Are You For Real? Surprising Pitcher Starts from Week 2

Welcome back to "Are You For Real?" - 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.

We're two weeks into the season and already numerous pitchers have emerged as potential breakout candidates to be had on the waiver wire. This week we're breaking down a pair of left-handers that put up incredible starts on Sunday in Andrew Heaney of the Dodgers and Nestor Cortes Jr., both of whom scored double digit strikeouts in their outings. We're also looking at an old favorite of fantasy managers, Carlos Carrasco of the Mets, who was dominant on Saturday against the Diamondbacks as well.

Roster percentages are taken from Yahoo and are accurate as of 4/12/22.

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Carlos Carrasco, New York Mets

63% Rostered

2021 Stats: 53.2 IP, 6.04 ER, 4.44 SIERA, 13.5% K-BB%
4/16 vs. ARI: 5 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 2 BB, 8 K

2021 looked like the beginning of the end for Carrasco, who posted a hideous 6.04 ERA in 12 starts between IL stints. At age 35 and a laundry list of injuries under his belt, many thought Carrasco was toast as a fantasy viable starter. He’s done his best to prove the critics wrong so far, as Carrasco has surrendered just one run combined through his first two starts. Carrasco will probably never return to his peak, but can the Mets’ hurler still provide production at this stage in his career?

Carrasco works primarily with a broad five-pitch mix, featuring the four-seam fastball, changeup, and slider most prominently, and utilizing the curveball and sinker less often. In his prime Carrasco averaged over 95 MPH on his heater, but these days he’s clocking in around 92.8 on the gun.  Carrasco has also begun using his fastball less frequently in favor of the slider and changeup, a strategy we’ve seen many pitchers adopt as they hit their mid-30s and their physical abilities decline. This strategy proved especially fruitful for Carrasco in his most recent outing, as his two secondary pitches did the heavy-lifting in such a dominating start.

Carrasco’s split-changeup was often revered as one of the game’s best, with it’s sharp vertical movement and low spin rate making the pitch especially deceptive. It was his go-to strikeout pitch in this one, as Carrasco notched 10 of his 17 swinging strikes with the changeup alone, good for a monster 63% whiff rate. While he’s lost something on the fastball over the years, the movement on his changeup remains consistently good even at age 35. Here’s a few examples of the pitch from this start.

That looks an awful lot like prime Carlos Carrasco to these eyes. Not only does Carrasco generate a fair amount of swing-and-miss with the pitch, it’s also a groundball machine, with career 66.4% groundball rate against and a -4-degree average launch angle against between this season and last. Carrasco’s split-changeup still looks to be a plus offering, and it’s the type of pitch that can both finish off batters and get him out of tough situations.

Along with the changeup Carrasco features a slider, which is a little softer and has more horizontal break compared to the changeup. Unlike the changeup, however, it’s fair to say that Carrasco’s slider is no longer at its peak. He’s averaged just 2365 RPM with the slider this season, whereas he was up around 2600-2700 RPM a few years ago. He’s also lost about an inch of break and two inches of drop compared to his peak. While all of that sounds bad, Carrasco’s slider is still a good offering even in a diminished state. None of us expect him to be a top-10 or even top-40 starter anymore, and for an end-of-the-bench pitcher Carrasco boasts an excellent breaking ball. He only got two whiffs with the slider against Arizona, but in his first start against Washington he generated five of his 10 whiffs with his slider.

Carrasco only used his slider 20.2% of the time last season, which was his lowest usage since 2017. Whether he was injured, didn’t have a good feel for the pitch, or was trying a different approach, I think shying away from his slider and leaning more heavily on his fastball (50.5% usage in 2021) was in part responsible for his struggles last year. Carrasco thrived in the COVID-shortened 2020 and he did it with a career-low (at the time) fastball usage of 39.3%. Carrasco is at 38.3% fastball usage through two games, and if he can live in that sub-40% range and lean on the slider and changeup, he could be a very effective pitcher, though one who will always carry injury concerns. He’s also flown a bit under-the-radar through two starts, so while everyone flocks to the young up-and-comers Carrasco could be snagged for relatively cheap and could be a pitcher that remains on your roster all season if healthy.

Verdict:

Back to his old ways? Probably not since he's no longer able to rely on his fastball for big velocity, but Carrasco still wields two strong secondary offerings and should be productive when healthy. Expect above average strikeout numbers and a sub-4 ERA, but budget in some IL stints for the 35-year-old hurler. Carrasco is someone worth adding in standard mixed leagues and deeper.

 

Andrew Heaney, Los Angeles Dodgers

56% Rostered

2021 Stats: 129.2 IP, 5.83 ERA, 3.84 SIERA, 19.5% K-BB%
4/17 vs. CIN: 6 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 3 BB, 11 K

It only took eight years, but the Andrew Heaney hype-train may finally be taking off. A former top-prospect and longtime sleeper darling of season fantasy players, Heaney hit rock bottom last season with an ERA near six and relegation to a bullpen role for the New York. He was a curious signing this offseason when the Dodgers forked over $8.5 million for him following a dreadful season between the Angels and Yankees last year, but Heaney was outstanding on Sunday, allowing just one hit while fanning 11 Reds en route to his first victory of 2022. The 11 strikeouts were also his highest total since 2019, and this was his first start without surrendering a run since May 6, 2021. Heaney’s advanced metrics such as FIP, spin rate, and K/BB ratios have often been above average, but he’s yet to really channel that talent into sustained success. With the might and wisdom of the LA Dodgers behind him, has Heaney finally made that star turn?

What’s interesting about Heaney through two starts is just how dramatically the Dodgers have shifted his approach. Heaney was a three-pitch guy, featuring a sinker, changeup, and slurve in his arsenal. The Dodgers have completely reshuffled his pitch sequencing to where Heaney only throws two pitches, a four-seam fastball, and a revamped sweeping slider. He’s thrown five changeups this year, but Heaney has shown a surprising confidence in his new slider, brazenly throwing it to left and right-handed hitters alike. With this new approach Heaney is going to live-and-die by the slider, but is the pitch good enough to carry a starter throughout an entire season?

The best way to get an idea of how different Heaney’s slider is now compared to the previous iteration is by doing a visual comparison. Here’s a few examples of the new pitch from this start.

And the old version of the pitch from 2020.

Notice that the old version of the pitch is slower and loopier, closer to a slurve or curveball than a true slider. In fact, some pitch tracking websites referred to it as a curve or as a slider, but regardless of classification it’s clear that Heaney is working with a new breaking ball. It’s been referred to as a “sweeper” by those around the team, and it’s easy to see how it earned that name. It’s got much more side-to-side movement and more bite to it than the older pitch. While it’s doubtful that Heaney can maintain the 30.7% swinging strike rate he currently has on his slider, this pitch does look like it can be a reliable strikeout weapon, more so than his old slider or changeup ever were.

While Heaney’s new slider is deservedly getting lots of attention, he’s got a solid fastball as well. His fastball was one of the reasons scouts and analysts liked him, because while his velocity isn’t anything special at roughly 92 MPH, his spin rate and ability to get whiffs with the heater are both exceptional. Heaney has consistently been between 2400-2500 RPM with his fastball, and has a career swinging strike rate of 11.5% with his four-seamer, a remarkable number for a fastball. Now that Heaney has what looks like a dominant breaking ball at his disposal, he should finally be able to harness the full potential of his heater. Together, the fastball-sweeper combo looks like something special.

As good as these two pitches have looked, there is still the issue of a third pitch. Heaney does have a changeup which he used to feature more prominently, but has only thrown five times through two starts. He likely isn’t using the pitch more often because he feels comfortable with his slider against righties, but two-pitch pitchers tend to have extreme volatility from start-to-start. Consider guys like Chris Archer or Dinelson Lamet when they were fantasy relevant starters. Sure, they’d fire gems like Heaney just did, but they’d also get knocked around quite a bit, and seemingly out of nowhere. That’s because two-pitch pitchers are A: more predictable, especially as the league sees them more-and-more, like they will with Heaney, and B: if they lose their feel for one pitch on a given night, they’ve got nothing to fall back on.

Heaney’s had home run problems throughout his career, and when he’s off, the longball could start flying. The good news for him is that he’s in best possible situation for his pitching style. Dodger Stadium and the other ballparks in the NL West (sans Coors Field of course) tend to favor pitchers, and there aren’t any truly scary lineups in his division, except maybe when the Padres are at full strength. At this early stage Heaney will be and should be added everywhere, and while I’m certainly intrigued by his new pitching style, there’s reason for skepticism. I wouldn’t be desperate to move him if Heaney was on my team, but I’d certainly send out some cheeseball offers for struggling players. Say, Heaney straight up for Trevor Rogers who was shelled on Saturday, or Heaney plus a batter for someone like Freddy Peralta or Jose Berrios. Early season is when you get the biggest overreactions and panicked managers, so it never hurts to try. Otherwise, I think he’s a good pitcher to add and just let it ride to see how far the new pitch can take him.

Verdict:

Heaney's been a sweeping success during his first two starts with the Dodgers, and the introduction of a new pitch gives us plenty of reason to believe in the beleaguered southpaw. He's still working with basically two pitches, the fastball and the slider, so expect some ups-and-downs throughout the season. I'd be wary of using him in hitter-friendly ballparks or against teams loaded with right-handed power until he proves himself a bit more. The hype machine is in full force for Heaney as well right now, so if you can spin a deal for a more established player consider doing so.

 

Nestor Cortes Jr., New York Yankees

64% Rostered

2021 Stats: 93 IP, 2.90 ERA, 3.78 SIERA, 20.9% K-BB%
4/17 @ BAL: 5 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 1 BB, 12 K

Cortes was a key fantasy contributor down the stretch last year, and he’s picked up where left off early in 2022 as well, striking out 12 Orioles over five innings on Sunday. Cortes has yet to let a run cross the plate through two starts, and the former swingman who the Yankees seemed eager to replace this offseason looks like someone who could be a fixture in their rotation all season. I’m not sure whether it’s his lack of prospect pedigree, his unorthodox delivery and pitching style, or the fact that he sort of looks like Farva from Super Troopers, but there’s been a reluctance to buy into Cortes from the fantasy community. Heck, those numbers from last year should disqualify this from being a surprising start, but Cortes is available in so many leagues that it seems that we were all sleeping on him.

To be fair, fantasy players had good reason to sleep on Cortes. Originally a 36^th-round draft pick in 2013, Cortes never had much fanfare or hype behind him. In fact, the Yankees had him in their organization twice and let him go twice before his emergence in 2021, and based on his usage in primarily low-leverage situations, it’s clear they didn’t think much of him either. It was only by necessity that Cortes even became a starter, and he shocked everyone by putting up a 3.07 ERA in 73.1 innings as a starter last season. Cortes gets it done with four pitches, working with a four-seam fastball, cutter, curveball, and the occasional changeup. It’s been all about the cutter for Cortes through his first two starts, and the pitch drove his success in this outing against Baltimore.

Cortes threw his cutter early and often in this start, using the pitch 41% of the time, a higher usage rate than his fastball. He also earned 10 of his 15 whiffs on the cutter, continuing the trend from 2021 that saw Cortes’s cutter featured as his most effective strikeout pitch. Here’s an example from this start.

With his weird arm angle Cortes really slings it towards the plate and therefore gets a good amount of break for a cutter, which increases his deception and helps generate whiffs. Even as his predominant swing-and-miss offering, Cortes’s cutter never reached these heights last season. Cortes has only reached double-digit strikeouts once before in his career, and that also occurred against the Baltimore Orioles, one of the weakest teams in baseball. Altogether, he only had a 12.8% swinging strike rate with the pitch last season, which is a fine percentage, but nothing noteworthy, especially in the fantasy realm where strikeouts are so important. It would be hard to envision him putting up big strikeout numbers against a more formidable opponent.

Speaking of opponents, Cortes has done a great job of beating up on the weaker ones throughout his young career, especially these Baltimore Orioles. Currently, he has a 3.59 ERA and 10.02 K/9 as a starting pitcher, which looks awesome on paper, but if we take out the games against Baltimore he has a much less favorable 4.10 ERA and 8.6 K/9. Those numbers are good enough for him to stick in the back-end of a major league rotation, but not quite what we’re looking for in our fantasy rotations, at least not in standard mixed leagues. He should have more opportunities to face Baltimore this year, but for now Cortes is someone fantasy managers should choose their spots carefully with at this point. Don’t rush to use him against the powerhouses of the AL East like Boston and Toronto just yet.

Outside of the cutter, which looks like a decent strikeout pitch (though much less impressive than Heaney’s slider or Carrasco’s changeup, if we’re comparing), there’s not much else to like in this profile. His fastball putters in at just 90.7 MPH on average, and his curveball has a paltry 3.9% swinging strike rate for his career. His fastball spin has been up this season through two starts, averaging 2344 RPM thus far compared to 2223 RPM last year, but that’s not enough of  a leap to buy into his early success. Cortes’s fastball is great at inducing flyballs, which can be excellent to have situationally as flyballs often lead to outs, but that’s a dangerous game to play for a right-handed Yankees pitcher. Cortes allowed 1.35 HR/9 as a starter last year, and he’d be lucky to keep a rate that low in 2022 given his flyball tendencies and home ballpark.

Verdict:

Cortes has already done more than was ever expected of him at the major league level. That being said, his stuff does not blow me away and this house of cards will likely come falling down at some point. His situation is less than ideal as well, since he's in one of the toughest ballparks for flyball pitchers and one of the most loaded offensive divisions in baseball. Of the three pitchers covered in this piece, he’s my least favorite and one I’d be shopping on the trade market if I had him. If you’re in a deep league or want to use him in the right matchups he should work as a streamer or end of the rotation piece, but you likely aren’t getting a stable arm in Cortes.

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