2016 MLB Player Profile: Josh Tomlin

Josh Tomlin is 31 years old. He’s no youngin’ despite what you might think given his less than extensive track record at the big league level. In a career that started back in 2010 he’s had one good season. One. Is there a chance in hell that he could possibly extend the success he had last season into 2016 for one of the best starting staffs in baseball? Let’s explore the outlook of the righty.

Here is a link to all the players that have been reviewed in the 2016 Player Profile Series.

THE NUMBERS

Let me just say it off the top.

If you look at Tomlin’s career numbers you see nothing to get excited about in the fantasy game. The WHIP would play in any format, and I love the lack of walks, but his ERA is extremely elevated and his record barely over .500. There’s also a punishing lack of strikeouts as well. But what has changed the last two years when his big league performance has changed substantially? Let’s dig into it.

WALKS

As a minor leaguer Tomlin walked 1.8 batters per nine innings. As a big leaguer Tomlin has walked an average of 1.53 batters per nine innings. He ain’t gonna beat himself with a walk. He’s taken his game to even higher heights the last two seasons with a mark of 1.17 per nine. This is one area where his talents are elite.

STRIKEOUTS

As a minor leaguer Tomlin’s strikeout per nine mark was 7.7. That would totally play. This mark the last two years has been 8.01. Seems about right, at least on the surface. Of course, we’ve got the little problem that from 2010-14 Tomlin owned a 4.92 K/9 rate over 343.2 innings. What’s changed the last two seasons to allow him to go back to the strikeout arm we saw in the minors?

In 2012-13 his swinging strike rate was 8.2 percent.

In 2014-15 his swinging strike rate was 9.4 percent.

That’s nice improvement but 9.4 percent is a completely league average number.

Did his velocity go up?

According to PITCHf/x data he threw his fastball 88.7 mph the last two seasons. His career mark is 88.8 mph.

Did he throw his fastball more?

Yes, he did.

Last season he threw his heater 47.6 percent of the time according to PITCHf/x which is well above his 37.8 percent career mark. Let’s look a bit deeper at the fastball.

Here’s the PITCHf/x data on the heater.

Pretty much everything improved last season but take another look at those numbers. Do any of them standout out at all? Nope, they don’t, and the SLG, ISO and wOBA marks are still terrible.

Let’s take a look how things went with his cutter.

Like with his fastball, things did improve with the pitch, especially where he jacked up his swinging strike rate. Still, a .520 SLG is terrible and we need an even harsher adjective to speak to his .307 Isolated Power mark.

There’s really not much here to support the strikeout growth, or at least nothing obvious that I can pin my hopes on a repeat on.

BATTED BALL DATA

Tomlin allowed a 16.3 percent line drive rate last season. That’s a very low number indeed. His career mark is 21.9 percent by the way. There’s no way he is going to be able to maintain that line drive mark. It ain’t happening folks.

One thing I’m even more certain about with Tomlin is that his laughable low BABIP of .199 from 2015 will skyrocket. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it went up .100 points this season. He owns a .276 career mark and as recently as 2014 the mark was much worse at .320.

Unfortunately for Tomlin, given the lack of strikeout upside, he isn’t exactly a ground ball inducing machine. In fact, his 37.3 percent ground ball rate for his career is well below the league average of about 45 percent. That’s not good at all. What that number obviously means is that Tomlin is going to allow a lot of fly balls, and with that a lot of homers since his stuff can’t make up for bad location.

Tomlin is the owner of a 41 percent fly ball ratio for his career, a good deal above the 34 percent league average. Things got even worse last season, some might say dire, given his skillset as the rate vaulted up to 46.2 percent. He’s simply not going to be able to survive at that level. Last year, despite the on the surface success, he was blasted for 13 homers in 65.2 innings leading to a sickly 1.78 HR/9 mark. Moreover, the last two seasons his HR/FB ratio has been exactly the same at 15.3 percent each year, and the result has been 31 homers allowed in 169.2 innings or a HR/9 rate of 1.64, a pathetic number. There’s no way he’s replicating his 3.02 ERA with those numbers in tow, no way.

INDIANS ROTATION

Here’s how the rotation would appear to be laid out.

Corey Kluber
Carlos Carrasco
Danny Salazar
Trevor Bauer

At this point it seems like Tomlin is ahead of Cody Anderson for the 5^th spot. However, the Indians have a funky schedule in April that includes five days off in the first 29 days of the season. What that means is that the Indians’ fifth starter is likely to have multiple starts skipped in the month as the 5^th starter might end up working out of the bullpen because of the missed games in the schedule. That means the Tribe could go a lot with a four-man rotation in the first month of 2016.

As for the role of Tomlin manager Terry Francona had this to say. "He could do anything, but I do think our preference is for him to start," Indians manager Terry Francona said. "It's just that handling April can be a challenge, not just for hitters, but for pitchers, too. ... He's got a pretty good chance of handling whatever is thrown at him, probably as good as anybody." Again, sounds like he will be the fifth starter though he’s not pitched well at all early in camp (he posted a 7.15 ERA and had allowed 21 hits over his first 11.1 innings).

* NOTE: Late in spring the club annunced that their rotation would be the following: Kluber, Carrasco, Salazar, Anderson and Tomlin with Bauer being sent to the bullpen.

Have you picked up your copy of the 2016 MLB Draft Guide yet? The Guide includes more than 600 Players Ranked, auction values, rookie reports, hitting and pitching targets as well as all the info you need if you’re ready to start playing DFS.

OUTLOOK

With some uncertainty as to his role, and the likelihood that the Indians 5^th starter will lose a couple of starts in April, I just can’t understand why you would be looking the 31 year old’s way at the draft table. I want to like the guy who appears to have finally figured out some things but there are yellow flags everywhere with Tomlin.

10-team Mixed: Can’t trust the role or the strikeouts, so no need to even consider him until the season is under way in this format.

12-team Mixed: No appreciable upside at all. Let someone else make the mistake of drafting him.

15-team Mixed: Maybe, maybe you could roster him. I know if it was my team I certainly wouldn’t. He would be on the “watchlist” but not on the draft day roster.

AL-Only: There’s uncertainty everywhere, but there’s also no love for him which will keep the cost low. Guys like Chris Young routinely outperform their measureables so perhaps Tomlin can as well. Not likely, but perhaps.

To see where Tomlin ranks take a look at our 2016 Rankings that are part of the MLB Draft Guide.

Ray Flowers can be heard Monday through Friday, 7 PM EDT and Friday on SiriusXM Fantasy Sports Radio (Sirius 210, XM 87). You can also hear Ray Sunday nights at 6 PM on the channel talking fantasy sports. Follow Ray’s work at Fantasy Alarm and on Twitter (@baseballguys).