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With six starts under their belts in the 2022 season, Kevin Gausman of the Toronto Blue Jays and Carlos Rodon of the San Francisco Giants have looked like the two best pitchers in baseball and thrust themselves onto the shortlist for the Cy Young Award in their respective leagues.
Despite having excellent 2021 seasons, both pitchers found themselves on new teams in 2022. Gausman left San Francisco in free agency and signed a fat five-year contract worth 110 million. The Jays had to replace Robbie Ray, who won the AL Cy Young, and Steven Matz who both got lucrative deals elsewhere. Meanwhile, Rodon wasn't offered a new deal by the White Sox despite a very productive 2021 season and then ended up signing a deal worth 20+ million a year for two years with the Giants.
So oddly enough, these two dominant pitchers' fates have been intertwined as the departure of Gausman from San Francisco actually led to the arrival of Rodon (and Alex Cobb, who has looked great and is also a splitter pitcher like Gausman, but that's another article for another day). These two pitchers are atop the pitching leaderboards in nearly every category, but I don't think their early returns are fluky by any means. I hope I can convince you to hold onto these aces if you have them because they have what it takes to keep pitching at a high level and I think both of them can turn in top-10 performances for the rest of the season.
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From Gas Can to God Tier
I don't want to spend too much time on the backstory of how Gausman turned his career around, but I think it's somewhat important to understand how he has evolved as a pitcher in order to get you to have faith that he can continue his dominance.
Gausman was a first-round pick of the Orioles back in 2012 out of LSU. At age 21 he was already a pretty polished pitcher and for that reason (and because Baltimore so badly needed pitching help) he spent very little time in the minors before debuting at the big league level in 2013. By 2016, at the age of 25, he finally put in his first full MLB season, starting 30 games and finishing 9-12 with a 3.61 ERA.
Those numbers weren't bad by any means, but this version of Gausman wasn't really anything special either. He was an average pitcher at best, sporting a 22-23% strikeout rate and he had a real problem with the long ball as he allowed an average of 27 home runs per season from 2016-to 2018. Pitching for the Orioles, he was routinely facing the Yankees and Red Sox for a large chunk of starts and pitching half of his games at home in the extremely hitter-friendly venue of Camden Yards (before they moved the fences).
There was a time when he was with Baltimore that some of us in the DFS community even referred to him as "Kevin Gas-Can" and would routinely stack hitters against him, especially since guys like Mookie Betts and J.D. Martinez had a boatload of success against him.
Finally, in 2018, Baltimore gave up on him and shipped him to Atlanta mid-season. He lasted only a year in Atlanta before being dealt to the Reds where he finished out 2019. At the age of 29, he signed in San Francisco and began the process of remaking himself as a pitcher.
In 1.5 seasons (with 2020 being a shortened season) with the Giants, Gausman posted a 17-9 record with a 3.00 ERA, 1.06 WHIP, and 10.9 K/9. There were a few key changes to his approach that helped him make such noticeable gains across the board.
By 2019, Gausman had pretty much ditched both his slider and changeup and was throwing his splitter more than ever before (37% of the time). But you'll notice that he brought them back in 2020 with the change-up being his preferred third pitch (14%) and it allowed him to throw fewer splitters and fewer fastballs.
The downward trend in four-seamers is one of the reasons Gausman continues to get better. His fastball clocks in around 94 MPH and is his worst pitch in terms of how hard it gets hit. His splitter is his best pitch, but he can't rely on it exclusively either, especially when he throws it outside the strike zone most of the time. The splitter was one of the best pitches in baseball in 2021, with a -23 Statcast run value, a 46% whiff rate, and a .156 xBA.
Gausman's splitter has always been a good pitch, but he picked up an extra inch of vertical movement on it in 2020 and it continues to be a nasty complement to a competent, but not usually overpowering fastball.
Kevin Gausman's Unfair Splitters.
I don't know how anyone ever hits this absurd pitch. pic.twitter.com/KEcwbgCMiq
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) May 1, 2022
Gausman has shown improved command on all his pitches and it's no secret that Giants' pitching coach Andrew Bailey has had a major impact on Gausman and others in his relatively short tenure. Opposing hitters were making weaker contact and striking out more often against his retooled arsenal. And in 2021, he set career-highs in wins, innings pitched, and strikeouts. He clearly earned a big payday and rather than extend Gausman, the Giants let him walk, choosing several other reclamation projects (Alex Cobb, Jake Junis) and eventually bringing in Rodon when other teams were fearful of him for his health concerns.
Gausman 3.0?
So even if we got the 2021 version of Gausman this season, fantasy managers would likely have been happy with that level of his production for where he was being drafted. Some in the industry were concerned that a move back to the American League East was going to prove difficult for him and I think some people simply weren't sold on him being really, really good just yet since we had only a season and a half sample of the dominant version of Gausman in San Fran.
But he's been even better in Toronto and both Blue Jays fans and Gausman owners alike have to be thrilled with what they've seen from him so far this season. Through seven starts he's sporting a 2.40 ERA that is backed by a 2.51 xERA, 0.84 FIP, and 2.20 SIERA. There's simply nothing fluky about what you're getting from Gausman this season, he's the real deal.
He's striking out 30.9% of opposing hitters while walking only 1.1% of them at the same time. His 29.7% K-BB% is second only to Shane McClanahan, who is enjoying a massive breakout season of his own. I attribute a lot of his success this year to the pinpoint control of his pitches. He's getting ahead of hitters better than ever with an incredible 70.9% first-strike % and then forcing them to chase his splitter (still nastier than ever) and slider (he's ditched the change-up for increased slider usage to right-handers) out the zone.
He's burying the slider down and away from righties and giving hitters another offspeed pitch with a different spin and break than his splitter to worry about. The slider has a 25% SwStr% this year and a 32.5% CSW%. He's cut back on the changeup usage to just 4% and the increased usage and effectiveness of the slider have to be playing a big role in his success so far.
You can see from his Statcast slide that his chase rate is elite. He's getting hitters to swing at pitches out of the zone at an absurd 48.9% of the time which has been one of the real keys to his strikeout numbers. The plan is simple. Throw the fastball for strikes early in the count and then get hitters to chase the splitter or slider down out of the zone.
We saw Toronto's pitching coach Pete Walker turn Robbie Ray's career around last year and give Jose Berrios a boost. Gausman wasn't a reclamation project at all, he was already a really good pitcher. But he certainly looks like he could be a great one in 2022 and beyond. There's no reason to sell high or temper expectations here. Kevin Gausman looks like the truth and I expect him to continue dominating hitters the rest of the season like we have seen him do through the first month and a half.
King Carlos
I could talk about Kevin Gausman all day, but enough about him already. Let's talk about the king of the K, Mr. Carlos Rodon shall we? Rodon's 36.1% strikeout rate is currently third-best in the league behind McClanahan and Dylan Cease. If I had finished this article a few days sooner, he would have been near the top of the league in multiple other categories too, except that he had his worst outing of the season on Sunday when he gave up eight runs on 10 hits to the St. Louis Cardinals.
That outing blew up his ERA from under two to where it stands now at 3.49. But I'm not trying to read into one start all that much here early in the season. Nothing was really wrong in terms of his velocity and there were no signs of an injury, he just ran into a good Cardinals offense that had his number. His HardHit% slider dipped quite a bit as a result, but as you can see in his Statcast slider here, he's still doing a lot of things really well.
Rodon was one of the best stories in baseball last year when he took the American League by storm, piling up 130 strikeouts in 89 innings during the first half of the 2021 season. Rodon has always had good stuff but was in his sixth season with Chicago and had never pitched more than 165 innings, which he did all the way back in 2016 at age 23. He battled injuries on and off again for several years leading up to his 2021 breakout. He was limited to just 43 innings in the second half as the White Sox were cautious with him down the stretch and their efforts to preserve him for the postseason were all for nothing as he made just one start in the ALDS as the White Sox were bounced in the first round in four games by Houston.
Rodon still ended the season with fantastic numbers across the board, but with only 132.2 total innings pitched he didn't offer the same value as other "workhorse" pitchers to fantasy managers, or apparently to the White Sox who chose not to re-sign him.
One of the biggest keys to his rebirth in 2021 was the increase in velocity on his four-seamer. He was throwing 94 MPH as a 22-year-old when he came up but had dipped down into the 91-93 range during his injury-plagued seasons from 2017 to 2020. Then last year he averaged 95.4 on his heater and he absolutely pounded the zone with it. The extra velocity on his fastball gave him the confidence in it that he needed to increase his usage of it as it was effective at both missing bats and setting up his slider for strikeouts.
Carlos Rodón, Pause...and 97mph ?
I thought my pc froze, tbh. pic.twitter.com/RF9DKFIpeP
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) May 10, 2022
So far this season he's upped his velocity another tick to an average of 96.3 MPH and he's throwing it more than ever with a 63.6% usage. He's dropped the changeup entirely and has been working on incorporating a curveball as his third pitch. His slider has been even better this season with an increased SwStr% of 21.3% and 33.7% CSW%. His fastball and slider are good enough that he can continue to be really good with just throwing two pitches, but if he can throw the slower curveball (around 78 MPH) that has more vertical break then he could become even more unhittable.
He doesn't have the same control that Gausman does, but he has seen a modest increase in his first pitch strike % as he's up 2% to 60.6% so far this season and he's getting 5% more swings from hitters on pitches out of the zone. The velocity on his fastball allows him to get away with throwing in the heart of the zone more often and right now he's being ultra-aggressive with it in order to set up hitters for the breaking ball.
Keep Riding Rodon?
If you are someone who is risk-averse, then holding onto Rodon probably isn't the move for you. But how many risk-averse managers even drafted Rodon, right? There were lingering concerns about him coming into the season that prevented him from being drafted with other elite pitchers.
What we know is this. This version of Carlos Rodon is really, really good and is an excellent fantasy asset. What we don't know is how he will hold up for an entire season and if the increased fastball velocity is sustainable over 150 or more innings. I do think it's good, on one hand, that he's throwing the fastball more often as it's saving his arm from too many sliders. Pitchers who rely on breaking balls as their primary pitches have shown to wear down quicker over time.
If the fastball velocity does dip back into the 94 MPH range, he's going to have to be more careful with it and won't be able to challenge hitters up in the zone as often. So even though we are talking about a 29-year-old pitcher who is in his eighth season in the league, we are still in many ways in uncharted territory when it comes to Rodon.
I have optimism regarding Rodon based on the reputation that the Giants have for getting the most out of their pitchers. I mentioned earlier with Gausman and they clearly maximized his potential, but they're doing some great work with Alex Wood, Jake Junis, and Alex Cobb, too.
If you were bold enough to snag Rodon on draft day, sit back and enjoy watching him dominate! I think he can keep it going and if he is able to do so, the reward is well worth the risk. And if you want to know which match-ups to target Rodon for DFS or strikeout props, follow me @ThunderDanDFS on Twitter and I'll let you know!
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