Tanner Houck shoved Wednesday night against the Guardians.
A complete game, three-hit shutout with nine strikeouts — and it was a Maddux to boot.
With pitching injuries mounting around the league, as they often do in the early months of the season, the premium on healthy, productive starters is alive and well. Finding a willing trade partner with excess means targeting teams that have reaped the benefits of a late-round hit like Houck.
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Through four starts, he’s done nearly everything you could have reasonably asked of thefifth starter selected from the Red Sox’s rotation by late-March ADP. How about a 1.35 ERA, 0.90 WHIP with a 28.2 K:BB in 26.2 IP?
Updated pitcher rankings from Eno Sarris are just around the corner, and a fresh set for hitters from me will be available by the end of the month. Generally, I believe we can react swiftly with pitchers. A fresh pitch mix, more velocity, new location strategies, improved offerings (validated by pitching models like Stuff+) give us more to work with than 15-20 games for a hitter.
A Houck skeptic will point to matchups against the A’s, Angels (twice), and Guardians to say that he’s making his layups with an easy stretch of schedule. While frequent matchups against the AL East will be more difficult than the first four matchups he’s drawn, Houck is currently 18th in Stuff+ with four average-or-better pitches in his arsenal — a 99 for a two-seam fastball is a whisker above average.
Just how much of a tax should you expect to pay if you decide to reach out to the team in your league that rosters Houck right now?
During Thursday’s episode of Rates & Barrels, I asked Eno if it’s fair to rank Houck similarly to Michael King, another starter with a lot of big-league experience in the bullpen, and a similar flaw — less impressive results against left-handed hitters. Since the start of 2021, Houck is tied for 53rd among 262 qualified pitchers (min. 100 IP) in K-BB% against right-handed hitters (20.3%). He’s 71st out of 131 pitchers against lefties (12.9%) during that span.
The earliest Houck was selected in an NFBC draft during the final 10 days of March was overall pick No. 244 (with an ADP that left him as starting pitcher No. 134!). King was trendy after pitching well in the Yankees’ rotation late in 2023 and he picked up more buzz after being acquired by the Padres in the Juan Soto trade. The latest King was drafted during that same span? Overall pick No. 202. By ADP, he was the 48th starting pitcher off the board, pretty firmly in the range of an SP3 or SP4 depending on league size.
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Can the value of two healthy players converge this quickly?
Think of it this way. Even if King is still generally preferred to Houck by 90% of fantasy baseball managers, the gap between them in value could be very small. In-season prices are far from perfect, and while the small sample of results can hyper-inflate the price of a player doing well (it can also do the opposite), the gap between SP40 and SP80 is often relatively small — FanGraph’s Paul Sporer has referred to this range of starting pitchers during draft season as “The Glob.”
Leverage “The Glob” to your benefit. If Houck is found money, and you can more easily complete a trade for him than pitchers who were drafted several rounds ahead of him, pay the tax. It should be easier to buy high on Houck than it is to buy low on Joe Musgrove, Tanner Bibee, or Bailey Ober. Plus, if you’re in a league where rest-of-season projections drive trade values, Houck is still buried with ERA and WHIP numbers well above his career marks (3.62 ERA, 1.19 WHIP) by all of the public-facing projection sets at FanGraphs.
I’m unsure that in-season projections move fast enough to keep up with rapidly-changing values of starting pitchers.
On a related note, if you believe that Pittsburgh rookie Jared Jones is on the brink of putting together a season like the one we saw from Spencer Strider in 2022, there is a very good chance that his hyper-inflated draft price still won’t be too high.
Three simple steps to find pitching that you may be able to trade for:
- Check the standings and hone in on the team(s) dominating the pitching categories.
- Examine the roster(s) for “found” money, biggest early-season surprises.
- Find the weakness or needs for those teams, and begin the dialogue with a fair offer.
Here’s a quick look at the topics we discussed on the show this week.
Listen to Rates & Barrels wherever you enjoy podcasts — includingSpotify,Apple Podcasts,YouTube, thead-free option within The Athletic app.
Monday
The fluidity of tough drops and holds was on full display as we had several popular starting pitchers from draft season on the chopping block from various listener leagues in our Discord.
- Michael King, Hunter Brown, Brandon Pfaadt, and DL Hall were among the players being discussed throughout the weekend on our Discord. Hall’s hold on a rotation spot for the Brewers is stronger at the moment because they are dealing with multiple injuries, but his stuff — particularly his fastball — have been very far from advertised through his first three starts. With 22 hits allowed, including four homers, through 12.2 IP, he’s an easy drop in redraft formats.
- Pfaadt is my favorite short-term option of the other three, and after a nice outing Tuesday at home against the Cubs (7 IP, 6 H, 2 ER, 6 K, 0 BB), he’s now gone at least five innings in each of his first four starts. He remains in the bucket of intriguing pitchers in need of a better approach to left-handed hitters if he’s going to turn the corner completely in 2024.
Tuesday
John Sterling’s abrupt retirement, Max Meyer’s surprising demotion to Triple-A, and the Cubs’ five-year outlook were the core topics of our weekly episode with Britt Ghiroli.
- Meyer is worth waiting for as a temporary stash in many leagues, and while the Marlins may have believed it was the best option from a group that they didn’t really want to change, I was adamant that Ryan Weathers was the better short-term choice for a demotion. Weathers proceeded to shove against the Giants in a 10-K performance as he continues to show off increased velocity and an improved arsenal in the early going. Braxton Garrett is dealing with a case of dead arm as he tries to return from a shoulder injury, and A.J. Puk’s time in the rotation may be limited if his early control woes persist — 8:14 K:BB in 10.2 IP. Shifting to a six-man rotation, or a midseason Jesús Luzardo trade could also reduce the job security concerns for the Marlins starters.
- Eno openly wondered if the Cubs have an elite position player prospect in their system. Matt Shaw’s blistering start at Double-A gives him 11 homers and 19 steals (24 attempts) over 47 professional games since he was selected with the 13th overall pick in July. The bigger question about Shaw is his eventual defensive home, but he’s hitting like a soon-to-be Top 10 prospect as promotions whittle away at some of the players ahead of him.
Thursday
The necessity of buying high on early-season pitchers, hitters potentially adding power to an already strong hit tool, and a few recent prospect callups were the focus Thursday.
- Eno’s look at Steven Kwan, Jackson Merrill and CJ Abrams as contact hitters looking to add power was very good.
- In hopes of unearthing more power on the horizon, we looked for hitters age 24 and under with a swinging-strike rate of 10% or less and Max Exit Velocities of 107+ mph. One takeaway: be patient with Colt Keith! A few others: Masyn Winn is looking good early, Anthony Volpe’s signs of a breakout are very real, and Maikel Garcia is just as interesting today as he was when you took him as a draft-season riser three-plus weeks ago.
Friday
(Update) No livestream this week, but we get started most Fridays t 1 pm ET/1o am PT on our YouTube page. Next week, Eno, Trevor May and I will discuss the most effective way to measure a pitcher’s workload, and build an optimized big-league bullpen. As always, we’ll leave time for Live Q&A!
Have a great weekend! We’re back with you Monday.
(Top photo of Tanner Houck: Eric Canha-USA TODAY Sports)
