Fantasy Baseball Today - Will These Four Pitchers Bounce Back in 2025? (Fantasy Baseball Today in 5 podcast)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Will these pitchers bounce back next season? Find out next on Fantasy Baseball today in five. Welcome into FBT and 5 on Saturday, December 7th. I am Frank Sample, joined by Chris Towers. Let's take a look at a handful of bounce back candidates for starting pitcher. And first up is Luis Castillo, who had an ADP of 32 last season. That's all the way down to 76. We know, Chris, the innings are starting to add up here.

Starting point is 00:00:26 The velocity has dropped. The strikeout rate has dropped. what chance do you give Luis Castillo of bouncing back next season? I'm not super optimistic. And there are two reasons why I'm not super optimistic. One is just the Mariners are probably going to trade a starting pitcher. Luis Castillo is the most expensive that they're starting pitchers. And I'm sure they would love to move him before the decline phase really kicks into high gear.

Starting point is 00:00:52 And as with everyone on that staff, he really benefited from pitching at T-Mobile Park. 315 ERA, 27.4% strikeout rate at home last season. 425 ERA, 20.7% strikeout rate on the road for Luis Castia. So that's the big one. If he gets traded away from Seattle, I think the bottom could fall out for him as a must-start fantasy option. But even then, I just look at a guy who, I think he's going to be 32, 33, turns 32 next week. excuse me. He lost a lot of effectiveness with his four seam fastball last year. Philosophy down a little bit, you know, about a half mile per hour, maybe a little more.

Starting point is 00:01:36 But the whiff rate went from 33%, which was better than all but three relievers last in in 2023, dropped to 27%, which was still good. It was like 30th among qualifiers last year. It's a good mark for forcing fastball. But when you don't have the rest of the rest of that, to the arsenal. He doesn't have the change up that he used to have in his Cincinnati days that was such a good whiff pitch for him. It just makes it he's so dependent on that four-seem fastball for strikeouts that any loss like he had last year really adds up. And I think

Starting point is 00:02:10 that's what we saw. And look, it's possible that he gets back to it. Maybe he wasn't, maybe he was pitching through something. I don't know. But like I said, a 32-year-old whose best pitch lost effectiveness last season, it's not typically something you see. guys get back. So I'm not really super optimistic about Luis Castillo in 2025. What about Pablo Lopez who had an ADP of 40 last year that's all the way down to 63? So we're getting two rounds worth of value. He finished his season with a 408 ERA that was his highest since 2019. Chris, do you think Pablo Lopez will bounce back next season? I do worry that Pablo Lopez might just be one of these like Aranola types who's just

Starting point is 00:02:51 struggles with inconsistency, struggles with kind of an infancy. inflated ERA and you just have to live with it. You have to understand that when you're building your staff, Pablo Lopez might be more of a floor play. He might be more of a stabilizer than a ceiling razor, right? He might be someone who you can go three years in a row of 180 plus innings. You can go out there and bet on him for that. You can bet on him for 200 plus strikeouts or 200-ish strikeouts.

Starting point is 00:03:19 Decent whip, decent ERA, but you're going to have to get help there elsewhere. He's the kind of pitcher that you add as like your number two starter gives you the flexibility to get some more questionable guys later on who are going to have strikeout upside who have ERA upside but aren't as bankable. That might just be who Pablo Lopez is. Maybe he's not a three ERA guy. Maybe you think more like three six.

Starting point is 00:03:43 So as far as, yeah, I expect him to be better than the 408 ERA he had last season. But do I expect Pablo Lopez to be the ace we hoped he could be? probably not. What about Kevin Gosman, who's ADP this time last year was 37, and now it's all the way down to 151. We know that he dealt with that shoulder injury

Starting point is 00:04:04 right before the season started last year. The velocity came down a little bit. The strikeout rate came down a huge amount. Chris, any chance that Kevin Gosman could get back on track? I think it's possible. You know, you have the shoulder injury at the end of spring training as a complicating factor that could explain why he just wasn't as good.

Starting point is 00:04:26 Even though he did stay healthy, made 31 starts through 181 innings. Maybe he was just at 90% the whole time. He was able to pitch through it. But you saw the arm slot drop. Maybe that's compensating for the injury. Velocity dropped, again, about half a half a mile per hour. Maybe that's a result of the shoulder injury. So I think you can look at and say, hey, if Kevin Gosman gets through spring training,

Starting point is 00:04:49 maybe there's some bounce back potential. spoiler alert i'm not ranking him inside of my top 200 overall i'm not ranking him inside of my top 60 starting pitchers for 20 25 i am pretty much out on kevin gosman and the big thing is just he lowered that arm slot and for a guy like he got to pitch north south he has to have that basketball up in the zone he needs the slider at the bottom of the zone he needs whiffs on the slider still got a decent amount it was like a 33% whiff rate that was like 43% in 20203 and this is a 34-year-old on opening day. So older than Luis Castillo, it's just, it's possible he bounces back.

Starting point is 00:05:29 It's not a bet I want to make. I know you said slider for Gosman. Of course, you met the splitter there, but yes. His signature splitter, yes. Yes, that is, that pitch has lost. It's effective for sure. What about Zach Allen? The ADP is 40, last year was 43.

Starting point is 00:05:43 It's all the way down to 115. And the walk rate was up this year. The ERA, the whip were both kind of inflated. entering a contract year here with the debacks, Chris, do you think Zach Gallen could get back to, you know, 2023 for him? Just kind of lower those ratios a little bit across the board. I might be a little more optimistic about Gallen than the other guys here

Starting point is 00:06:05 just because you look at the splits, right? And then the first half of the season, the RA was inflated. He actually lowered the IRA in the second half. But what went wrong for him in the second half, walk rate went way up. He had 21 walks and 76 innings before. for the All-Star break, 33 and 71 innings afterwards.

Starting point is 00:06:23 His whip went up to 132. I think he was lucky to see his ERA go down as a result of that. And that was mostly he came back from this hamstring injury. And it was just a really weird like couple of months when he came back from it. He had a stretch where he couldn't get whiffs with anything but his fastball, but his fastball was really good. He had a stretch where he couldn't throw strikes at all, which has never been an issue for him.

Starting point is 00:06:47 That was such an outlier for Gass. and he threw so many innings in 2023, I think was 240. So actually dialing back that workload, I think is a good thing in 2024 for its 2025 value. I do think we'll see the strikeout rate remain in that 25 to 26 percent range. I would bet on the walk rate getting back down to like the 6 percent range where it had been before 2024. And I do think something like mid three ZRA, good whip, good volume. I think that's a reasonable expectation for Gallen. I'm certainly not ranking him as high as I did last year,

Starting point is 00:07:24 but I'm okay drafting him. If I can get him as my number three, that feels really, really nice. Yeah, I actually just did an NFBC draft where I got George Kirby, Dylan Seas, and then I think I got Zach Allen in round nine as my SP3. I like that combo a lot.

Starting point is 00:07:39 Yeah, and I feel pretty good about that. For more extensive fantasy baseball coverage, listen to the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or anywhere else podcasts are found. Thanks for listening to Fantasy Baseball today in 5, and we will be back again next week. Bye-bye. Mount Podcasts.

Fantasy Baseball Today - Will These Four Pitchers Bounce Back in 2025? (Fantasy Baseball Today in 5 podcast)

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