Are You For Real? Surprising Pitcher Starts from Week 13

Elliott Baas looks at starting pitchers who turned in surprising starts recently. These SP could emerge as waiver wire targets and sleepers, or simply mirages.

Welcome to Are You For Real?, a weekly column where we look at pitchers who turned in surprisingly good starts and try to determine whether they are the real deal. This week we're looking at a veteran who's trying to right the ship after early season struggles, and two prospects who turned in the first strong performances of their entire career.

Jameson Taillon turned in one of his best starts as a Yankee on Thursday, holding the Royals to just one run for his first quality start in almost two months. Tony Santillan struck out eight Braves in his first career quality start on Thursday, and Kyle Muller struck out nine Reds in the same series on Sunday.

Roster percentages quoted in this piece are based on Yahoo availability and are accurate as of 06/28/2021.

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Jameson Taillon, New York Yankees

30% Rostered

2021 Stats (Prior to this start): 58 IP, 5.59 ERA, 4.53 FIP, 3.5 K/BB ratio

06/24 vs. KC: 6.1 IP, 5 H, 1 ER, 2 BB, 6 K

There were high expectations for Taillon following a trade from Pittsburgh to the Bronx, as many thought he could use the change of scenery to realize his full potential, much like ex-Pirates Gerrit Cole and Tyler Glasnow. Those hopes came crashing down almost immediately, as Taillon served up two homers in his first start and has struggled with Gopheritis and inconsistency throughout the season. Taillon has had a lot of ups-and-downs throughout his career, including two Tommy John surgeries and surgery for cancer. He was able to bounce back from all of that, so there’s a chance he can bounce back from recent struggles as well. He started to turn it around on Thursday, with his first quality start since May 7. Is Taillon turning over a new leaf, or did he take advantage of a weak Royals lineup?

Most fantasy players or people who follow baseball at more than a casual level are familiar with Taillon’s story. He was a top draft pick and one of the most hyped pitching prospects in baseball coming up, and had all the tools of a front-end starter. He has a mid-90s fastball, using both a four-seam and two-seam grip, and has two solid breaking balls with his curveball and slider.  His repertoire has changed a bit this season, as Taillon has shied away from his sinker and reworked his slider into a more traditional slider rather than the cutter-slider hybrid he'd used in previous seasons. So far, those changes have not paid off as Taillon is on pace for his worst season as a big leaguer.

The biggest issue for Taillon this season has been the long ball, which is not something he struggled with prior to 2021. He hadn’t posted a HR/9 above 1.0 since his rookie season, but Taillon has an eye-popping 1.54 HR/9 this season. He’s surrendered 11 bombs in 64.1 innings thus far, which is the same amount he allowed in 2018 in 133.2 innings. What has caused Taillon to experience such a calamitous and uncharacteristic home run rate? Certainly, a move from spacious PNC Park in the relatively light-hitting NL Central to Yankee Stadium and the sluggers of the AL East doesn’t help, but that move doesn’t account for such a drastic jump. No, to crack this mystery I think a visualize exercise is necessary. Below are Taillon’s pitch heatmaps on all pitches in 2021 (top) compared to the rest of his career (bottom).

Hmm…something’s different, isn’t it? The top half of the zone is much redder in 2021. Let’s look at just his four-seam fastball now.

That fastball location is higher than Hunter S. Thompson on any given day in the 1970s. Taillon seems to be elevating his fastball in an effort to get more whiffs, which is working as his 16.3% swinging strike rate on his fastball is the highest of his career and 6% higher than his career average, but it seems to be coming at the expense of his home run rate. Taillon has allowed six home runs with a .207 ISO against his four-seamer this season, along with a 50.7% flyball rate, which is 11% higher than his career rate. He would’ve had an easier time getting away with this approach in Pittsburgh, but it’s much harder in Yankee Stadium, especially to left-handed hitters. Lefties are slugging .517 off Taillon this season, which is nearly 100 points higher than his career mark.

Compounding the issue is Taillon’s shift away from his sinker to a more four-seam heavy approach. Taillon’s sinker has a 57.7% career groundball rate, so it’s a puzzling move to discard the offering entirely, but this has been the Yankees blueprint for many pitchers. They try and get them to focus less on sinkers and more on four-seam/breaking ball usage to increase strikeout numbers. Taillon also told Lindsey Adler of the Athletic that he “anticipates being more four-seam heavy” following his second Tommy John surgery. Perhaps he doesn’t have a feel for the pitch anymore, or perhaps he’s changed his style at the behest of the Yankees organization. Either way, it doesn’t look like his sinker is coming back in a significant way, as he only threw nine in this start. The problem with this approach going forward is that Taillon hasn’t been inordinately unlucky on fly balls either this season. His 12.8% HR/FB ratio is below league average and around his rates in previous seasons, but his overall fly ball rate has risen by 20% this season. There’s no home run regression due here. Taillon has earned those long balls, and unless he re-shifts back towards the sinker, it’s not going to change.

You may be thinking, so what if Taillon’s home run rate is high? Lots of successful pitchers have struggled with homers and still been fantasy relevant, like Lucas Giolito, Trevor Bauer, and Max Scherzer to name a few. That’s true, and some pitchers can get away with giving up home runs, but they need to excel in two areas: keeping runners off the bases (multi-run homers are killers) and maintaining a good K:BB ratio. You can’t walk the world and then serve up bombs and expect to be successful, unless you’re Robbie Ray, baseball’s ultimate enigma. The good news for Taillon is that he’s always been pretty good at keeping runners off the bases…until 2021. The year Taillon happens to post his highest home run rate he has also posted his highest WHIP, BABIP, and walk rate since 2017. In 2018 and 2019 Taillon maintained a WHIP below 1.20 and a walk rate below 6%, but he has an ugly 1.32 WHIP and 7.2% walk rate in 2021 despite a career-high 53.4% zone rate.

The culprit here seems to be his slider, which has shown diminished measurables this season. The pitch is moving less, about an inch less vertically and half an inch horizontally, and as a consequence, is more hittable. Taillon’s slider has a pedestrian 9.8% swinging strike rate and 32.4% chase rate, down 10% from 2019. This is how walk rate can increase even when a pitcher throws more strikes. He can’t get anyone to swing out of the zone. He either has to live in the zone and expose himself to a greater likelihood of hits and home runs, or he has to walk batters because they won’t chase. This problem is not easily fixable, especially mid-season, and his diminished slider performance has me more concerned than I am encouraged by the increased strikeout rate with his fastball.

Verdict:

Taillon was once an extremely talented and promising pitcher, but he has had some of the most brutal injury luck of any player over the course of his career. He isn’t close to bottoming out like Matt Harvey, and I wouldn’t want to write him off for good, but I don’t think he’ll regain the 2018 form that had him looking like a top-20 starter anytime soon. I could see him following a career path similar to Garrett Richards or Steven Matz, two pitchers with immense talent who’ve been hindered by injuries, but still fantasy viable in the right context or situation. Hopefully, with time and adjustments, he can be a notch above those guys, but for now he's in that camp. His next start is 6/29 against the Angels and I wouldn’t touch him against a team with such strong lefties like Shohei Ohtani and Jared Walsh. His start after that is more enticing, pitching at home against the Mets, a team with a 93 wRC+ and .139 ISO versus right-handed pitching.

Tony Santillan, Cincinnati Reds

5% Rostered

2021 Stats (AAA): 32.1 IP, 2.51 ERA, 3.72 FIP, 3.75 K/BB ratio

06/24 vs. ATL: 6 IP, 3 H, 1 ER, 3 BB, 8 K

Santillan was thrust into a starting role thanks to mounting injuries in Cincinnati’s rotation. He put up the best start of his young career on Thursday, striking out eight batters for his first big league win and quality start. A middling prospect in the Reds’ system coming into 2021, Santillan was posting monster strikeout numbers at Triple-A before his promotion, with a 34.4% K rate. He showed some of that strikeout upside last week, but can Santillan sustain such high strikeout numbers over a longer period of time? Can he earn a permanent spot in the Reds’ rotation? Let’s put him under the microscope for a closer look.

Santillan was the Reds’ ninth-ranked prospect by MLB pipeline coming into 2021. The bad news is the Reds have a relatively weak farm system, especially for pitching sans Hunter Greene. A second round pick out of high school back in 2015, Santillan has been a slow adapter as a professional. Based on his minor league numbers, he’s had some ups-and-downs as he’s progressed through the system, but things were really coming together for him at Triple-A before coming to the majors. One thing that’s helped Santillan’s progression is his fastball velocity increase. He has gone from a low 90s fastball to averaging between 94-95 MPH with the heat, sometimes touching 97 MPH. He pairs that four-seamer with an above average slider that’s been the source of his strikeouts this season, and the occasional show-me changeup he’ll use primarily against left-handed batters.

When it comes to strikeouts, Santillan is going to live and die by the slider. He diced up the Braves with the pitch on Thursday, netting 13 whiffs on 19 swings for a monster 68% whiff rate.  Santillan leaned heavily on the offering in this start, throwing it 46% of the time, more than any other pitch. Though it’s a limited sample size, the pitch has been significantly above league average in terms of break and vertical movement. Pitch movement is one of the few things in baseball that can be somewhat trusted in small samples since it’s a measure of physical ability and not influenced by the randomness of outcomes. It’s kind of like sprint speed in that way. We can tell after a few recordings that Albert Pujols is slow. He isn’t going to pop off a random 30.0 ft/s sprint down the baseline because he isn’t capable of that. A player isn’t going to perform significantly outside their physical limits unless there’s an external factor such as injury or weather. The pitch has measured well and performed well and it looks darn good in action. Here are few examples from this start.

That’s a big league pitch, and a weapon like that should at least ensure Santillan can maintain some level of success in the majors, whether it be as a starter or a reliever. Of course, we’re interested in him as a starter. If nothing else, his slider should ensure an above average strikeout rate for Santillan as a starter.

Outside of the slider, his game is a little less impressive. His fastball velocity is above average at 94.3 MPH, but his 2099 RPM spin rate is below average and would lead to his fastball playing below its actual velocity due to poor movement and deception. In fact, Santillan’s fastball has been punished by big league hitters for a .345 AVG and .791 SLG thus far, including a monstrous 442-foot home run by Freddie Freeman on the first pitch Freeman saw. It’s true that some pitchers can get away with a low-spin fastball, but those pitchers usually have deeper repertoires or another outstanding skill to help make up for this shortcoming, or they just flat out stink. If one were to go to the baseball savant leaderboards and check out the pitchers with the a four-seam fastball spin rate below 2100, it’s not a pretty list of names outside of a few outliers. Unless he can get his hands on some sticky stuff, Santillan’s spin rate probably isn’t going up, so he’s going to have to survive with this fastball in its current state. It’s doable, but he needs to be on point in every other aspect of his game, something that’s difficult for any pitcher, but especially a rookie.

Of course, an iffy fastball isn’t the only issue for Santillan. The youngster often has trouble finding the strike zone. He has issued eight free passes in just 13.2 major league innings thus far. He also had a 9.2% walk rate at Triple-A before his promotion and an 11.6% walk rate at Double-A in 2019 over 102.1 innings. This is another common problem for two-pitch pitchers like Santillan. His slider is good, but if that's all he’s throwing, hitters will often freeze at the plate and hope he issues a walk, hence the high walk rate thus far. Santillan could probably sustain a walk rate below 10%, but I’m not sure how much below it can be given his current approach.

Verdict:

Santillan has an impressive slider, which gives him strong strikeout upside. The rest of his game needs work, and if he can’t develop a third pitch, he may be destined for the bullpen someday. His fastball velocity is solid, but a low spin rate affects its perceived velocity and will make it more hittable than the typical 94 MPH fastball. He is streamable in deep leagues if you need to roll the dice on a highly available player with big strikeout potential, but he’s too risky for most standard leagues.

Kyle Muller, Atlanta Braves

8% Rostered

2021 Stats (AAA): 31.1 IP, 4.60 ERA, 5.16 FIP, 2.16 K/BB ratio

06/27 @ CIN: 5 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 2 BB, 9 K

The Braves can’t stop churning out young, interesting starters in 2021. First, Huascar Ynoa garnered plenty of attention in April, and Tucker Davidson put up zeroes in early June. Now Kyle Muller managed to fan nine Reds on Sunday. Unfortunately, the reason the Braves have used so many young pitchers is because they keep going down with injuries. Hopefully, the same fate doesn’t befall Muller, though abstaining from wall-punching may be half the battle if Ynoa’s injury in any indication. With Davidson out for an extended period and Ynoa just beginning a throwing program, Muller has the opportunity to hang onto a rotation spot. Can he pitch well enough to do it?

Muller is the fifth-ranked prospect in Atlanta’s system, but is the highest-ranked pitching prospect in the system, slightly ahead of Tucker Davidson. A second round pick out of high school in 2016, the left-hander is know for his imposing size. Listed at 6’7” and 250 pounds, Muller has the fastball velocity to match his size, averaging between 94-95 MPH with his fastball. In addition to the fastball, Muller sports two breaking balls, a slider and a curveball, and throws the rare changeup against right-handed batters.

Muller has something most pitchers would kill for, which is two effective strikeout breaking balls. He had 16 total swinging strikes in this start, notching six whiffs with the slider and five with the curveball. Interestingly, Muller added the slider at the alternate site last season and it’s already looking like his best pitch. It’s a hard, sweeping slider that is especially effective against left-handed batters. Here’s an example of one of his sliders from this start.

He fooled a man old enough to be his father (okay, not really, but Joey Votto is still a fossil). With above average break, this is a pitch that should be able to generate whiffs regularly. Since he just added the pitch in 2020, it would help explain his jump in strikeout rate at the minor league level this season. Muller had a 28.9% K rate before his promotion, a career-high at all levels. Being able to pair that slider with an above average curveball is what makes Muller a truly dangerous strikeout pitcher. Both offerings have solid movement, meaning he could sustain a high strikeout rate over a longer period of time.

Like Tony Santillan, Muller has big fastball velocity. He averages mid-90s on the heater and can touch the high-90s when he maxes out. Unlike Santillan, Muller has an excellent spin rate with his fastball. He’s averaged 2467 RPM in the majors, which would put him in the top-20 among qualified pitchers if he’d thrown enough pitches to qualify. Hitters have struggled against the pitch as well, with a .267 AVG and .333 SLG thus far, and the expected stats are even better at .215 xBA and .265 xSLG. Of course, the sample size is too small to fully buy into those numbers. As mentioned earlier in this piece, you can’t fake velocity and spin rate and Muller grades well in both measurables.

Muller has another similarity with Santillan, and this one isn’t as favorable. They both have struggled with control over the course of their careers. Muller had a 13.4% walk rate prior to his promotion, and had a horrendous 14.5% walk rate in 2019 at Double-A. It doesn’t look like he’ll have the same inability to get hitters to chase like Santillan and Taillon have suffered with, it’s just that Muller struggles to get his pitches where he wants them. That’s not an uncommon issue in bigger pitchers who can have trouble repeating mechanics. As such an inexperienced pitcher, he might have days where he simply doesn’t have it and walks four or five batters in a start. However, he will also have days like Sunday where he fans nine and shuts down his opponent entirely.

Verdict:

It has only been two starts, but Muller looks like he might be something special. He has a complete repertoire with three plus offerings in the fastball, slider, and curveball, which should allow him to maintain a solid strikeout rate as a starter. He will struggle with control at times, and may run a high WHIP and be prone to disaster starts at times. Still, there’s enough here that he’s worth adding in 14-team leagues or deeper, and shallow league players should at least keep his name in mind as someone to monitor. Based on the current schedule, his final two starts before the All-Star break should come against the Marlins, making him a solid streaming option heading into the break.

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