Fantasy Baseball League Winners: Unlikely Aces Worth A Roster Spot? (Week 16)

Tommy Bell's weekly deep dive into three fantasy baseball starting pitchers to decide if their surprisingly good form merits a roster spot or staying on the waiver wire for Week 16 (2024).

Welcome back to another week of Unlikely Aces. We are just a few days away from the All-Star break, which means we'll be approaching fantasy baseball trade deadlines before we know it. Luckily, thanks to the constant shifting of the Major League Baseball pitching landscape, there may still be some arms to help managers on the waiver wire.

Each week, I'll take a look at three starters who have found recent success despite lesser outlooks across the fantasy landscape. By diving into some analytics, we can try to predict whether a back-end arm can potentially carry fantasy managers to glory, or if the strong performances are more likely a flash in the pan.

Are these unlikely aces for real, or is it safe to leave them out on the waiver wire with negative regression surely coming in bunches quickly? Let's take a deeper look!

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Andrew Heaney, Texas Rangers

23% Rostered

In his last four starts, Heaney has really found something. The 33-year-old has 30 strikeouts, six walks, and just two homers over his last 23.1 innings of work. All of the underlying metrics look phenomenal as well, including a minuscule 20.7% hard-hit rate and a 3.27 xFIP compared to his 2.70 ERA.

Prior to those four starts, the southpaw had been just mediocre. Heaney had a 4.28 xFIP with an uncharacteristic 8.37 K/9 through his first 13 starts of 2024. The biggest potential change we could point to would be a jump in slider usage between those two sample sizes. In his first 13 starts, Heaney threw the slider 25.8% of the time. In his last four starts, that number has ballooned to 37.4%.

1,000 career strikeouts for Andrew Heaney! 🏆
@Rangers | #StraightUpTX | @BallySports 📺 pic.twitter.com/j2Vw60HxI9

— Bally Sports Southwest (@BallySportsSW) July 6, 2024

This seems like a pretty legitimate change to pitch mix, it's most definitely repeatable, and we've known Heaney to turn things up a notch as the postseason creeps closer. The Rangers will need the veteran to continue this stretch of good pitching if they're going to make up for a lackluster start to their 2024 year. I'm fully on board with buying into this improvement from one of the more proven lefty pitchers in our game today.

Andre Pallante, St. Louis Cardinals

15% Rostered

Since making the move to the starting rotation at the end of May, Pallante has made eight starts for St. Louis. Three of those starts have resulted in four or more earned runs, but the other five have resulted in one earned run or less, including three shutout appearances. While there have been a few bumps, including a rough fifth inning after cruising through four unscathed on Thursday night, the good for the young righty has been VERY good.

The 25-year-old boasts a beautiful 57.6% ground-ball rate, which has allowed him to keep his home-run total to just four. His hard contact rate is a strong 20.3% since becoming a starter, which explains his strong 3.81 xFIP and 2.5% barrel rate. Again, A LOT to like here.

Andre Pallante's 2Ks in the 2nd. pic.twitter.com/LRiEYdTWDM

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) June 15, 2024

Pallante uses a simple fastball, sinker, slider, and knuckle curve arsenal, and if it weren't for an uncharacteristic fifth inning on Thursday against the Royals, fantasy managers would be fighting each other to pick up this uber-efficient starter. The lack of strikeouts might steer a few away in roto leagues, but if consistency in the ratio categories and a few wins is what you're looking for, Pallante can provide that. He is widely available heading into the All-Star break.

JP Sears, Oakland Athletics

8% Rostered

There's been almost nothing to like about Sears this season, including the fact that he pitches for the Oakland A's. However, much like Heaney above, his last three starts have been strong enough to make me dig a bit deeper despite a season-long xFIP of 5.00 and K/9 of 6.79. Let's see if I'm on the right track...

As you can see in the FanGraphs game logs above, the lefty has been a totally different pitcher in his last three outings. Sure, the BABIP and LOB rates are a big piece of the puzzle, as evidenced by his 3.44 xFIP compared to his 2.16 ERA, but is there a pitch change to be considered as well?

Not really. Sears has thrown a few more fastballs, but that can't be the reason for this stretch. Especially when we uncover the fact that his hard-hit percentage actually jumped up to 41.5% during these three starts. This might be exactly what we expected above... Good luck.

As much as I like the 28-year-old when I simply watch the games and give it the old school eye test, the numbers don't lie. These strikeouts should level back out, and this hard contact should bite him just as it has in the first three months of the season. It's safe to leave Sears on the waiver wire despite his strong showing in Boston on Thursday night.

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