Tanner Roark (SP, CIN) - Week 14 Waiver Wire Pickups

Brady Grove profiles Cincinnati Reds starter Tanner Roark as a potential waiver wire pickup or add target for fantasy baseball leagues in Week 14 of the 2019 MLB campaign.

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ANALYSIS: Tanner Roark has had a big hand in the Cincinnati Reds finely tuned play of late. After a a shaky first month to the season, Roark produced a 2.28 ERA and 1.16 WHIP in five starts (27.2 IP) through May, and turned in another solid page of the calendar in five June starts (29.1 IP) with a 3.68 ERA and 1.09 WHIP. One key reason for his fantastic work from the mound has been the fact that he has maintained a high strikeout rate steadily throughout the season while steadily bringing his monthly walk rate from 11.4% in April to 4.1% in June.

How well has Tanner Roark been getting batters to whiff? With a 23.6% strikeout rate and K/9 of 9.1, he has actually been striking batters out at the best clip of his career. This could be in part due to the increased frequency in the deployment of his slider and the rising of the pitches average velocity to 86 MPH. That makes for a pretty string of starts when taking into account the season-best figures for hard contact rate (33.3%), soft contact rate (21.8%), and grounder rate (40.2%) that he has forced on batted balls this month. His next start will come this Tuesday at home against the Milwaukee Brewers, a team that he has fared quite well against in two starts so far in 2019, so he is worth getting your hands on soon.