the streaking Red Sox offense on Wednesday?

But the comparison I landed on was Walbert Ureña and a young Sandy Alcantara. They will make up the next installment in this short series of starting pitcher comps. And of course, if others come to mind, please let me know in the comments.