Why We Missed: Snell, Ottavino, & Mikolas
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%.
While the 2019 projections will bake in some regression, I don’t blame an owner if they dream on his 2018 second half and prorate it to be his overall projection.
Adam Ottavino
The 32-righty finished as the 32nd ranked pitcher. In all fairness, no one saw this season coming but he met the requirements of a topflight middle reliever like Josh Hader and Andrew Miller.
- Elite strikeout numbers (> 100).
- Multi-inning setup man with the chance to get some Wins and Saves.
- Elite ratios.
The few arms who meet these requirements are fantasy gold but it’s tough to pass on starters, like Blake Snell, for them during a draft. Also, picking who has the complete season can be a crapshoot, just like with closers.
I’m not sure I’ll target any middle relievers on draft day unless they could close. I think I’ll closely watch the waiver wire for some and will pick one if I have a roster opening. With every bullpen in flux, I’ll revisit the issue as the season draws near.
Miles Mikolas
The 30-year-old righty signed with the Cardinals out of Japan and no one really had high expectations for him. He fooled by winning 18 games with a 2.83 ERA and 1.07 WHIP.
I didn’t own him in any league but should have. Almost all pitchers coming from Asia meet or exceed expectation. The big names like Shohei Ohtani and Yu Darvish may not come at a discount, but the others seem to exceed expectation like Colby Lewis and Seung Hwan Oh.
My guess is that for a pitcher to get a chance in states, they have to be outstanding in Asia for an MLB team to take notice and go recruit them. If the pitcher was replacement level, the MLB team could just recall one from Triple-A or sign one off the waiver wire.
A few postings have been rumored this offseason but no one has been signed from Asia. If one does, at a minimum, I’ll take a chance on him as a reserve option. I can’t ignore the upside.
Jeff, one of the authors of the fantasy baseball guide,The Process, writes for RotoGraphs, The Hardball Times, Rotowire, Baseball America, and BaseballHQ. He has been nominated for two SABR Analytics Research Award for Contemporary Analysis and won it in 2013 in tandem with Bill Petti. He has won four FSWA Awards including on for his Mining the News series. He's won Tout Wars three times, LABR twice, and got his first NFBC Main Event win in 2021. Follow him on Twitter @jeffwzimmerman.
There is no excuse for missing on Snell. He was the 52nd pick of is draft year , he had uber stuff, tore up the minors easily, and had somewhat of a positive season in 2017. Yes his command and control was below average coming into 2018. Go look at Kershaw’s control in the minors and the first couple of years in the majors. Similar. The only question with Snell is not if but when he will put it all together. Of course staying healthy is also important. Just my opinion but a guy like Snell you stay on him until his stuff goes south or he walks too many guys to be competitive in a starting roll. Then he still makes an impact in late relief.
So much this. Totally normal for high-end prospect like Snell to take an adjustment year when jumping to the MLB. Snell’s path looks very similar to others, Hamels & Lincecum comes to mind. There are certainly guys that don’t adjust, but a situation like Snell is worth the gamble.
Granted Flaherty had a pretty stellar year, but given his MiLB BB% vs this year, he’s likely to make a jump forward next season
I’m a sucker for this type of pitcher, which is why it’s funny to me to see this backward-looking take that a Snell breakout was inevitable. I’ve been burned multiple times by big-armed guys with big breaking balls who succeeded in the minors despite control issues and never figured it out in the majors and went on to settle in either as bad starters or mediocre relievers. Matt Moore comes immediately to mind as another big-armed lefty with sky-high upside and control issues who came through the Rays system and never made it, but the list would be dozens of names long just looking at the last decade. These guys fail more often than they make it.
But like I said, I”m a sucker for this type of pitcher, and as a result I owned Snell in every one of my leagues last year 🙂