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 I subscribed to that viewpoint, I will confess, but my experience is that those premises are no longer valid.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.

Anibal Sanchez – RHP – Detroit Tigers

2015 Stats: 10-10, 157.0 IP, 4.99 ERA, 138 K’s, 1.28 WHIP

Current ADP

Mock Draft Army ADP: 305.6 (based on current ADPs generated by Howard Bender’s Mock Draft Army results)

National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC): 291.70

FSTA Draft on January 14th, 2016: Drafted 21st round (272nd overall)

LABR Mixed Draft on February 16, 2016: Drafted 23rdround (341 overall)

Availability

Coming off a pair of injury shortened seasons, and undoubtedly his worst major league season since 2008, he is not exactly a darling in drafts this season. He was also shut down for a few days at the opening of spring camp with a triceps issue, which cannot make his potential owners comfortable. He is going late, and deservedly so after a pair of underwhelming seasons.

Upside

It seems unlikely that he will pitch as poorly as he did in 2015 where he flirted with a 5.00 ERA and gave up a boatload of homers. He still managed to rack up a decent amount of Ks (7.91 K/9) and managed to shut down left-handed hitters extremely well (.217 BAA and 22.5% K rate). It would be an anomaly if his HR rate remained the same in 2016, and you have to think he was trying to deal with an injury that resulted in the plethora of dingers last season.  He is slotted in as the No. 3 starter for the Tigers unless something unforeseen happens this spring, so there is that going for him, as he should easily beat out Mike Pelfrey and for the present, Shane Greene (Daniel Norris is out for the start of the season with "non-displaced fractures in his spinous process”, whatever that medical gobbledygook means)  as a top three starter in Detroit.

Downside

His upside is limited, as his FIP and ERA were very close (4.80 vs 4.99, respectively) and his BABIP was below league average (.288), so there does not seem to be a huge amount of unluckiness in his awful 2015 numbers. Plus, you really have to work to give up 15 homers at Comerica Park, although he was almost as generous with the long ball on the road where he yielded 14 homers in 2015.

Summary

Even if he is there late in your drafts, do not think you are going to get anything resembling his excellent 2013 stats in this current season. He is still a decent source of strikeouts, but his injury status over the past couple seasons should sour you on expecting a full season of production. And if that production is anything near to what he provided in 2015, you should steer clear of him on draft day.