2016 Fantasy Baseball Player Profile: Derek Holland

Possessor of one of the dirtiest mustaches in baseball when he grows it, but a fella with great style (check out that suit), Derek Holland is a 29 year old lefty who once owned tremendous promise. A rising star when he hit the big league, he struggled through two ineffective seasons before hitting it big. He then ran off three solid years from 2011-13 before injuries struck. Looking just to reestablish himself as a legitimate big league starter, Holland has had a strong start to the 2016 campaign. Can the former rising star reestablish himself as a big league weapon?

THE NUMBERS

THE INJURIES

In 2012 Holland missed 31 days with fatigue in his shoulder.

He returned in 2013 to throw a career best 213 innings.

However, he’s been a total mess the last two seasons.

In 2014 he missed 164 days with a knee that required surgery. Apparently his dog did it? He had microfracture surgery which is pretty significant.

In 2015 he missed 130 days with a shoulder situation termed a subscapular strain. Actually, both he and Jurickson Profar suffered similar injuries last year.

As you can see above, Holland failed to reach 60-innings pitched in either of the last two seasons. 

THE SKILLS

NOTE: Everything that follows kind of assumes that Holland is healthy and is still the “same” guy as before. Admittedly you have to make that leap or none of what follows matters. If you can’t agree to that as a baseline, it’s highly likely that you won’t be looking Holland’s way, so I guess it wouldn’t really matter to you then anyway.

We can’t really look at two starts, the amount of times he’s been on the hill in 2016, and think we know much about Holland’s outlook. If we expand things back to Spring Training, and add it to what he has done so far in 2016 we get a look at 36.2 innings with a 2.70 ERA, 1.17 WHIP and a 6.38 K/9. Those numbers are certainly encouraging. After his last outing, he got some props too. "Stellar performance by Derek tonight," Rangers manager Jeff Banister said. "He seemed to be in control all night long, held the middle of their order in check… Tremendous effort by Derek tonight. ... The off-speed I think was a key for him tonight, both the curve and the slider, a swing and miss pitch for him, and able to move the fastball around where he wanted to."

To this point of his career Holland owns a 7.41 K/9 mark which has led to two seasons with more than 160 strikeouts. We can live with that. However, over his last 107.1 innings of work that K-rate has dipped all the way down to 6.29 per nine. That is no bueno, which for those of you that didn’t take Spanish means no good. He’s a full batter down per nine in his K-rate, and unless it comes back he’s not going to be worth much in a mixed league. There is some small hope of a rebound. After all his career swinging strike rate is 8.5 and since the start of the 2014 the number is 8.4 percent. Note that neither mark is impressive given that 10 percent is about the league average.

Since 2014 the walk rate per nine is 2.18, a strong mark. It’s well below the 2.83 mark he owns for his career which is a very good sign. Even though he’s given back some strikeouts his K/BB ratio since the start of 2014 is 2.88 which is above his 2.61 career rate. Solid.

The last three seasons versus his career. Here’s the tale of the tape.

The batted ball rates are all similar except for one area – the reduction in fly ball rate. That’s a big positive for him, if he can maintain it, given that he pitches in a very offensive ballpark in Texas. The last three years his HR/9 rate is 1.01. For his career the mark is 1.19. That’s good to hear. His HR/FB ratio is down a bit, but it’s nothing substantial – meaning he could hold on to it. The BABIP is a bit low, but again, not crazy low or something he couldn’t hold on to.

THE OUTLOOK

Holland pitches in an offensive ball yard.

His strikeout rate has dipped, and while his walks have fallen too leaving him with a still solid K/BB ratio, we need to see those strikeouts in the fantasy game.

For his career his 4.25 ERA and 1.31 WHIP are league average stuff (the ERA is worse).

The biggest issue though might be an inability to stay healthy given that only once in the last three seasons he’s been healthy to throw even 60 innings.

Holland is a spot starter type on the road – he’s always been solid there with a 3.78 ERA and 1.24 WHIP for his career – but he just doesn’t show enough skill, or possess enough health, to be anything other than a streaming option in mixed leagues, and that might be a best case scenario.
 

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).