It's been a while since my Busts 1.0 came out, so let me take this opportunity to remind you that my interpretation of "bust" isn't just an inefficient pick who doesn't quite live up to his cost. It's the bottom falling out, a disaster scenario by which a pick turns out to be a total waste.
- Sleepers 2.0: Scott | Chris | Frank
- Breakouts 2.0: Scott | Chris | Frank
- Busts 2.0: Scott | Chris | Frank
Of course, the chances of complete ruin for any one player isn't all that high, so I wouldn't suggest treating any of these as if they're off limits. There are circumstances by which I'd draft each and every one, in some cases because the upside is just as significant as the downside. But when navigating a draft, it helps to know where the land mines are, if only to mitigate the potential loss of life and limb should you step on one.
And with that, I have five new names for you here in Version 2.0, along with the 12 names from Version 1.0. It's a long read, so buckle in.
THE NEWCOMERS
Tyler Glasnow, SP, Dodgers
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FantasyPros ADP: 43.6
It's kind of layup, right? Failing to make it through a full season is what Glasnow is most known for, probably, so for me to say "you know, drafting him as your ace in Round 4 could really come back to bite you" is about the most obvious thing in the world.
So I guess I'm writing about him because I've come to realize that I can't live with that risk. I thought I could back when I wrote Busts 1.0 because, pitch for pitch, Glasnow is the most dominant starter this side of Spencer Strider. And at a time when so much of the pitcher pool has merged into an indistinguishable glob, having a reliably high-impact starter, for however long he lasts, is worth the upcharge. You'll have a big advantage whenever he's healthy, and when he's not, you'll deal with the glob like everyone else. And I still think all of that tracks, in theory.
But I just don't have the stomach for it. Glasnow's 120 innings last year were the most he's ever had in a major-league season. If you combine his major- and minor-league numbers, the most he's ever thrown over a nine-year professional career is 155 1/3, and that happened way back in 2017. He's 30 now. What's going to change? Furthermore, why would the Dodgers, with their postseason ticket basically punched already, push the envelope with him? They're going to work Walker Buehler and Clayton Kershaw back into the fold eventually, and they have no shortage of up-and-comers between Emmet Sheehan, Gavin Stone, Kyle Hurt and Landon Knack. They'll be mixing up their starting rotation all season to keep everyone fresh for the playoffs, such that even if Glasnow were to miraculously stay healthy, he wouldn't be taking on an ace workload. And that's the best-case scenario. Ask yourself which is more likely: 160 innings or 60 innings?
Maybe if he slipped to Round 6 or 7, I could justify taking him, but my drafting experience has shown that somebody will always take him in Round 4 or 5. And I'm going to take a more trustworthy player at some other position (starting pitcher included) instead.
Matt McLain, 2B/SS, Reds
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FantasyPros ADP: 65.4
I quite enjoyed what McLain did as a rookie last year, arriving in mid-May to deliver premium production across all five categories. And lest you think that his strengths were specific to Rotisserie leagues, note that his 3.41 Head-to-Head points per game ranked fifth among second basemen, behind Mookie Betts, Jose Altuve, Ozzie Albies and Marcus Semien. That's basically where McLain is being drafted now, give or take a Nico Hoerner, so the question is whether we can take his rookie performance at face value.
I have my doubts. The biggest mark in his favor is that he was just as scintillating at Triple-A Louisville prior to his promotion, slashing .340/.467/.688 with 12 homers and 10 steals in 40 games. So that's something. But also, he outperformed his .256 xBA (in the majors, I mean) by 34 points, his .436 xSLG by 71 points and his .332 xwOBA by 38 points, which is to say that Statcast made him out to be more of a middle-of-the-road hitter. Meanwhile, his 28.5 percent strikeout rate ranked in the 16th percentile, and it climbed to 29.7 percent from July 1 on. Normally, the hitters who succeed with a 30 percent strikeout rate are those with top-of-the-scales, 95th percentile exit velocities, which certainly isn't McLain, so in that way, his 2023 was akin to a unicorn sighting.
Granted, strikeouts weren't a big part of his profile in the minors, so it's possible he just gets better. Regardless, some amount of regression seems more likely than a complete repeat, which means McLain probably doesn't need to be going 3-5 rounds ahead of Ketel Marte, Bryson Stott, Andres Gimenez and Zack Gelof. And given the Reds' infield surplus, with Spencer Steer forced to the outfield and Jonathan India to the bench, McLain also has a narrower margin for error -- one made all the narrower by the fact he's reportedly still contending with the oblique injury that sidelined him late last year.
Cedric Mullins, OF, Orioles
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FantasyPros ADP: 133.0
You might think it's foolish to declare a player a bust the year after his production takes a dive, but in Mullins' case, that drop in production may be all the excuse the Orioles need to phase him out. You may have noticed they're loaded for bear, with more quality options than they can fit in one lineup. Heston Kjerstad and Colton Cowser are fully baked as prospects, with little to gain from a return to the minors, yet they're blocked by Anthony Santander, Austin Hays and Mullins, not to mention Ryan Mountcastle at DH. So who's the weak link there? Mullins brings the most value because of his defense, you could argue, but when a team is looking to break in a new bat, substandard production is the easiest excuse.
Clearly, Mullins' production last year was substandard -- he hit .233 and reached base at only a .305 clip -- but you may be surprised to learn his .721 OPS was exactly the same as in 2022. It's his 2021, when he hit .291 with 30 homers and 30 steals, that's the outlier. We've learned twice over not to draft Mullins at that level anymore, instead targeting him in the Round 10-11 range, but if you think he's the magical solution to whatever outfield or stolen base shortage you've incurred to that point in the draft, understand that it could all go poof.
In fact, the Orioles were already showing signs of phasing out Mullins last year. He started only 39 of 47 games after returning from a groin injury and was batting in the lower third of the lineup rather than leadoff. Would it be so crazy for the Orioles to do with Mullins what we all can see they're doing with Jorge Mateo, another defensive-minded speedster now bound for the bench?
Salvador Perez, C, Royals
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FantasyPros ADP: 134.8
"He's old" is the gist of my reasoning here, but for the justification of my salary, I'll use a bunch more words to express it. So ... 34. That's what Perez will be in May. It's old for a baseball player but especially old for a catcher and especially old for a catcher who has staked reputation on being one of the most heavily worked since breaking in at 21.
This reputation is so well established that you probably didn't notice Perez made only 90 starts at catcher last year, his fewest (2020 season excluded) since before he had established himself as a major-league starter. Perhaps the simpler way to put it is that his 50 starts at some position other than catcher (29 at DH and 21 at first base) were by far his most ever. The Royals are beginning to phase him out of catching, and the defensive metrics say it's justified. He's a terrible pitch framer -- perhaps always has been -- and their thrifty rotation could use some help in that regard. Freddy Fermin emerged as a viable alternative last year and will presumably continue to cut into Perez's workload behind the plate.
So the question is whether Perez remains enough of an offensive standout to justify so many at-bats at those other positions. That's where those 34 years of age come in. His average exit velocity and hard-hit rate last year were both his lowest since 2017, and he's never been much of an on-base threat. Meanwhile, Vinnie Pasquantino is healthy again and figures to take priority over Perez at first base. Is it so crazy to think that Nelson Velazquez would be more deserving of DH at-bats than Perez? If not him, then maybe Nick Pratto emerges or Tyler Gentry or someone else we don't even see coming. If Perez ends up being a catcher who plays more like 110-120 games than 140, then he's probably being drafted 50 spots too early.
Michael King, SP/RP, Padres
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FantasyPros ADP: 151.6
The truth is that King's ADP is about where I rank him, so I was reluctant label him a bust in Version 1.0. But his cost isn't so low that we can just ignore the downside risk, and yet I don't see much acknowledgment of that risk within Fantasy Baseball circles.
Yes, it's true he had a 1.88 ERA, 1.10 WHIP and 11.3 K/9 in his eight-start trial for the Yankees. Yes, it's true that his velocity held steady even as he (eventually) built up to six and seven innings. Yes, it's true that the Padres were so enamored with the performance that they made him the centerpiece of the Juan Soto trade this offseason. You've heard all that before, I'm sure. What you may not have heard is that King struggled to keep his body intact even as a reliever, with the most damning of his injuries being a fractured elbow that sidelined him for the final three months of 2022.
It wasn't because he was struck by a line drive. The elbow broke from the act of pitching, an unnatural activity that's become increasingly forceful over the years. Not everyone's body is built to withstand the physics of it (see Jacob deGrom since he began pushing for triple-digit velocity in 2020), and when bones are literally breaking from the torque, it's a problem. With that particular injury in King's history, I'd consider it an upset if he were to make more than 20 starts this year.
Now, maybe those 20 starts (or 15 or a dozen or whatever) will be so good that he'll still justify the price tag, but maybe not. We're basing our optimism on all of eight starts, only two of which met the minimum length of a quality start. And while his strikeout rate was good in those eight starts, his swinging-strike rate (9.7 percent) was more in the neighborhood of pitiful. Just don't pin all your hopes to him is all I'm saying.
THE HOLDOVERS
Cody Bellinger, 1B/OF, Cubs
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FantasyPros ADP: 55.0
Even though Bellinger has wound up back where he was during his resurgent 2023, there are reasons to doubt whether he can repeat those numbers. The most obvious is what happened during the preceding three years, when he hit a combined .203 with a .648 OPS. True, he's also a former league MVP, claiming the honor in 2019, but his track record is equal parts success and failure at this point. The sheer inconsistency is reason enough to question what you're actually getting for your investment.
And it's not like he rebounded in every way last year. His exit velocities didn't return to 2019 levels, and in fact, his 87.9 mph average was his lowest on record, ranking in the bottom 25 percent of the league. His max exit velocity, for what it's worth, ranked in the bottom half. Those readings aren't the type we generally see for a middle-of-the-order bat, and Statcast estimates that the 26 home runs Bellinger hit last year would have been more like 19-23 at most other venues. He was one of the 10 biggest overachievers by xBA (.268 vs. his actual .307 mark) and one of the five biggest overachievers by xSLG (.434 vs. 525). And for as underwhelming as those expected stats were, just imagine them if he hadn't struck out a career-low 15.6 percent of the time.
There's certainly a glass-half-full outlook for Bellinger that presumes his miserable three-year stretch was the result of injuries wreaking havoc on his mechanics or that his diverse skill set will protect him from a true bottom-out scenario. But the poor exit velocity readings last year would seem to undermine the first point and his bottoming out from 2020 through 2022 would seem to undermine the second.
Paul Goldschmidt, 1B, Cardinals
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FantasyPros ADP: 61.0
Part of me thinks Goldschmidt isn't worth mentioning here because the ADP is more than reasonable for an early-round mainstay who's just a year removed from winning NL MVP and was batting .285 with an .850 OPS as late as July 26. In fact, I might even rank him higher than his ADP.
Gee, I'm making a pretty good case for drafting him, aren't I? Well, here's where I'll remind you that my goal here is less about identifying draft inefficiencies and more about flagging potential land mines. And while there's still a good chance he'll be perfectly fine, I have an inkling Goldschmidt is about to blow up -- like, in a bad way.
For one thing, he's 36 now, and you may have heard that Father Time is undefeated. Time seemed to catch up to Goldschmidt in the second half last year. It's not just that he hit .246 with a .763 OPS. It's not just that his strikeout rate jumped from 21.8 to 25.6 percent. It's not even just that his average exit velocity dropped from 93.0 to 88.7 mph. Any of those on its own would be easy enough to dismiss as random variation in a fickle game, but all of them together, for a guy on the wrong side of 35, is something to worry about.
What's most worrisome of all, though, is Goldschmidt's splits against fastballs, which are purportedly the easiest pitch to hit because they take a relatively straight path to the plate. But as a player gets older, his swing slows down a bit, and he can have a harder time catching up to pure heat. It might explain why Goldschmidt, a career .307 hitter with a .995 OPS against fastballs, hit just .238 with a .797 OPS against them last year, swinging and missing 10.6 percent of the time compared to the usual 8.7 percent.
Blake Snell, SP, free agent
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FantasyPros ADP: 61.4
Snell may be a two-time Cy Young winner, but he spent the four years in between struggling to justify himself. His numbers during that time -- a 3.85 ERA, 1.26 WHIP and 12.0 K/9 -- may not look so terrible, particularly the sparkling strikeout rate, but he didn't last even 130 innings in any of those four seasons. And it took a late surge in 2021 and 2022 to bring his numbers to a respectable level. As late as midseason, he had an ERA over 5.00 both years.
But it's worse than just him disappearing for stretches due to injury or having a blowup start from time to time. When he's off, he's close to unusable in Fantasy, squandering too many pitches on walks and strikeouts to make it more than five innings. There's a reason Snell's Cy Young seasons are his only two with double-digit wins despite him pitching for some pretty good Rays and Padres teams, and at times during those 2021 and 2022 seasons, there was even talk of dropping him in Fantasy. Can we feel confident he's nipped those efficiency issues in the bud? Well, he still averaged 5.0 BB/9 last year, so probably not. It's also the reason why he was the biggest overachiever in both FIP (3.44) and xERA (3.74) among full-time starters in 2023 -- and there was no close second.
Snell did show improvement with both his curveball and changeup last year, giving him a deeper arsenal of swing-and-miss pitches than we had before, but remember, his first Cy Young came with a 1.89 ERA. We were all pretty bullish about his state of development then, too. If the improved arsenal came with an improved walk rate, I'd be a little more forgiving of Snell's past, but even ignoring his past, the walk rate alone potentially makes for another Dylan Cease scenario.
Ha-Seong Kim, 2B/3B/SS, Padres
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FantasyPros ADP: 84.0
At this time a year ago, Kim was known mostly as the defensive standout responsible for bumping Jake Cronenworth to first base and, in a less direct way, Fernando Tatis to the outfield. But he had turned himself into an instrumental Fantasy player by season's end, mostly by way of his new stolen base prowess. That has as much to do with the stolen base environment improving (through limited pickoff attempts, bigger bases, etc.) as anything, which means it may be here to stay. But even so, he's unlikely to improve upon the 38 steals he had last year.
And that's basically my entire objection to Kim for 2024. It just seems like he did everything as well as he could possibly do it in 2023. A clearer example of this is his power hitting. His 17 homers represent a nice, healthy total, particularly for a base-stealer, but he didn't impact the ball in a way that would suggest 17-homer power. His max exit velocity was only 39th percentile. His average exit velocity was only 7th percentile. And his hard-hit rate? Well, that was 3rd percentile. We're nearly at the bottom of the barrel. Granted, the shape of the contact also makes a difference. Kim elevated well to his pull side and may be able to repeat the feat. But that's working in opposition to his batting average, which Statcast suggests should have been .245 rather than his actual .260 mark.
It wouldn't take much for Kim to slip to just 12 homers and 30 steals -- in which case he's Tommy Edman, who's going half a draft later. And I suspect there's even more downside risk from there.
Joe Ryan, SP, Twins
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FantasyPros ADP: 93.4
My approach to starting pitching this year (at least in 5x5 categories leagues) is to sell out for strikeouts, believing that blowup starts have become too common to put much stock in ERA and WHIP. But as with any sweeping changes to my approach, it's more of a guideline than a rule, and for someone like Ryan, I think the ERA risk is too great to pursue the 11.0 K/9. I say this not just because he had a 4.51 ERA last year, but because I think all of it, the strikeouts included, could get even worse.
In short, the jig is up. Ryan was never a hard thrower. He never featured much of a secondary arsenal. What made him so effective -- both in the majors and especially the minors -- was the shape of his fastball. Its low release height gave it the optimal vertical approach angle to dominate at the top of the zone, which was very much on trend with current best pitching practices. It's so on trend, in fact, that hitters have begun to adjust. "The worm is turning in the battle for the top of the zone," Eno Sarris wrote for The Athletic in October. What was once considered good ride for a fastball, he points out, yielded a .355 wOBA in 2023, up from .304 just a year earlier.
Ryan's entire career is built on that gimmick, so if the effect has worn off, the fall could be tremendous. And it may have already started. While his ERA finished at 4.51, it was 2.98 as late as June 26. Such a jump amounts to a 6.62 ERA over his final 14 starts, along an untenable home run rate of 3.2 per nine innings. It's true he was pitching through a groin injury for part of that time, which might explain the worst of his struggles, but seeing as he had a 4.79 ERA in seven starts after returning, I can't rule out the possibility that he's just done.
Spencer Steer, 1B/3B/OF, Reds
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FantasyPros ADP: 98.4
Steer was one of the biggest finds in all of Fantasy last year, ranking fifth among third basemen in points leagues and eighth in Rotisserie, with eligibility at first base and the outfield as well. He made worthwhile contributions in batting average, home runs and stolen bases and did it all as a rookie. But my concern is that we happened to get his best-case outcome on the first try, and I think the odds are against him doing it again.
Just on a pure skill level, my skepticism is warranted. You'll notice I described his contributions in batting average, home runs and stolen bases as "worthwhile." Yeah, he wasn't a standout in any of those areas, which makes for a slimmer margin for error in all three. And because his whole is basically the sum of his parts, any slippage in one could upend the whole thing. So let's examine those possibilities for slippage. Of his 15 stolen bases, more than half came in June. He didn't show much willingness to run otherwise. His average exit velocity was only 37th percentile, his max 63rd percentile. Fair to say, then, he's not exactly scalding the ball, and so you may not be surprised to learn he outperformed his .252 xBA by 19 percentage points and his .417 xSLG by 47.
It's true he plays in the majors' most homer-friendly park, which helps to make up for those shortcomings, but in order for that to happen, he does have to play. And this is the kicker for me. For whatever talents Steer brings to the table offensively, they don't compare to Elly De La Cruz, Noelvi Marte, Matt McLain and Christian Encarnacion-Strand, to say nothing for holdover Jonathan India and free agent addition Jeimer Candelario. Between those six, the infield is no longer an option for Steer. Now, if he's as good as last year, he'll suit the Reds just fine in the outfield, but with TJ Friedl, Will Benson and Jake Fraley all vying for at-bats as well, and all batting left-handed, could any slippage lead to a playing-time crunch? It seems more than plausible.
Sonny Gray, SP, Cardinals
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FantasyPros ADP: 114.6
While it's true Gray secured some Cy Young votes, enough to finish second in a down year for pitching in general, he was in many ways the same as he's always been. His strikeout and walk rates were virtually identical to the year before. His xERA and xFIP were both about 80 points higher than his 2.79 ERA, putting him in the same mid-to-high threes range where he's resided since 2019.
His FIP stands out by comparison, actually topping the leaderboard at 2.83, but that's because FIP is calculated using actual home runs rather than the likelihood of home runs. Good home run luck was a key to Gray's success in 2023. He surrendered only eight all year, a feat he's unlikely to repeat. Some will point to his new sweeper as a game-changing pitch, accounting for a 41.3 percent whiff rate, but his overall swinging-strike rate (11.4 percent) was merely decent and not out of character for him. He also rarely threw the pitch for strikes, and over time, hitters will learn not to chase it.
All of that doesn't even take into account the biggest concern of all. More than his ERA, his FIP or his sweeper, what moved Gray into the Cy Young conversation last year was his 184 innings pitched. He hadn't reached 180 in a season since 2015, averaging 140 in the six seasons thereafter (2020 excluded, for obvious reasons). Standing only 5-feet-10, his body generally hasn't held up to being a full-time starting pitcher, and a single departure from the trend isn't enough to upend the trend.
Is the likelihood of 140 innings from a middling strikeout pitcher with a spotty ERA history really something to stake your season on? As anything more than a back-end rotation stabilizer -- which is mostly how Gray has been regarded over the years -- it wouldn't be for me.
Josh Jung, 3B, Rangers
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FantasyPros ADP: 119.0
There seems to be a fundamental disagreement over how good Jung actually is -- one that I trace back to the first two months of last season, when he hit .295 with 12 homers and an .872 OPS. At the time, I said it was a mirage, that his middling exit velocities wouldn't hold up to his inflated strikeout rate. And you know what? He hit just .244 with 11 homers and a .712 OPS the rest of the way, a span of 70 games compared to the initial 52.
So why the disconnect? I think it's just because the initial 52 games happened during the time of year when Fantasy Baseballers were playing closest attention, and their impressions of Jung became entrenched. But again, the warning signs were there before the drop-off even began. To put actual numbers to it, Jung struck out 29.3 percent of the time last year. Only seven qualifying batters struck out more, and their combined batting average was .235. It's true that we've seen players strike out that much and still deliver a quality batting average, but it usually requires the sort of outlier exit velocities that Jung doesn't seem capable of delivering. Yes, he did hit the ball hard on average in 2023, but it's the high-end readings that matter more for power production. Jung's max exit velocity was only 58th percentile.
Given that profile, I'd say that Jung's final 70 games are closer to his true self than his first 52 games. I'm willing to split the difference and value him based on his overall numbers, but that puts him closer to Alec Bohm than Nolan Arenado, in my estimation, even though ADP says otherwise.
Lane Thomas, OF, Nationals
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FantasyPros ADP: 122.6
Thomas seems like too easy of a choice here, being a fourth outfielder type who overachieved for half a season before coming back down to earth with a .223 batting average and .705 OPS in the second half. That pretty much sums it up, right? But here he is still being drafted ahead of such notables as Teoscar Hernandez and Dansby Swanson.
There are some complicating factors here, such as Thomas still hitting 14 homers and stealing 12 bases during that 68-game stretch when he was batting .223 -- strong totals, to be sure. And nobody should think .223 is the true baseline for him anyway. He entered the year a career .237 hitter. Meanwhile, his role is probably safe on a still-depleted Nationals club. And then there's the biggest complicating factor of all, the fact that outfield is terrible after the top 25 or so are off the board. That's about the point when Thomas is being drafted, and if your biggest need at that point is outfield, then investing in the guy coming off a 28-homer, 20-steal season is no crazier than investing in anyone else.
But maybe it's crazy to invest in any outfielder at that point, and you shouldn't put yourself in a position where you're tempted to do so. If the goal here is to identify potential land mines, Thomas certainly qualifies as one -- and at a point in the draft when there are still quality alternatives, if mostly at other positions.
Esteury Ruiz, OF, Athletics
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FantasyPros ADP: 135.8
I'd venture to say that everyone reading this knows Ronald Acuna led the majors with 73 stolen bases last year. But second was Ruiz with 67, and the gap between him and No. 3 (Corbin Carroll with 54) was bigger than at any other place on the leaderboard. Of course, Acuna (and Carroll, for that matter) contributed in a multitude of other ways while Ruiz pretty much just stole the bases. He's about as one-dimensional as players get, and that one dimension isn't as useful as it once was.
I think the reason Ruiz is being drafted about 70 spots higher than where I rank him in Rotisserie leagues is that our collective sensibilities haven't caught up to our new reality yet. The 3,503 stolen bases across the majors last year were 41 percent more than the year before and the most since 1987, which means virtually no one playing Fantasy Baseball today can recall a time when they were so plentiful. And it's a particularly stark contrast to the juiced ball years, when there was no higher priority than stolen bases on draft day. You could have presumed in those days that a 67-steal guy would carry you in a category where few player were of any use at all. It was scarcity that made a player like Ruiz valuable, but that scarcity doesn't exist anymore.
Which brings me back to what he doesn't do -- i.e., everything else. His quality-of-contact readings are some of the worst in all of baseball, and the way he angles the ball doesn't offer much hope for sneaky power either. He's an overly aggressive hitter, too, which means he's not even getting on base enough to take full advantage of his speed. And perhaps the biggest case for him being a bust is that by season's end, he had become too much of an offensive liability even for the lowly Athletics, starting only half of their games from Aug. 5 on.
Isaac Paredes, 1B/3B, Rays
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FantasyPros ADP: 156.8
One telltale sign of a bust candidate is a player who relies on a single trick to make him everything he is. Joe Ryan is one such example, but Paredes is another. The basis of his appeal is his power production -- he hit 31 homers and drove in 98 runs last year -- but his profile isn't that of a slugger at all. A quick look at his Statcast page will reveal nothing but icy blue, his max exit velocity ranking in the 33rd percentile, his average exit velocity in the 13th percentile and his hard-hit rate in the 6th percentile. His .488 slugging percentage was 119 points higher than his .369 xSLG, which was the second-biggest gap among all hitters.
For him, it's all about the angles. Rather than hitting majestic home runs from gap to gap, he takes aim for the shortest part of the fence and is able to sneak it over enough to count for something. His fly-ball rate last year was 47.0 percent, which ranked 11th among qualifiers, and his pull rate on fly balls was 45.4 percent, which ranked second only to Adam Duvall. The resulting spray chart looked like this:
Who is this? pic.twitter.com/2OnmNgvlvl
— Scott White (@CBSScottWhite) January 19, 2024
In theory, it should continue to work, and in fact, it's been a two-year trend now. But consider how much of an outlier it requires Paredes to be, particularly with regard to hitting fly balls to his pull side. His 45.4 percent rate was nearly twice the league average of 24.9 percent. Any regression there could spell disaster given that weakly hit fly balls to any other part of the yard are easy outs. And even if he's able to maintain the outlier rate, maybe some of those 31 homers fall short of the fence this time, resulting, again, in easy outs. As fickle as the Rays are with their lineups, how many chances do you think they'll give Paredes if he's hitting .220 in mid-May?
Bryce Miller, SP, Mariners
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FantasyPros ADP: 185.4
The enthusiasm for Miller is built on the same flimsy foundation as the enthusiasm for Josh Jung. Basically, everyone remembers how it started and less so how it finished. So let me break it down for you. Through five starts, the right-hander had a 1.15 ERA, going six-plus innings in all five. In 20 starts thereafter, he had a 5.31 ERA, going six-plus innings in just four.
I don't know which sample is more revealing to you, but when the more recent one also happens to be four times larger, it shouldn't be a difficult decision.
The big issue for Miller is that he's essentially a one-pitch pitcher, throwing his fastball 60 percent of the time. It's a good fastball, featuring just 11.8 inches of drop, but when there's little to counteract it, hitters eventually figure it out. He did begin mixing in other pitches as the season went on -- mostly different variations of a fastball and slider -- but none of them proved to be particularly effective. The overall results also didn't improve at all as he threw them more. He has been working on a splitter this offseason, but its impact is theoretical at this point.
Of course, Miller did throw 67 percent of his pitches for strikes, which is particularly impressive for a rookie and somewhat reminiscent of George Kirby, another young Mariners pitcher who has struggled to develop much of a secondary arsenal. I underestimated Kirby at one point, and it's possible I'm doing the same for Miller. But the results were always there for Kirby while for Miller, apart from those first five starts, they just weren't. The upside is much clearer to me for pitchers like Nick Pivetta, Ryan Pepiot, Nick Lodolo and Kyle Harrison, all of whom are being drafted after Miller, on average.
