2016 Fantasy Baseball Player Profile: Jerad Eickhoff

Jerad Eickhoff spells both his names oddly. Get over it. A huge youngster, he stands 6’4” and weighs in at about 245 lbs, the righty of the Phillies has teamed with Vincent Velasquez (Player Profile) to create some early season buzz. I already profiled Velasquez, so today it’s on to his teammate.

THE MINORS

Jerad was never looked at as an elite option. A 46^th round selection in 2010, he improved to the 15^th round the following year after he didn’t sign with the Cubs in 2010. After working in the Rangers organization for a few years, he was dealt on July 31^st, 2015 to the Phillies in the Cole Hamels deal. Here are the numbers he posted with both clubs in the minors.

THE MAJORS

Eickhoff made eight starts last year for the Phillies and two starts this season. He’s the owner of a 4-4 record, 2.43 ERA, 1.02 WHIP, 8.71 K/9 and 2.14 BB/9 ratio over 63 innings.

THE SKILLS

Here’s an assessment of his skills.

Jerad throws a low 90’s fastball, and he augments the heater with a solid curveball and slider plus a passable changeup. Pretty much a classic series of offerings. The first three pitches are solid major league caliber stuff, but Eickhoff simply doesn’t own the stuff to be more than a 4/5 starter in the big leagues. Or he didn’t until late last year. Maybe. As Paul Sporer noted, things appeared to improve last season. His slider dominated righties, and his curve ball was impressive leading some to posit that perhaps we judged him a bit too soon as an end of the rotation arm. A further look.

*K% and BB% stand for both outcomes divided by total batters faced.

Caveat… we’re only talking 63 innings, and in the case of the changeup he’s thrown a total of 55 of them according to PITCHf/x. That’s hardly enough to draw any significant conclusions.

What we can say is that he throws his fastball a good deal, and though it’s hard, he hasn’t dominated at the big league level with it. It’s been the slider/curveball that have helped to push him to the success he’s offered. Note though that the slider and curveball never really graded out as anything other than average when scouts profiled him. That makes me dubious that he will be able to hold on to the dominance he’s shown with those two pitches thus far.

Now let’s move to how he fares when facing lefties and righties.

Eickhoff has dominated righties but been hit pretty hard by lefties to this point. At least he has more success against the side of batter that he will be seeing most frequently, but his work against lefties should be a concern, especially when he faces a club with a lineup that includes many.

As for his batted ball stuff…

Eickhoff has a .259 BABIP. That’s a low number and one that he doesn’t seem likely to be able to sustain over the long run.

Eickhoff is a fly ball arm and that could lead to some homer issues. During his minor league career Jerad allowed 1.1 homers per nine. His mark in the big leagues is 0.71. It’s likely to go up. Jerad has been fortunate to this point of his big league career, remember we’re only talking 10 starts, with a 7.4 percent HR/FB ratio. I base that on history, the league average is about 10 percent, his stuff and the fact that his HR/FB ratio in the minors was over 12 percent.

Finally, when it comes to the ERA he’s posted, three notes.

1 – Though he has a 2.43 mark his left on base percentage is 79.3 percent, a Kershawnian level. There is no way that Eickhoff will be able to hold on to that mark, no chance. The LOB rate will recede, perhaps by 10 percent.

2 – Though Jerad had a 2.43 ERA for career his SIERA is 3.50.

3 – Though Jerad has a 2.43 ERA for his career his xFIP is 3.57.

You get the point, right?

CONCLUSION

Eickhoff has looked pretty sharp over his 10 big league starts. Still, his success isn’t completely supported at this point. We need a larger sample size before we can draw any definitive conclusions, but to recap the data we have…

Eickhoff allows a good deal of fly balls and that has led to some homer issues – even if they haven’t yet shown up at the big league level.

Eickhoff has dominated righties but been hit hard by lefties.

Eickhoff has a low BABIP and a Left On Base Percentage that is too high.

Eickhoff has an artificially low ERA as seen by his SIERA and xFIP.

Eickhoff has a better K/9 and BB/9 as a big leaguer than he did as a minor leaguer. That doesn’t happen too frequently.

Eickhoff is off to a good start to his big league career. I’m still not sold that he’s anything other than an SP 4/5 as a big leaguer. I’m not saying a 4^th or 5^th fantasy starter, I’m talking a 4^th or 5^th starter on a big league squad. Just like I noted with Velasquez, the team isn’t likely to lead Jerad to many victories, and Citizen Bank Park ain’t a good place to pitch when you are a fly ball arm. Eickhoff has also never thrown more than 154.1 innings in a season so it’s unclear how his arm would hold up if he made 30 starts this season for the Phillies. If I owned Eickhoff I would listen to the trade market and give some serious consideration to selling him if someone is of the opinion that he’s going to be a top-50 starting pitcher this season. In fact, a season inside the top-75 isn’t going to be as easy to accomplish as some seem to think, despite what the numbers currently say. Caution is warranted with Eickhoff.

Here's an audio clip where I discuss the Phillies' rotation.

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).