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 I subscribed to that viewpoint, I will confess, but my experience is that those premises are no longer valid.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

Nathan Eovaldi – RHP – New York Yankees

2015 Stats: 14-3, 154.1 IP, 4.20 ERA, 121 K’s, 1.45 WHIP

Current ADP

Mock Draft Army ADP: 345.8 (based on current ADPs generated by Howard Bender’s Mock Draft Army results)

National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC): 310.94

FSTA Draft on January 14th, 2016: Drafted 23rd round (343rd overall)

LABR Mixed Draft on February 16, 2016: Drafted 19th round (284 overall)

Availability

Normally a starting pitcher coming off a 14-win season would be going early on in drafts, but it looks as though drafters are not convinced that Eovaldi has turned the corner on his young career, this being just his sixth year in the majors at the age of 26. He is going extremely late in early drafts, and if that inclination continues, you are looking at a potential steal in the final rounds of your drafts.

Upside

He has always possessed a blazing fastball, and the velocity clocked in at a career-best 96.7 MPH in 2015. It was the lack of a second pitch that hurt his production, but he solved that issue by developing a superb split-finger fastball in the middle of last season. The splitter allowed him to handle left-handed batters finally, as well as improving his ground ball rate. His first half and second half were dramatically different stories, with lefties hitting an egregious 1.008 OPS against him in his first 13 starts. Once he began to use his new splitter, however, he reduced the left-handed OPS to a much more palatable .587. He is stingy with the long ball, posting a 0.58 HR/9 over his 27 starts in 2015, coming right in at his three-year average of 0.59.

Downside

Despite the development of the split-fingered fastball, he is still essentially a two-pitch starter, and until he acquires a third pitch, his skillset as a starting pitcher will lag behind many other young SPs. His split finger measures at 84 MPH and his change up registers at 88 MPH, so there is some room for improvement with his repertoire. He also is coming off a lost September, where he was shut down due to elbow inflammation, although he could have pitched in the playoffs if the Yankees had advanced into the ALDS series. Despite how hard he throws his fastball, his strikeout numbers are nothing more than average or worse.

Summary

Eovaldi has strikeout potential, which is nothing new. He has been able to improve his control over the past couple of seasons, although his walk rate jumped nearly one walk per nine innings last season, but is still better than his first three seasons in the majors. Good control, limited home runs allowed, an ability to stifle hitters on both sides of the plate and an extreme groundball inducing tendency make him a great late round sleeper who will be a real value on draft day so long as his elbow does not flare up again.