2019 Breakout Starters Who’ll Continue to Improve

July 3, 2020

David Emerick explores three breakout starters from last season who could be risers and undervalued draft targets in 2020 fantasy baseball leagues.

Breakout starters are one of the great joys of fantasy baseball. There are few things more satisfying than adding or drafting a player who emerges as one of the season’s best values.

Starting pitchers are particularly prone to come out of nowhere and propel a team to a championship. However, that volatility makes it difficult to judge whether a breakout star will regress, repeat, or continue their growth.

Here are three starting pitchers whom fantasy managers can target to pick up where they left off in 2019.

Eduardo Rodriguez, Boston Red Sox

Prior to 2019, Rodriguez had never pitched more than 137 innings in a year, never exceeded 150 strikeouts, and never managed to stay healthy for an entire MLB season. In his fifth season, E-Rod accumulated 203 IP, providing 19 wins, 16 quality starts, 213 Ks, and a 3.81 ERA.

On a per-start basis, Rodriguez’s 2019 looks like the healthy version of his 2018 season, actually worse on certain levels. If we were only judging by results, that would be the end of it, but the underlying stats and approach suggest that Rodriguez took another step forward in 2019.

Last season, Rodriguez threw his slider less often and at a lower velocity, but the pitch gave up fewer barrels. His fastball was a half tick slower, but he used it to get more whiffs than ever before. Finally, Rodriguez developed his sinker as a tool against hitters when he was ahead in the count. The righty used the pitch 25% of the time when he had two strikes on a hitter, and in 2019, hitters produced a pitiful .046 ISO and .205 BA against it. Over the last two seasons, Rodriguez’s sinker has evolved to better emulate his fastball, thereby adding a level of deception that he lacked prior to 2018.

So why are we expecting an improved 2020 from him? For starters, Rodriguez’s weakness had always been his ability to stay healthy over an entire season. He’s not likely to see as many innings, and 2019 suggests that he may finally have gotten healthy or have found a way to stay healthy as an MLB pitcher. Additionally, the changes above crystallized throughout the 2019 season, and Rodriguez posted a 2.95 ERA in the second half. Of course, we’d like to see more of a track record, but if he had that type of history, he’d be going 50 picks earlier alongside Jose Berrios.

Aaron Civale, Cleveland Indians

Civale has shown up in many places as a player who could outperform his draft slot. However, I think we need to take it a step further and be clear that while Civale probably won’t improve on his ratio stats, he should be more valuable in 2020 than he was in 2019.

Civale’s 3.36 xERA and a .278 xwOBA made him a StatCast darling. The simple story of those numbers is that Civale controls hard contact. In 57.2 innings with 164 batted ball events, Civale allowed just four barrels, giving him a 2.4% barrel rate, which was better than every other starting pitcher with at least 150 BBE.

Beyond Civale’s ability to prevent hitters from making good contact, he also pitches for Cleveland, which carries two distinct advantages. First, the Indians organization has shown the ability to develop pitchers and cultivate their repertoires. Civale’s situation in Cleveland is a more inspiring context than most other teams. Secondly, Civale pitches in the central, so he’ll have the advantage of pitching against the worst hitting of the three regions for 2020.

Owners should feel confident reaching for Civale ahead of his current draft slot at 239. Let’s not oversell him, but it’s hard to understand how Civale is being selected after pitchers like Jon Gray and Dakota Hudson.

Matthew Boyd, Detroit Tigers

Apparently, there are some owners who are still spooked by Boyd’s struggles in August and September. OK, it could also be related to the fact that he plays for Detroit. Regardless, Matthew Boyd did most of what he needed to do to win our respect last season.

From 2015 to 2018, the big lefty had a 19.9% strikeout rate. In 2019, that spiked to 30.2%, and his K-BB% improved to 23.9%. That was eighth-best among pitchers with at least 150 IP. Similarly, Boyd’s xFIP (3.88), SIERA (3.61), and xERA (3.86) suggest that we’ll see him dramatically outperform his 2019 ERA (4.56).

Using his slider more than ever, Boyd punished hitters by inducing more swings outside the zone (34.7% O-Swing) and more whiffs (14.0%). That latter number suggests that we might see some regression in his strikeouts. However, that’s why Boyd is such a compelling target for later in drafts: even if his peripherals regress from 2019, he could emerge as a quality SP3 for fantasy teams. Remember Boyd’s 23.9 K-BB%? It was better than Yu Darvish’s 23.7%, Stephen Strasburg’s 23.2%, and Charlie Morton’s 23.2%. By comparison, Boyd is available 100 picks later than any one of those three. While he’s not going to rack up the wins this year, it’s unlikely that we’re going to see many 7 or 8 game winners (the 2020 equivalent of a 20-game winner). The simple reality is that Boyd should still provide strong strikeouts, a 3.80 ERA, and enough wins to be a serious asset this season.

Honorable Mention

Brandon Woodruff, Milwaukee Brewers: I would like to announce my candidacy for the Brandon Woodruff fantasy fan club. The only reason he’s not listed above is that I’m concerned that some natural strikeout regression might mitigate his value. Despite that very very very modest concern, Woodruff could leverage his velocity and improved control into a top-10 performance this season. Woodruff's underlying statistics and fantasy numbers were already quite good for 2019. Go deeper and you can see that as the season progressed, he gained velocity and forced hitters to chase more and more pitches outside the zone. Plus, Woodruff also has the advantage of pitching in the central this season.

Frankie Montas, Oakland A's: Buy Montas’ improvement. He’s being valued alongside pitchers with just as many warts and who are further removed from the type of success Montas demonstrated last year. The changes in Montas' pitch mix and approach won't rely on the PED enhancement.

Joe Musgrove, Pittsburgh Pirates: I’m not sure if Joe Musgrove broke out or not. Some of the stats suggest that he did, and some aspects make Musgrove look like a poor man's Matthew Boyd. However, we never got to see stretches where Musgrove put it all together in the same way that Boyd did. He’s an interesting late-round flyer, and he should outperform his 2019 numbers especially now that Pittsburgh finally has a new regime.

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