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 I subscribed to that viewpoint, I will confess, but my experience is that those premises are no longer valid.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.
Aaron Nola – RHP – Philadelphia Phillies
2015 Stats: 6-2, 77.2 IP, 3.59 ERA, 68 K’s, 1.20 WHIP
Current ADP
Mock Draft Army ADP: 232.9 (based on current ADPs generated by Howard Bender’s Mock Draft Army results)
National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC): 240.11
FSTA Draft on January 14th, 2016: Drafted 21stthth round (270th overall)
LABR Mixed Draft on February 16, 2016: Drafted 17th round (245 overall)
Availability
Nola has been moving up in drafts, although his team is in definite rebuilding mode. He does not pitch in a park that will protect him, but drafters are seeing something in his potential from last season and in the spring that is sending him slowly up the ADP ranks. He is certainly an available late round starting pitcher, and he has shown the skills to be worthy of consideration for the back end of a fantasy rotation.
Upside
His 3:1 K/BB ratio this spring is nice, and we saw that kind of ratio in his first MLB season in 2015 when he put up a 3.58 K/BB ratio over 77.2 innings. The minor league numbers hint that he could push that ratio even higher once he settles in at the major league level. He did show a good ability to generate groundballs in 2015, with a 1.76 GB/FB ratio, and that should play well in his home park. He could easily pitch 200-plus innings this season, having tossed a combined 186 innings between Philly and minor leagues last season. His fastball velocity was down around 91 MPH in the majors, but he was able to throw his fastball in the mid-90s in the minors, so perhaps an increase in speed will improve his K rate.
Downside
He has not had a great spring, putting up a 5.40 ERA and allowing four homers over 15 innings, but you have to disregard spring numbers to a certain extent as we do not know what he was working on in his four appearances to date. A 4.10 FIP and .294 BABIP indicate that he was slightly lucky in his 2015 MLB time, but not something that screams avoid him. The loss of velocity on his fastball once he was promoted is a concern, but that could have been a case of him wearing down at the end of the season.
Summary
As I noted above, he has flashed the skills necessary to be considered a viable back-end option for your fantasy pitching staff. He profiles as a good, but not great, starting pitching option at this point in his career. Pitching in Philly, even with a favorable groundball ratio, is another worry. Add in a rebuilding team, and he is just another pitcher to take late, who should not hurt you but will certainly not be a top option in drafts absent a major uptick in production.