For years, the mantra in fantasy baseball drafts has been to wait to select your starting pitchers, as pitching is deep, pitchers suffer more injuries, and pitching is too inconsistent to waste high draft picks on in non-auction leagues. I subscribed to that viewpoint, I will confess, but my experience is that those premises are no longer valid. Hitters get injured just as often as pitchers, there is plenty of inconsistency to go around in baseball that pitchers no longer have a lock on up and down seasons, and while I agree that if you are savvy enough to study starting pitchers, you can find gems in the later rounds, there is still plenty to like among the top 20-25 starters in any given season to make them a part of your draft or auction strategy. In fact, my preferred strategy is to see if perhaps a Clayton Kershaw, Madison Bumgarner, or Max Scherzer (those are my top three, but others could easily be included depending on your league setup) is available in the latter part of the first round or in the second round to provide my lock-down ace early on.

These articles that will be published prior to Opening Day, however, are not about the stud starting pitching options available in your drafts or auctions. What we are looking at are those very good options that for one reason or another are being ignored in early drafts and mock drafts. What sorts of hidden values are dropping below the 12th round in most drafts that you can snag for great value with an eye to dominating your league this season? Note: I am operating on the assumption you are drafting in a 12 team league, so all pitchers profiled here will be below the 144th pick.

I will be profiling one (or at most two) mid to late round options in the starting pitching realm on a bi-weekly basis (that is twice a week, not the alternate definition of every two weeks-why is English so difficult and confusing?). If you have questions about any pitchers and their viability as a “sleeper” pick, hit me up at ia@fantasyalarm.com and I will do my best to provide some insight. Also, I am always available to answer starting pitching (or other fantasy baseball) questions all season long.

Luis Severino– RHP – New York Yankees

2015 Stats: 5-3, 62.1 IP, 2.89 ERA, 56 K’s, 1.20 WHIP

Current ADP

Mock Draft Army ADP: 148.1 (based on current ADPs generated by Howard Bender’s Mock Draft Army results)

National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC): 160.74

FSTA Draft on January 14th, 2016: Drafted 14th round (172nd overall)

Availability

Luis Severino is going in the middle of drafts early on, and part of that has to do with his lack of major league experience to date. He only started 11 games for the Yankees in 2015, but has made a steady progression through the minors since his first season in the Rookie League in 2013 at age 19. The early word out of Yankee camp is that he is projected to toss 200 innings in 2016, so he will provide fairly cheap depth to your rotations if you trust him to hold up all season.

Upside

Speaking of throwing 200 or so innings, he did manage to toss 161.2 innings over his travels from Double-A to Triple-A and finally the big leagues when he was called up in early August. Thus, while the front office may get nervous about the manager, Joe Girardi’s projections, it would seem that he should not have any sort of innings limit unless problems crop up during the course of the season. He features a mid-90s fastball, and was able to post a 8.09 K/9 rate in his 11 starts with the Yankees. The 2.89 ERA in 2015 is due to regress but you should still expect a decent sub-3.50 ERA and an WHIP around 1.20, both nice additions to a fantasy rotation. Couple that with a bevy of strikeouts, and his groundball tendencies (1.71 GB/FB ratio) should help him out in his home park and bring his home run ratio more in line with his minor league numbers, which never exceeded 0.51 HR/9.

Downside

While you have to like his strikeout potential, his 3.18 BB/9 rate in his 11 MLB starts is a concern, as is the 1.30 HR/9 ratio he demonstrated with the Yankees. He was limited to 90 pitches per start in 2015, and could face a similar limit in 2016. That will hurt his chances to provide his fantasy owners with wins, naturally, and could also impact his ability to provide quality starts in leagues that have jettisoned wins in favor of the more favorable QS category for starting pitchers. He put up a 2.89 ERA over his 11 starts in 2015, but a 4.44 FIP hints that his ERA will rise this season. Both his abnormally low BABIP (.269) and high strand rate (83.3 percent) figure to normalize as he pitches more innings in 2016, thereby pushing up his relevant fantasy stats.

Summary

The kid is only 22, and has a bright future in front of him, based on his success in the minors and his limited time in the majors. Being a member of the Yankees means he will not be a below the radar type of pitcher, but for those of you in keeper leagues, and especially in dynasty leagues, he is someone to target now for this season and future years. As a side note, of all the starting pitchers I am going to profile in this series of articles, right now I am liking Severino best as a pitcher to provide strong value, in all the counting stats and peripherals this season. Do not wait to draft him as your SP3, and jump on him if he is available in your keeper leagues.