If you like what you’re reading then you will like my 2015 Fantasy Baseball Guide! Last year’s fantasy guide was more than 150,000 words and had 440 player profiles (of hitters and pitchers). My approach to player evaluation is to ask questions about what the player has done in the past and what he may do in the future. I certainly provide a narrative on how I feel a player will perform, but I also ask a lot of open ended questions that I hope will get you thinking about the information I’ve provided.
No other pitcher had more conflicted forecasts, projections and evaluations than Alex Wood. On one hand I do not like how he throws a baseball. When I see him pitch it looks like his arm is going to blow off into the stands. I have no idea how he can throw strikes consistently because I don’t know how he’s able to consistently to throw strikes.
On the other hand he’s been extremely successful for the past two seasons. The table below shows his Major League statistics as a starting pitcher. Last year he was a top 30 starting pitcher in mixed leagues and threw 180 innings between the minors and majors last year.
| IP | ERA | WHIP | AVG | K% | BB% |
| 212.3 | 2.84 | 1.19 | .243 | 23.5% | 7.0% |
The major improvement last year was the curveball got a lot better and he was able to throw it for more strikes while missing a lot of bats. The table below shows the strikeout rate and the percentage of strikes with the curveball.
| Splits | K% | Strk% |
| 2013 | 45.5% | 50.0% |
| 2014 | 43.5% | 62.4% |
The reason why I mentioned the curveball was because coming up through the minors he was a two-pitch pitcher (fastball and changeup). The lack of a third pitch and funky mechanics suppressed his name on prospect lists coming through the minors because his profile suggested he was going to be a reliever. Since the curveball has emerged as a legitimate third pitch he now has a good chance of having another solid season as a starting pitcher.
In regards to last year’s statistics there’s no way he’s going to have an 80% strand rate again so there is going some negative regression. However, when evaluating any left handed starter I always look at the lefty-righty splits because a lot of times lefties struggle to get righties out.
| Splits | SLUG | OPS | BABIP | K% | BB% |
| LHB | .343 | .654 | .347 | 26.9% | 6.8% |
| RHB | .358 | .658 | .302 | 23.2% | 7.1% |
His numbers suggest he should be able to get righties out so the last major concern I have is how many wins will he have if he has 30 starts? Other than Craig Kimbrel I have major questions about their bullpen. Currently their seventh and eighth inning relievers are Jim Johnson and Jason Grilli. Maybe both these pitchers regress, but I do not want these pitchers pitching high leverage situations. Also, I believe the Braves offense is going to be bad; in fact they’re going to score least number of runs in the NL. Therefore, it’s going to be hard for any Braves starting pitcher to have more than 11-12 wins next year.
My 2015 projection for Wood is 190 IP, 3.40, 1.15 WHIP, 179 Ks and 11 wins.
