Are You For Real? Surprising Fantasy Baseball Pitcher Starts From Albert Suarez and Andrew Heaney

July 2, 2024

Elliott Baas looks at starting pitchers who turned in surprising starts recently. These SPs could emerge as fantasy baseball waiver wire targets and sleepers for Week 15, or simply mirages.

Welcome back to the "Are You For Real?" series, as we dive into Week 15 of the 2024 fantasy baseball season. This week we're looking at a pair of veterans who pitched in the same series this weekend. First, we'll look at Albert Suarez shutting down the Texas Rangers on Friday. Then, we'll deep dive into Andrew Heaney's 10-strikeout outing against Baltimore on Sunday.

For those who are not familiar, this is a weekly column where we take starting pitchers who had surprisingly good starts over the past week and put them under the microscope to determine whether they're legit or just smoke and mirrors.

Roster percentages are taken from Yahoo! and are accurate as of July 1.

Albert Suarez, Baltimore Orioles - 20% Rostered

2024 Stats (before this start): 53.1 IP, 2.70 ERA, 3.38 FIP, 9.1% K-BB%
6/28 vs. TEX: 6 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 2 K

Suarez was excellent on Friday night, shutting down the defending World Series champion Texas Rangers over six innings while picking up his fourth victory of the year. Suarez now has a sparkling 2.43 ERA and has proven to be a reliable arm for Baltimore despite being an afterthought coming into the season. Can Suarez keep this up, or will the 34-year-old journeyman crumble?

Journeyman might be an understatement when it comes to Suarez’s path to Baltimore. He signed with the Tampa Bay Rays organization way back in 2006 and has spent time with the Rays, Angels, Giants, Diamondbacks, and now Orioles. Additionally, Suarez has spent time in NPB in Japan and the KBO in Korea. It’s never been easy for Suarez, and he’s just now tasting his first big-league success with Baltimore. Suarez works with a four-pitch mix, consisting of a four-seam fastball, cutter, changeup, and curveball. Suarez has taken a fastball-heavy approach this season and it’s worked well for him.

The fastball has been the centerpiece of Suarez’s arsenal this season, and it was on full display in this outing. He threw the four-seamer 63% of the time against Texas and has a 52.7% usage rate this season. There’s a little gas on Suarez’s heater, as he’s averaging 95.1 mph with the pitch, solidly above league average. Opponents have struggled against Suarez’s fastball, with a .250 AVG, .388 SLG, and .317 wOBA against. The expected stats on the pitch suggest that Suarez has earned his good results, with all three expected metrics being within 21 points of the actual numbers. Suarez also has a 10.8% swinging strike rate and a 29.8% chase rate with his four-seamer this season, both good numbers for a fastball.

How does Suarez do it? He has been inducing favorable contact by keeping the ball up in the zone and forcing hitters into flyballs. Here’s a heatmap comparison of his fastball usage this season compared to his last MLB season, 2017.

2017:

2024:

His location seems a lot more intentional compared to the old version of Suarez, and he should be able to induce favorable contact with this strategy going forward. Fortunately for Suarez, he pitches in one of the most pitcher-friendly parks in baseball, and his 0.30 HR/9 is a big reason why he’s had so much success thus far.

After the fastball, it’s an even mix of cutters and changeups for Suarez, depending on the handedness of the batter. He throws the cutter against righties and the changeup against lefties. The changeup has proven to be a lot more effective for Suarez, as opponents are hitting just .170 against the pitch with a .234 SLG and .234 wOBA. The expected stats on this pitch are a little more suspect at a .237 xBA, .401 xSLG, and .318 xwOBA, but it’s been a good pitch nonetheless and Suarez should have no issue wielding it against lefties going forward.

The cutter has been less effective for Suarez as opponents are hitting .279 with a .349 SLG and .294 wOBA off the pitch, however, the xwOBA for the changeup and cutter are quite similar. Suarez has a .327 xwOBA against his cutter and a .318 xwOBA against his changeup. Both pitches do one thing extremely well, and that is to induce weak contact. Against Suarez’s cutter, opponents have an 84 mph average exit velocity. Off Suarez’s changeup, batters have an 85.7 mph average exit velocity. Batters simply can’t rip into either pitch, which has given Suarez positive outcomes on batted balls.

It's nice to see these outcomes for Suarez, but we should be skeptical of the sustainability. First, Suarez has a .206 BABIP against his changeup, something that will be hard to sustain with a 28.6% line drive rate, even with the weak contact he’s been inducing. Second, Saurez is allowing a lot of line drives with his cutter (32.4% rate) and fastball (26.6% rate), which is not conducive to a low BABIP and solid batted ball outcomes, which a low-strikeout pitcher like Suarez needs. Third, Suarez has been exceptionally lucky this season. He has a .278 BABIP against, an 80.6% LOB rate, and a microscopic 2.7% HR/FB ratio. He might have a 2.43 ERA, but ERA estimators do not paint a pretty picture. As of writing this, Suarez has a 4.68 xFIP and a 4.71 SIERA. Rostering a pitcher with those peripherals is a dangerous game to play.

Verdict:

Baltimore, with their pitcher-friendly ballpark and strong supporting cast, might be the best situation for a starting pitcher in fantasy right now. Suarez has a stable rotation spot for one of baseball's best teams, and that’s probably his most appealing aspect. He is mostly surviving on luck and it’s hard to predict more positive outcomes for Suarez going forward. His game lacks the swing-and-miss upside we fantasy players crave, and his starts mostly rely on how balls-in-play bounce. He’s not a bad streaming option thanks to his situation, but he isn’t a league winner and won’t have much value beyond streaming or as a back-end rotation stabilizer.

Andrew Heaney, Texas Rangers - 15% Rostered

2024 Stats (before this start): 77.2 IP, 4.17 ERA, 4.20 FIP, 15.7% K-BB%
6/30 @ BAL: 7 IP, 5 H, 2 ER, 0 BB, 10 K

Heaney had one of his best starts all season on Sunday, fanning 10 Orioles while picking up his third victory of the season. Heaney lowered his ERA to a more respectable 4.04 following this start and had a 3.41 ERA in June. The veteran lefty has teased fantasy owners plenty of times in the past, and while no one has illusions of Heaney as a frontline starter, he’s pitched well enough to catapult his way back onto fantasy radars. Is Heaney for real, or will he falter?

Originally a first-round pick by the Marlins back in 2012, Heaney was a well-known prospect coming up. He’s spent time with the Marlins, Angels, Yankees, Dodgers, and now Rangers. Heaney works with a four-pitch mix, consisting of a four-seam fastball, a slider, a changeup, and a curveball. It was all about the fastball and slider in this one, as Heaney used each pitch a combined 85% of the time.

Let’s start with Heaney’s fastball, which had increased velocity in this outing. Heaney averages 91.5 mph with his heater on the year but had a 92.3 mph fastball in this start. Heaney’s fastball velocity peaked in a breakout 2022 where he averaged 93 mph with his heater and put up a career-best 3.10 ERA with the Dodgers. Heaney earned nine of his 19 whiffs with his fastball in this one as well. Opponents have really struggled with the pitch this season, hitting just .222 with a .405 SLG and .311 wOBA.

The expected stats are in line with the actual results as well, as Heaney has a .210 xBA, .400 xSLG, and .306 xwOBA with his fastball this year. Heaney excels with his fastball with extreme flyball tendencies. He has a 25-degree average launch angle and a 46.4% flyball rate with the pitch this season. Flyballs are the batted ball type that is least likely to land for a hit, so it’s not a bad approach by Heaney to lean into his flyball ability.

The biggest drawback to the flyball-heavy approach may seem obvious, and it’s home runs allowed. Heaney has long struggled with allowing homers, and that’s been no different this season as he has a 1.28 HR/9 through 84.2 innings. That’s actually his best homer rate since 2020, but still higher than we like to see. Heaney not only allows a high number of flyballs, but he also allows hard contact on those flyballs. He has a 90.8 mph average exit velocity against along with a 42.1% hard hit rate against. With batted-ball outcomes like this, Heaney will likely always struggle with home runs.

Home runs have long been an issue for Heaney, but one area where he’s thrived has been strikeouts. Heaney got 10 strikeouts on 19 whiffs in this game and has a career 9.55 K/9. His slider was a big driver behind the strikeouts, as Heaney got eight whiffs on 29 sliders against Baltimore. Heaney has an impressive 20.1% swinging strike rate and a 43.4% chase rate with the slider this season, which are above his career marks with the pitch.

With numbers like these on his slider, Heaney could have a strikeout rate even better than his current 9.04 K/9. In fact, during June Heaney increased his slider usage by 6% and has an elevated 10.2 K/9. Heaney provides strikeout upside that we don’t often see with pitchers with roster percentages this low, and that makes him an attractive streaming option for deeper leagues.

Pitchers with strikeout rates this high are normally rostered, so what makes Heaney so flawed? Why isn’t he rostered more? First and foremost would be the inconsistency we’ve experienced throughout his career. Heaney has been around since 2014 and has just two seasons with an ERA below 4, a career 4.45 ERA, and a career 1.56 HR/9 and 4.38 FIP. On paper, he should be better, as evidenced by his career 3.81 SIERA, but he’s been unable to move past the inconsistencies on a start-by-start basis, limiting his fantasy upside.

Verdict:

Not much appears to have changed about Heaney, which means he’s still a fringe fantasy asset in mixed leagues. His stuff, the fastball-slider combo, still looks solid and capable of producing outs, but he hasn’t grown much as a pitcher over the years. He’s an interesting streamer thanks to his ability to get strikeouts, but he also tends to expand one’s ratios if left in the lineup too long. Heaney is the type of streamer I like to use when coming from behind in a given weak thanks to his capability to get 10 strikeouts every so often. He’s a little underrated from that perspective, but still not much of a long-term asset in standard mixed leagues.

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