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.

Despite two years in a row of sub-3.20 ERAs and his high prospect ranking I’m still not buying Julio Teheran. I have a hard time trusting pitchers who are fly ball pitchers and have had good luck on their side. By good luck I mean he’s had below average BABIPS, HR/FB rates and LOB%’s in the last two seasons, which has led to his ERAs to be far above his respective FIPs and xFIPs.

Mark Bowman at MLB.com wrote how the slider emerged in 2014, but the stats don’t support it (table below).

The fact he’s a low walk and fly ball pitcher works really well for his home ballpark so I shouldn’t have a bias about Teheran’s ability to continue to repeat the numbers he put up the past two seasons. The most recent case of a pitcher with a similar profile as Teheran is Jeremy Hellickson. Hellickson, is a fly ball pitcher, had extremely good BABIPs, HR/FB rates and LOB%s from 2011-12. He defied the odds by consistently putting up ERAs below his FIP and xFIP. However, in 2013 his good luck ran out.

Teheran is a better pitcher than Hellickson. First and most importantly, Teheran misses way more bats because his stuff is much better. However, they still both rely on generating weak contact in order to get outs and for me, that’s not a profile I want to pay top dollar for.

It’s important how the offense was inept last year and how it’s going to continue next year. In eight losses of his losses last season, the Braves scored a total of nine runs and were shutout three times. As of late December I have serious questions of the Braves offense will score runs. Last year they were 27^th in the majors in wOBA and 29^th in runs scored. Now they lost Justin Upton and Tommy LaStella and replaced them with Nick Markakis and Alberto Callaspo. At the very least I don’t think the offense is going to be even better so it’s possible Teheran will struggle to earn wins.

My 2015 projection for Teheran is 210 IP, 3.40 ERA, 1.12 WHIP, 170 Ks and 12 wins.