5 years agoHow does one go about projecting Carlos Carrasco? After his “blood condition” was diagnosed in June—and announced as leukemia in July—his 4.98 ERA at the time became the least of anyone’s concerns. He returned in September as a bullpen arm and saw his ERA rise to 5.29, but he has a rotation spot in Cleveland to start 2020. Some good news in his 2019 performance was the maintenance of his strikeouts versus walks: a 23.5 K-BB% compared to 24.0% the previous season. Home runs were the issue; he allowed 18 of them in just 80 innings. They were no fluke: his 12.8% barrel rate allowed, 90.8 exit velocity, and 45.8% hard hit percentage were all in the bottom 2% of the league (that’s a good percent for milk, bad for performance). It’s still difficult to say how much was health-related for at least a couple reasons. First, his fastball velocity was essentially unchanged, up in fact by 0.1 mph. Also, after throwing 100 pitches in just one of his first eight starts, he eclipsed that count in his last four starts before the diagnosis, so fatigue did not appear to cost him innings. Nonetheless, Carrasco’s 2019 was still an outlier in the last six seasons, and it correlated with a frightening health diagnosis. The best bet is to expect a recovery in performance, although perhaps not quite back to pre-2019 levels: Steamer foresees 12 wins, 189 strikeouts, and a 3.80 ERA. Ultimately an ADP of 110 seems about right.--Nathaniel Green