Breaking Down Buck Farmer

When a new player is called up from the minors, the fantasy baseball community immediately turns its attention towards them. If it’s a veteran journeyman, he’s easily dismissed. If it’s a young prospect getting an opportunity, owners start climbing over each other to get at him. Everyone wants to be the guy who “discovers” the next Clayton Kershaw. But what about those mid-range guys who may have gotten a little buzz when they first came up but failed to produce? In this era of needing instant gratification in which we live, immediate failure is not tolerated and, often times, the player is dismissed until he does something extraordinary that forces people to take notice. Such is the fantasy life of Buck Farmer.

The Tigers hurler can probably thank Draft Kings for the immediate attention as he was priced at just $4,000 for Wednesday’s contests. There may have been some who actually did a breakdown to see what Farmer was all about, but the hype was more about game theory and the pricing. After all, it cost more to roster Yadier Molina last night than it did Farmer and at that price, it was a no-brainer, to use him as your second starter. If he tanked, well, you didn’t invest anything. If he was even just half-decent, he was already paying dividends. The fact that he tossed 6.2 scoreless frames, allowed just three hits and a walk and struck out five was friggin’ brilliant. He posted 26.6 points on DK and 45 on FanDuel, leading a number of players to big GPP winnings.

But while that’s all well and good for the DFS community, what about seasonal fantasy baseball players? Is Farmer worth a look in seasonal or is this strictly a match-up based, cost-efficient move left to the daily folk? I had the chance to break down Farmer on Wednesday’s show on SiriusXM before his outing and based on what I’ve seen, I don’t see how you don’t pick him up and give him a try. Let's start with the big league numbers.

When it comes to looking at a guy like Farmer, it’s all about growth. His numbers from the minors and majors may look sketchy at times and will certainly scare off a number of people who only take a cursory glance, but for those you study the trends and look for year-to-year progress in spite of the actual numbers themselves, Farmer profiles as a guy headed towards a personal breakout.

For some of these years, it helps illustrate the point even more if you also check out the yearly minor league totals, but it’s not completely necessary for this here. You can still see the trends, progress and growth with just the big league numbers. Of course, you may want to open his Fangraphs Player Page as well so you can see things like Pitch f/x numbers to help back-up the reasoning.

Farmer had a rough go of things during his first call-up to the majors. He had a strong showing at High-A West Michigan and was quickly advanced through Double and Triple-A. When he arrived on the scene, he managed to maintain his strong strikeout totals, but his command was spotty, he got burned by the long ball and he looked shaky pitching from the stretch with men on base. His fastball was solid, his slider was good, but his changeup definitely needed some work.

In 2015, he made some strong adjustments as he backed off his changeup and worked from his strengths rather than trying to force a pitch that was still a work in progress. He didn’t abandon the change, he just refined it and used it less. The results proved positive. While he pitched to more contact and saw his strikeout rate suffer, he issued fewer walks and significantly increased his ground ball rate. He was still having problems with the long ball though and for that, his ERA suffered. The FIP and xFIP numbers, however, showed he was pitching better than his ERA would indicate.

The following season, Farmer spent much of his time in the minors working on a cutter and a curveball in lieu of his slider which he was leaving up in the zone too often. The increased arsenal was interesting and when he arrived in the majors, he grabbed back most of his strikeout rate, allowed fewer home runs and, surprisingly, still saw an uptick in his ground ball rate. His changeup improved, his fastball remained solid and while his overall totals showed improvement, the cutter and curve still needed a lot of work and his lack of command of those secondary offerings helped contribute to a high walk rate. The important thing here is, again, growth. We’ve continued to see marked improvement and while some of the numbers are fluctuating, we’ve got easy explanations for the changes which instills confidence in the hope for even further development.

Which brings us to today and Farmer 4.0. His first start against the White Sox was outstanding as he tossed 6.1 innings of shutout ball with 11 strikeouts. Granted, the White Sox had been one of the worst-hitting clubs against right-handed pitching, but the strikeout rate was insane and while many may have dismissed it as the sun shining on a dog’s ass at least once, you have to look at is as the next step in his growth as a major league pitcher. If you viewed it that way, you would have reaped the benefits of last night’s start.

Some interesting things to note about this season’s Buck Farmer would be the abandonment of the cutter, the return of his slider (which looks nastier than previous versions) and another pull-back from using the changeup so much. He’s also pulled back on the curve, but he’s now actually a four-pitch pitcher with solid velocity and improved command. The decreased ground ball rate is something to watch, but if he continues to keep missing bats (14.3 SwStr%), he doesn’t need to bring it back up to the 50-percent mark that keeps fantasy owners all warm and fuzzy.

In short, Farmer has developed into quite the solid option over these last four years. He’s not going to pitch at this particular level the rest of the way, but through just two starts, he’s proven to manager Brad Ausmus that he belongs in the rotation and to fantasy owners he should be owned. If he’s available in your league, get out your wallet and get ready to make it rain FAAB bucks this weekend.