Tanner Houck: 2022 Fantasy Baseball Sleeper

There are a lot of different ways the 2022 season could go for Boston Red Sox pitcher Tanner Houck. In a best-case scenario, the 25-year-old would pick up where he left off last year and stick in the rotation throughout the season. If that indeed ends up being the case, he’s going to be a steal at his current ADP of around 200.

However, the worst-case scenario is that the right-hander barely sniffs the rotation and mostly works in long relief throughout the year.

Most likely, he’s going to fall somewhere in between those two scenarios. And in today’s article, I’ll give an overview of why I believe his outcome – barring injuries – will be closer to the best-case scenario.

2021 Recap

The Red Sox inundated Houck with a busy travel schedule last season. He started the year in the majors, then went on to fluctuate between the Red Sox, the team’s alternate site, and Triple-A throughout the year.

While the constant string of transactions may have been frustrating for Houck, he sure didn’t let the roster moves affect his performance while he was on the mound in the majors.

Houck made a total of 18 appearances with the Red Sox last season, pitching a total of 69 innings. He made 13 starts and his other five appearances came in relief. Over his 18 appearances, he pitched to a 3.52 ERA and 1.13 WHIP. He averaged 11.3 K/9 and had a 30.5% strikeout rate, a mark that ranked him in the 87^th percentile. He didn’t go very deep into his starts and the Red Sox didn’t provide him with much run support either, so he wound up with an ugly 1-5 record despite his strong pitching.

Here is a strikeout reel from one of his more dominant outings of the year, which came against the Yankees on July 22. He pitched 4 2/3 innings and gave up two hits, two walks, and one unearned run while striking out eight.

Tanner Houck is good. pic.twitter.com/ZjGn5cVRkf

— Section 10 Podcast (@Section10Pod) July 23, 2021

A Statcast Dream

So yes, Houck had some impressive and encouraging surface numbers in the majors last year. But it’s his underlying metrics that have fantasy pundits especially excited for what’s to come.

As seen below, Houck had a red-infused Statcast page last season, highlighted by his aforementioned strikeout rate as well as his 85^th percentile xERA (3.20), his 85^th percentile xwOBA (.277), and his 83^rd percentile xSLG (.337).

Houck’s ability to limit hard contact (35.1% hard-hit rate, 87.2 mph average exit velocity) while inducing a ton of strikeouts helped lead to his impressive expected stats last year. He did a fantastic job of keeping the ball on the ground and in the yard in 2021. He had a 48.2% ground ball rate that was paired with a minuscule 7.4% HR/FB rate.

Houck’s first big league experience came in 2020 and while the sample size wasn’t very big (17 innings), he had a great deal of success. And that success helps support the validity of his 2021 performance. Through 17 innings in 2020, which came over three starts, he went 3-0 with a 0.53 ERA, a 0.88 WHIP, and a 33.3% strikeout rate. He held batters to a 34.4% hard-hit rate and he had an xBA of .186.

So overall, across two fractioned years of big-league experience, Houck has thrown 86 innings while pitching to a 2.93 ERA and a 1.081 WHIP. He’s averaged 11.3 K/9 with a 31% strikeout rate over that stretch.

Pitch Mix

Houck has two plus-pitches that he leaned on heavily last year.

His four-seam fastball, which he threw 38.6% of the time, had an average velocity of 94.5 mph. He threw the pitch a total of 443 times last year and yielded just four extra-base hits (two doubles, one triple, and one home run). Opposing batters hit .257 against the pitch, but they slugged just .321.

Houck’s most lethal pitch last year was his second-most used pitch, his slider. He threw the pitch 37.1% of the time and just completely dominated batters with it. He yielded a .159 batting average with an xBA of .144 as well as a .232 slugging percentage and a .190 xSLG. The pitch generated a whopping 42.4% whiff rate.

After those two pitches, Houck mixed in a sinker 17% of the time. He had some great movement on the pitch as it averaged 32.4 inches of vertical drop, which was 9.3 inches more than league average. However, batters hit .313 and slugged .458 against the pitch.

One pitch that could really help elevate Houck’s arsenal is his splitter. He threw the pitch just 85 times last year and 73 of those pitches came against lefties. Overall, batters hit just .059 against the pitch and it generated a 36.8% whiff rate.

Over an interview with the WEEI Live BP podcast in January, Houck discussed the strides he made on his splitter last year. He said that prior to last year, he hadn’t differentiated it enough from his fastball, but once he started to throw it at a different speed, he was happy with the results. He said, “The biggest thing before was not having a true secondary off-speed pitch that could complement the slider. I think the splitter is an incredible pitch to pair with that, especially where it was last year when I was throwing it 84-87 mph…That’s good separation in terms of velo off the fastball. It’s somewhat similar in the movement profile, but the velo was enough where they couldn’t sit on that anymore.”

If Houck can continue refining his splitter and develop it into another consistently lethal pitch, he’ll grow from being just a two-pitch pitcher. Additionally, the splitter could help him last longer in his starts. Houck struggled the third time through a lineup last year – which we’ll cover in the next section – and much of that was due to the fact that he only had two plus pitches to lean on.

Concerns

So, here’s the big one right off the bat: Houck is far from guaranteed a rotation spot at the start of the season.

A normal offseason with a regularly scheduled Spring Training would have really helped us fully evaluate Houck. He’s someone whose value could fluctuate a ton between now and the start of the season. If he were named a starter, his ADP would go flying upwards. If he were thrown into the bullpen, his ADP would plummet.

Barring injuries, the only two players who I consider to be absolute locks for the team’s Opening Day rotation are Chris Sale and Nathan Eovaldi. After that, Rich Hill and Nick Pivetta are the most likely candidates to have rotation spots. Then, we’re looking at Michael Wacha, Garrett Whitlock, Connor Seabold, and Houck.

Whitlock was predominantly a starter in the minors, but he was used exclusively as a reliever for the Red Sox last year and he pitched great with a 1.96 ERA and a 1.11 WHIP over 46 appearances. It’s likely they’ll keep him in relief. Seabold made his MLB debut in a starting role last year (allowing three hits and two earned runs over three innings) and he has started 47 games while making just six relief appearances in the minors.

Houck definitely seems more likely for a rotation spot than Whitlock or Seabold, but Wacha might be a problem. The Red Sox signed the 30-year-old veteran to a one-year deal and it seems likely a rotation spot is his to lose.

If Houck doesn’t land a rotation spot to start the year, he’s likely going to be just a hair away from joining the rotation. Either an injury to the oft-injured, soon-to-be 42-year-old Rich Hill or some erratic pitch locating from the wildly inconsistent Pivetta could do the trick.

The next concern is that Houck, if given a rotation spot, won’t be pitching very deep into games. The Red Sox kept Houck’s starts short last year and the limited sample size of data on Houck’s third time against an order suggests that they had good reason to. Houck only faced 18 total batters for the third time in a game and he allowed a .467 batting average and 1.489 OPS against those 18 batters.

If Houck is rarely ever going to go deep into the third round of a lineup, he’s going to have a lot of starts that are limited to five innings or fewer, making it much harder for him to accumulate wins.

When to Draft

It seems very likely that Houck is going to help the Red Sox a great deal this year, it’s just unclear how exactly he’s going to provide that help.

Houck has been great in his limited opportunities in the majors. If he simply continues pitching at the same level he’s been at, then he should earn at least a handful of starts and he’ll put up good ratios whether or not he’s in the rotation. That makes him a much more enticing pick for rotisserie leagues or head-to-head categories leagues, particularly deep ones that have an abundance of stats. If you’re in a league where non-closer relievers with strong ratios are highly coveted, then Houck is more attractive as you’ll have something to fall back on if he doesn’t earn a rotation spot.

As of this article’s writing, his ADP of 200 is about where he should be targeted in most standard leagues. There’s too much uncertainty to take him higher and his upside is too significant to let him fall lower.

One player who comes to mind as a pre-draft comparison for Houck is Freddy Peralta from 2021. Going into 2021 fantasy drafts, we didn’t know whether Peralta would stick in the rotation or be used in the bullpen – as he had been the previous few years. All we knew was that Peralta was an exceptional strikeout pitcher with fantastic underlying metrics. As things played out, Peralta pitched too well for the Brewers to even consider taking his rotation spot away.

There’s a chance we see the same thing happen to Houck this year. If he gets a shot at a few starts and he excels, he may force the Red Sox’s hand and cement his rotation spot for the full extent of the 2022 season.

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