The 2018 MLB regular season is upon us. America’s pastime finally gets underway later this week with all 30 clubs kicking off the season on the same day.
We like to think we have a general idea of what will happen, but a lot can change over the course of the lengthy 162-game schedule. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Just because a guy gets off to a hot start in April doesn’t mean he’ll be a lock to win an MVP award once October rolls around.
MLB’s top starting pitchers can be pretty easily divided into tiers. At the top, we have the likes of Clayton Kershaw, Chris Sale, Corey Kluber and Max Scherzer. The next tier likely includes guys like Stephen Strasburg, Luis Severino, Dallas Keuchel, James Paxton and Chris Archer.
All of those guys have the chance to win a Cy Young Award this season. If they did, nobody would be surprised. They’re the odds-on favorites for a reason. That said, we’ve seen guys come out of nowhere to win the award before. Just look at Rick Porcello, who took home AL honors back in 2016. Prior to the season, nobody would’ve picked Porcello to take home the hardware.
There’s plenty of young pitching talent out there. Might one or two of them rise up and win Cy Young this season? Let’s break down a few potential sleepers.
Frankly, it’s easy to forget how good Garrett Richards is. The lanky right-hander emerged as the ace of the Angels’ staff back in 2014, but injuries have decimated his production over the last 2 years. In 2016 and 2017 combined, Richards was healthy enough to make a total of just 12 starts.
It’s a small sample size, but Richards was unsurprisingly excellent in his limited outings over the last couple of years. Richards had a 2.34 ERA across his 6 starts in 2016, and he lowered it to 2.28 in his 6 outings last season.
Richards is healthy entering 2018, so here’s hoping he can stay that way. The Angels haven’t made the official announcement as of this writing, but he’s on track to take the mound for the Halos on opening day in Oakland later this week. Richards was the opening day starter in Oakland last year, too, but he was forced to leave the game in the fifth inning due to biceps cramping. The injury wound up keeping him sidelined until September, but he was fortunately able to avoid Tommy John surgery.
Richards is still only 29, so there’s reason to believe he can still get back to being the pitcher we saw stay healthy throughout the 2014 and 2015 seasons. The Angels are expected by many to be one of baseball’s most improved squads this season, and they’ll be able to live up to those expectations if their rotation is able to stay intact.
Richards is one of the keys that can unlock this team’s potential. The Angels will be rolling with a 6-man starting rotation, which should help keep those starters fairly fresh throughout the campaign. Richards looked tremendous during the spring, consistently sitting in the upper-90s with his fastball and racking up plenty of strikeouts.
Richards has the stuff to be one of the league’s filthiest starters. Let’s hope he can stay healthy to prove it.
Speaking of health, let’s not forget that Lance McCullers Jr. was an All-Star last season for the Astros. He got off to a very strong start through the season’s first 3 months before the injury bug bit him. He dealt with a lingering back problem for much of the middle and end of the season before being healthy enough to contribute to the team’s World Series run.
When he’s been healthy, McCullers has shown that he can be torture on hitters. He owns arguably the league’s nastiest curveball, and he can consistently reach the upper-90s with his heater. McCullers has dealt with some control issues, but that’s fairly standard for a young pitcher. LMJ is still only 24.
McCullers has yet to make 22 starts in any of his 3 big league campaigns. Obviously, that’s a red flag. If he can stay relatively healthy, though, there’s no questioning his potential. Some have suggested that McCullers would project best in the long-term as a reliever, but he’s shown that he’s got ace stuff.
The Astros are one of the handful of World Series favorites again in 2018, so we can expect healthy representation from Houston once again at the All-Star Game and come awards season.
Despite being arguably the most talented hurler on the staff, McCullers actually has the fourth-best Cy Young odds on his own team. Justin Verlander (+800), Dallas Keuchel (+2000) and Gerrit Cole (+2000) are more likely to win AL Cy Young, per the odds.
Like the Astros, the Dodgers have quite a few high-upside pitchers capable of winning the Cy Young Award if everything goes right. Kershaw obviously tops the list, but Wood, Kenta Maeda and Rich Hill are all very solid veteran arms.
Wood is the one that has the most potential. He’s been around awhile, but he’s still just 27. He was something of a project with the Braves, but last season he turned in easily his finest big league campaign to date. Wood, who made the All-Star team, went 16-3 with a tidy 2.72 ERA during the regular season.
One concern with Wood is his longevity. He got off to a blazing start last season before he saw his velocity gradually begin to dip as the year went on. He didn’t see the same kind of positive results in August and September as he did in May and June.
Wood did find something in the playoffs though, as he pitched 7.2 innings while allowing just a single run across 2 outings against the Astros in the World Series. One of those was a perfect 2-inning relief outing in Game 7.
The Dodgers will be right back at the top of the NL West again this season barring some sort of injury catastrophe. The best part about being a guy like Wood is that the public’s expectations are more focused on the performance of a guy like Kershaw. Wood flew under the radar for most of last season despite being dominant for several months. He started the season 11-0 before anyone really noticed.
Wood is an elite groundball pitcher with tremendous strikeout potential, too. That’s a lethal combination, especially in a division that features a massive hitter’s parks like Coors Field.
Sean Manaea is not a household name, but he may be before too long. The A’s don’t have many players that would be familiar to the casual fan, and with good reason. It’s been years since this franchise has been relevant. Oakland hasn’t won more than 75 games in a season since 2014.
They unfortunately play in a division that looks stacked, but there’s reason for optimism with the 2018 bunch. This team is going to hit a ton of homers again in ‘18, and they have a few interesting young starting pitchers. Chief among those is Manaea, who made strong strides as last season went on.
The big lefty went 12-10 with a 4.37 ERA last year. Obviously, those numbers don’t really jump off the page. That said, the ERA is a bit skewed by a few brutal starts. He had a 5.18 ERA in the month of April, though a single start in which he was blasted by the Rangers is the primary reason the number is so high. Ditto for his unsightly 9.17 mark in August, which includes a start in which he lasted just ⅓ of an inning and surrendered 6 runs against the Orioles.
For the most part, he was a very serviceable arm for Oakland last year. He’s shown an ability to pitch deep into games, and he’s got decent strikeout numbers to this point. Walks have been an issue for him historically, which is obviously problematic. Again, though, he still just turned 26 in February.
This is more of an off-the-board play than anything else.
The talent is there.
Manaea was our off-the-board pick to win the AL Cy Young, and we’ll roll with Taijuan Walker as our biggest sleeper on the National League side. Walker is a name we’ve known for years, as he was once one of the highest-rated prospects in the Mariners’ system.
He struggled with consistency during his time in Seattle, so the Ms decided to cut bait and traded him to Arizona prior to last season in the deal that sent Jean Segura to the Pacific Northwest. He didn’t exactly break out during his first year in the desert, but Walker still finished with a 9-9 record alongside a respectable 3.49 ERA.
Walker had some of the more drastic home/road splits in the majors last season. The big right-hander went 3-4 at Chase Field with a 4.18 ERA. On the road, he went 6-5 with a much more palatable 2.92 mark. Chase Field was one of baseball’s best hitting parks last season, so it’s not a surprise to see those numbers.
That may change this year. The Diamondbacks have decided to install a humidor at Chase Field this season. They’ll store the baseballs in the humidor, which is expected to have a dramatic impact on the way the ball flies. What was once a home run haven may now play like a more neutral yard.
While that’s bad news for a slugger like Paul Goldschmidt, it’s gotta be music to the ears of a pitcher like Walker. He has shown a quality mid-90s fastball, but the lack of a consistent secondary pitch has capped his upside to this point.
The humidor may actually help with that. According to Fangraphs, Walker’s slider and curveball each had far more success on the road last season. The two pitches combined to limit opposing hitters to an OPS of just .527 with a 25% K-BB ratio. At home, those pitches conceded an OPS of .928 with a K-BB ratio of just 9%. Those numbers are wild, but the humidor is designed to help pitchers get a better grip on the ball.
If Walker can harness those secondary pitches consistently, he’s going to be dangerous. Zack Greinke and Robbie Ray are the big-name pitchers on this staff, but don’t be surprised if Walker works his way into that conversation with a big 2018.
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