Although Valdez has shown #2 SP upside in fantasy for a couple of stretches – most recently during the second half of the 2023 campaign – his track record otherwise suggests that he is a mid-rotation arm.
Framber Valdez entered the 2023 campaign on the heels of a few effective seasons. It was arguably his strongest full season in the majors as he posted a 3.45 ERA, 9.1 K/9, 2.6 BB/9, and 3.39 xFIP, with the strikeout and walk rates his best in a full season of action. The improved control is encouraging, but there’s reason to wonder whether the sinkerballer will again be able to post a K/9 north of 9.
Valdez has a track record of success in the majors dating back to the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. That year, the southpaw logged a 3.57 ERA, 9.7 K/9, 2 BB/9, and 2.94 xFIP across 70.2 innings of work. With a groundball-oriented approach (60% groundball rate) and a modest 10% swinging-strike rate, there was reason to wonder whether he could replicate the strikeout rate. His walk rate, too, was a vast departure of the 5.6-plus that he posted in limited action in the show in 2018 and 2019. And then there was the hard contact rate, which came in at an above-average 38%. Was the step forward legitimate or was his performance a mirage of the abbreviated season?
His body of work in 2021 offered no definitive answers as the results were a mixed bag. Valdez missed the first few weeks of the season as he recovered from a fractured ring finger on his left (throwing) hand suffered while fielding a comebacker during spring training. In 22 starts after he made his season debut, Valdez posted a nice 3.14 ERA, but that came with an 8.4 K/9, 3.9 BB/9, and 3.58 xFIP in 134.2 IP. He excelled at inducing grounders (70%) while trimming his contact rate from 77% to just under 76% and, more importantly, slashed the opposition’s hard-hit rate from 38% to 31%. The swinging-strike rate, though, remained meh at 10%. With regression in both the strikeout and walk departments, there was little reason to be high on Valdez entering the 2022 season.
And yet he took a step forward that year. Across 201.2 IP (31 starts), the lefty recorded a career-best 2.82 ERA to go with a slightly better 8.7 K/9, an improved (but still not great) BB/9 of 3, and a 2.99 xFIP. He continued to induce lots of grounders (67%) while maintaining a 76% contact rate and trimming the hard-contact rate to just 30%. Encouragingly, his swinging-strike rate came in at just over 11%. The improved control and strikeout ability were both positive developments, even if neither rate was stellar. His average sinker velocity did come in at nearly 94mph after sitting at 92.5mph the year before at a shade over 93 in 2020. There was a slight change in his repertoire as Valdez introduced a slider that he deployed about 10.5% of the time. Despite the stellar ERA, though, the peripherals did not indicate a fantasy star in the making.
In 2023, then, Valdez impressed with that 9.1 K/9 and 2.6 BB/9, even if his ERA did slide to 3.45 and xFIP to 3.39. The sinkerballer’s groundball rate dipped quite a bit to 54%, easily a career low as Valdez surrendered a career-high 25% flyball rate (his previous high was 19.5% back in 2020). His contact rate slightly dipped to just over 75% while his swinging-strike rate was a career-best 11.5%. A bit of a red flag is the fact that his hard-hit rate climbed to over 37% after coming in at 30-31% the previous two seasons. Although his repertoire remained much the same in 2023 that it was in 2022, Valdez did throw his sinker 47% of the time – his lowest since 2019 – while deploying his changeup a career-high 15% of the time. His average sinker velocity came in at a career-high 95mph.
There was, concerningly, significant drop-off in key areas for Valdez as the season progressed. In 111 IP before the All-Star break, he logged a 2.51 ERA, 9.4 K/9, 2.1 BB/9, and 3.00 xFIP. In 87 IP after the break, he posted a 4.66 ERA, 8.7 K/9, 3.2 BB/9, and 3.87 xFIP. His groundball rate also dipped from 55% to 53% while his flyball rate climbed from under 24% to nearly 28%; those are still certainly not terrible figures for a sinkerballer, but they do not pair well with a 37% hard-hit rate (across both halves of the campaign).
Despite flashing fantasy #2 potential in the pandemic-shortened
2020 season and during the first half of the 2023 campaign, Valdez’s track
record otherwise indicates that he’s a mid-rotation SP for fantasy. Fantasy
owners would therefore do well to not overpay for him on draft day in 2024.
Comments
Post a Comment