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Veteran pitcher Zach Eflin signed a three-year contract with the Tampa Bay Rays ahead of the 2023 season. Jon Anderson takes a look at what this could mean for his fantasy baseball value in 2023.
The Rays made a minor splash on the first day of December, signing pitcher Zach Eflin to three-year deal. Eflin is far from an ace pitcher, but he has had an interesting career and has certainly had some moments. He is good enough to matter to us in the fantasy baseball world.
The signing is very interesting to us because of what the Rays have been able to do with pitchers in recent history. Here is their team ERA and league rank over the last five seasons:
| Year | Rays ERA | Lg Rank |
| 2022 | 3.41 | 4 |
| 2021 | 3.67 | 4 |
| 2020 | 3.56 | 3 |
| 2019 | 3.65 | 2 |
| 2018 | 3.74 | 6 |
You can see that there has been plenty of success on the pitching side of the ball for the Rays, and that does matter for us when a new pitcher finds his way on to this roster.
So let's take a look at Zach Eflin and try to figure out what to expect from him in 2023.
Eflin's Career Thus Far
I was a bit surprised to see that Eflin is only 28, it seems that he's been around for a long time. He will turn 29 right at the beginning of the fantasy season, but Eflin could still be considered in the "prime years". Here's what he's done since 2018 with the Phillies:
| Year | GS | IP | ERA | WHIP | K% | BB% | GB% | SwStr% |
| 2022 | 13 | 76 | 4.04 | 1.12 | 20.8% | 4.8% | 44.5% | 9.9% |
| 2021 | 18 | 106 | 4.17 | 1.25 | 22.4% | 3.6% | 43.5% | 10.2% |
| 2020 | 10 | 59 | 3.97 | 1.27 | 28.6% | 6.1% | 47.4% | 10.2% |
| 2019 | 28 | 163 | 4.13 | 1.35 | 18.3% | 6.8% | 44.4% | 9.0% |
| 2018 | 24 | 128 | 4.36 | 1.30 | 22.4% | 6.8% | 41.2% | 10.0% |
Eflin finished the season in the bullpen with the Phillies (7 appearances) last year after a mid-season injury and some time on the shelf. He has been a traditional starter for the bulk of his career, and presumedly he would have been in that role all season last year if not for the injury. What we see above is that he has been a competent Major League pitcher, but he has fallen well short of greatness in the fantasy game. The career ERA sits at 4.49 and the WHIP at 1.30. Those are not numbers you want your fantasy team spitting out, and the career strikeout rate is below average as well at 19.7% (although that number is about 21% over these last five seasons).
The Stuff
Here's what his arsenal looked like last year in his time as a starting pitcher.
| Pitch | % | SwStr% | CSW% | GB% |
| Sinker | 38.6% | 5.5% | 29.7% | 57.8% |
| Curveball | 19.7% | 2.1% | 33.5% | 32.0% |
| 4-Seam | 16.6% | 13.3% | 21.0% | 24.3% |
| Cutter | 14.8% | 9.3% | 26.1% | 20.8% |
| Changeup | 6.7% | 5.5% | 15.1% | 55.6% |
| Slider | 3.7% | 7.5% | 27.5% | 50.0% |
The sinker has long been Eflin's primary weapon, and that didn't change last year. This alone takes away almost all of the strikeout upside in his game. Sinkers are the easiest pitches for hitters to make contact with. Hitters swung and missed just 7% of the time when facing a sinker last year, the lowest of any pitch type by a good bit.
I would not imagine that Eflin will ditch his sinker or even significantly reduce its usage since that has just always been his pitch. It's possible I'm wrong about this and the Rays see something else in his pitch mix that they want to ramp up, but the best guess is 35%+ usage of the sinker once again which would keep the strikeout rate well under 25%.
He did undergo a pitch mix change in 2022 as compared to 2021. Here are the usages we saw in 2021 as compared to the 2022 marks.
| Pitch | 2022 Usage | 2021 Usage |
| Sinker | 38.6% | 41.5% |
| Curveball | 19.7% | 10.8% |
| 4-Seam | 16.6% | 12.4% |
| Cutter | 14.8% | 0.4% |
| Changeup | 6.7% | 10.8% |
| Slider | 3.7% | 24.5% |
So he pretty much ditched the slider in 2022 in favor of cutters and curveballs. That's an interesting change. It's possible that this was just the result of a tweak to the slider that turned into a cutter; those pitches are pretty similar and the differentiation is often just about how hard they're thrown.
Anyways, the cutter wasn't very good. The SwStr% was below average, the CSW% is low, and the barrel rate was really bad (12.5%). I'm not going to get into any more speculation here, but it's certainly notable that his pitch arsenal is a bit fluid here after we get past the sinker, and the Rays probably see some stuff they can work with here.
Overall, I will say it's pretty unlikely we see a K% above 23% from Eflin next year, so what does that mean? Well, it's not impossible to put together strong ratios with a low strikeout rate, here are some examples that we saw of that last year.
Best Pitchers with K% Under 23%, 2022
| Pitcher | IP | K% | ERA | WHIP |
| Alek Manoah | 197 | 22.9% | 2.24 | 0.99 |
| Tyler Anderson | 178 | 19.5% | 2.57 | 1.00 |
| Drew Rasmussen | 146 | 21.4% | 2.84 | 1.04 |
| Martin Perez | 196 | 20.6% | 2.89 | 1.26 |
| Jose Quintana | 166 | 20.2% | 2.93 | 1.21 |
| Ross Stripling | 135 | 20.7% | 3.01 | 1.02 |
| Logan Webb | 192 | 20.7% | 3.18 | 1.16 |
| Logan Gilbert | 186 | 22.7% | 3.20 | 1.18 |
| Dean Kremer | 125 | 17.0% | 3.23 | 1.25 |
| Miles Mikolas | 202 | 19.0% | 3.29 | 1.03 |
The thing that all of those pitchers have in common is a low walk rate. Eflin checks that box, posting walk rates under 7% for each of the last five years, and he's gone below 5% in the last two seasons. That's a point in his favor. A lot of the pitchers above had high ground-ball rates, which Eflin does not have despite heavy sinker usage (his curveball, four-seamer, and cutter all had very low GB%).
The Workload
Eflin's maximum innings thrown in the Majors over his career is the 163.1 we saw in 2019, and he hasn't exceeded 105 since that season. A lot of that has to do just with him not being a top pitcher for the Phillies in his career, it doesn't all have to do with him getting hurt. I don't view Eflin as one of these "injury-prone" pitchers.
While the Rays do tend to get the most out of their pitchers, they also tend to hold back on their pitch counts and innings totals (maybe these two things are related...). Rays starters averaged the fewest innings pitched per outing in the league last year
| Team | Avg SP IP | Rank |
| TB | 4.65 | 30 |
| PIT | 4.74 | 29 |
| WAS | 4.78 | 28 |
| MIN | 4.83 | 27 |
| SF | 4.83 | 26 |
| Lg Avg | 5.21 | -- |
| PHI | 5.54 | 5 |
| SD | 5.56 | 4 |
| SEA | 5.57 | 3 |
| CLE | 5.60 | 2 |
| HOU | 5.86 | 1 |
They are perennially at or near the bottom of this list. In previous years, it's been mostly because of their use of the opener, but they have been doing that less frequently over the last couple of seasons, so this number really does tell us something.
I really don't think the Rays are going to view Eflin as a guy they want six or seven innings from. They typically have reserved those opportunities for their best pitchers (Blake Snell, Charlie Morton, Shane McClanahan), while using their other arms more creatively. I would not be surprised at all to see Eflin used on one end of a "piggyback" role (when the team plans for two pitchers to cover six or seven innings rather than one). They did this plenty with Ryan Yarbrough last year, who they have recently cut from the organization.
The good news is that a three-year contract suggests they want him to throw significant innings, I don't really see Eflin not pitching every five games in some capacity. The planned rotation right now according to Roster Resource is
- Shane McClanahan
- Tyler Glasnow
- Drew Rasmussen
- Zach Eflin
- Jeffrey Springs
For right now, I don't see any other threats to enter the rotation. Yarbrough is gone, and Shane Baz won't be a factor next year after surgery. The Rays have been implicated in the Jacob deGrom discussions, but that really doesn't seem like a fit with how the Rays approach their payroll, but it is notable that they're looking to add on. It's possible that the Rays add another starter, and that wouldn't be great for Eflin's fantasy value - but it could very well just knock Springs to the bullpen instead of him, so it could be fine.
Conclusion
I'm giving you mixed signals here, I understand. Let's summarize.
The Good
- The Rays tend to get the most of their pitchers
- Eflin is still young and has had a successful career in the Majors so far
- Eflin has an arsenal that can be tinkered with, and maybe the Rays already have some ideas in mind
The Bad
- Eflin doesn't seem to have a path to a good strikeout rate, and that matters
- 170+ innings doesn't seem to be in the range of outcomes for Eflin
- A middle relief role certainly is in the range of outcomes
All things considered, I don't think Eflin is someone to draft in shallow leagues. He is well outside of my top fifty SPs, but in very deep league there is enough upside here to matter. I would say a ceiling projection would be something like 160 IP, a 3.25 ERA and a 1.15 WHIP. That's probably pretty optimistic, but we're talking about a ceiling here - and anything close to that would be more than useful in deep leagues.
That's it for the analysis on Eflin, hope it helps - thanks for reading RotoBaller!
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