This entire offseason we’ve all been hearing about Joe Musgrove and Mitch Keller, and occasionally even Chris Archer. Musgrove has been a baseball twitter favorite for a while, due to his well-rounded pitch mix. And people think with Searage gone he’ll be able to utilize it much better. With Keller, people look at his underlying stats as proof that his debut was actually much more successful than it seeme d, and that he’s due for a big 2020. Even Archer, with all the times he’s let us all down, has people excited following a strong second half where an adjustment to his pitch usage, yielded solid results.
All three of these guys have been labeled as ‘sleepers’ this offseason by many writers, including myself. I even wrote an article a few months ago discussing Keller and Archer, and for good reason too. At their current ADPs, all in the 200-300 range, these guys all have the potential to return solid value, especially Keller in my opinion. I have no problem with the hype these guys have gotten this offseason, but I wouldn’t call any of them sleepers at this point. If you want a true sleeper, what if I told you that the Pirates’ best pitcher could be a guy that almost no one is talking about, and even fewer people are drafting?
Trevor Williams? Nope.
Richard Rodriguez? Not him either, but he’s also being severely under drafted.
Kela? Crick? Burdi? Brault? No, no, no, and no.
With how bad the Pirates 40-Man is currently, you’ve probably already figured out who I’m going to be talking about, but if you haven’t then let me introduce you all to Chad Kuhl, my favorite sleeper pick for 2020 and on. Chad Kuhl isn’t exactly a new name; he had some fantasy relevance as a streamer from 2016 to 2018, but he’s probably better known for his elite fastball velocity (16th highest average FB velo among starters in 2018) than his performance. On top of that, Kuhl had Tommy John in 2018, and hasn’t thrown a pitch in a game since June 26, 2018; so why am I talking about Chad Kuhl? Well, just keep reading and I’m sure you’ll find out.
First of all, I just want to assess the risk associated with Kuhl. As I just mentioned, Kuhl had Tommy John in 2018 and has not thrown in a game since. Some guys get TJ and come back feeling better than ever. Some guys are never the same pitcher again. Some see almost no difference. We have no way of knowing who Kuhl will be upon returning. But in an ideal world, he will be at least a similar pitcher to who he was before the injury, so that’s how I will be assessing him. It’s also important to recognize that Kuhl is not guaranteed a spot in the rotation, so that is another risk that comes with him. He’ll likely be battling with Steven Brault for the 5th spot in the Pirates rotation, which is encouraging, but nothing is guaranteed. There is a possibility he ends up in the bullpen, which could hurt his fantasy value. But that is also an interesting scenario, so I’ll talk about why that’s interesting later as well.
(At the time this was written he was battling with Brault, but Brault just got injured which likely means that only Derek Holland (and his 8.10 ERA in 8 starts last year) is the only person left who could stop Kuhl from ending up in the rotation.)
Ok, so now that all of that is out of the way, let’s talk some Chad Kuhl.
Chad Kuhl was never a big name prospect at all. A ninth-round pick out of the University of Delaware, Kuhl was successful in the minors off the back of his maturity and above-average low-90s sinker that helped him generate an elite GB%. But his lack of stuff or secondary pitches limited him from ever ranking much higher than barely top 20 in the Pirates system. After dominating Triple-A in 2016, he earned a midseason call up, and found a decent amount of success as a rookie. In 14 starts (70.2 IP), Kuhl had a respectable 3.95 FIP, and showed potential in starts like July 17th against Nationals (6 IP, 1 H, 0 BB, 5 K), but his lack of strikeout stuff limited him to mostly a streamer option in fantasy.
The start of 2017 is where Kuhl starts to get pretty interesting. After being a low-90s guy as a prospect, and averaging 93.2 MPH on his fastball in 2016, Kuhl came out in 2017 looking like a new pitcher, averaging 95.5 and even touching triple digits. Despite this increase in velocity, his performance didn’t increase much, as he finished the year with fairly similar numbers as he had in 2016. If you take out one really bad start he had (April 24th vs the Cubs: 1.2 IP, 8 H, 9 ER, 4 BB), then the ERA drops from 4.35 to 3.87 and the WHIP drops from 1.47 to 1.41, but even then he wasn’t great in terms of fantasy.
Again in 2018, before he got injured, he was more or less the same pitcher, as he was sporting a 4.55 ERA and a 1.43 WHIP at the time he went down. For his career, through 313.0 IP, Kuhl has put up 3.7 fWAR, with a 4.37 ERA, a 4.30 FIP, and a 1.42 WHIP, so it seems as if he established himself as a pretty average pitcher. Especially with his career 20.4 K% and 9.2 BB%, Kuhl really wasn’t a guy with much fantasy value and wasn’t worth getting excited over. His 2018 was actually especially unimpressive considering his xwOBA was an unsightly .369, and his xwOBA, xSLG, xwOBACON, and barrel% were all bottom two among all pitchers.
At this point, you’re probably getting frustrated wondering why I’m even talking about such a painfully average pitcher, so let’s just get into that. Remember what I said about how Kuhl’s below-average secondaries kept him from prospect relevance? Well, does a .216 xwOBA slider and a .197 xwOBA curveball sound below-average to you? If you’re not sure, from 2017-2018 Kuhl’s curveball ranked 11th best in xwOBA among starters, and his slider ranked 9th, sandwiched right between Sonny Gray and Luis Severino.
xwOBA vs Pitch Usage on Breaking Balls from 2017-2018, courtesy of baseballsavant.com
This graph depicts every pitcher who threw at least 1,000 breaking balls from 2017 to 2018, with xwOBA of said pitches in the x-axis and pitch usage on the y-axis. As you can see from the other names I highlighted, Kuhl’s breaking balls measure up to some of the best pitchers in all of baseball, as he posted a better xwOBA on his slider/curveball than guys like Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander, Gerrit Cole, and Jacob deGrom. This isn’t a coincidence or luck either; both of Kuhl’s breaking balls grew into elite pitches. His curveball has elite spin-rate, averaging the 16th highest mark in 2018, as well as above-average movement in both directions.
His slider also possesses above-average spin and movement, which while not as high as his curveball, are very impressive for its 88.3 MPH average velocity. Eye test will also confirm that both of these pitches are truly above-average pitches, despite what scouts and the Pirates’ themselves thought about him as a prospect. Kuhl had a curveball coming out of college, but the Pirates pushed him to drop it in favor of a slider when he was in the minors. He didn’t pick it back up again until 2017.
The reason I used pitch usage as my y-axis is to show what the big issue with Chad Kuhl is. Despite having a combined xwOBA of .211, Kuhl only threw his breaking balls for 29.5% of his pitches. Of the pitchers with better breaking balls than Kuhl, only Charlie Morton, Corey Kluber, Blake Snell, and Ivan Nova used them less than him. This is especially concerning when you consider the fact that Kuhl throws both a slider and a curveball, while a large percentage of the pitchers on this chart mainly throw one or the other. It’s worth noting that a few guys in a similar position on the chart to Kuhl, such as Paxton, Morton, and Kluber, have a low percentage of breaking balls because they have a pitch which statcast identifies as a cutter, even though it acts more like a slider (although Paxton and Morton didn’t have significant usage on this pitch).
If you include his Cutter, Kluber’s percentage of breaking balls would jump to 51.6%. That just leaves the other three. Morton and Snell can be explained fairly simply by the fact that they all have plus fastballs, as do most guys with elite breaking balls but low usage, so they don’t need to rely on their breaking balls as much. It’s also worth noting that, like almost every pitcher close in proximity on the chart to Kuhl, Morton increased his percentage significantly in 2019. From 2017-2018, Morton used his curveball and cutter for 37.7% of his pitches. In 2019, that number rose from 47.7%, as he used his curveball especially significantly more, and he had the best season of his career by far. That just leaves Ivan Nova, and to explain that one, all I need to do is tell you to check what team Nova played for from 2017-2018, and the issue starts to become pretty clear.
Going back to the fact that most guys with elite breaking balls and low usage have elite fastballs, or at the very least above-average, let’s talk about Chad Kuhl’s fastball.
xwOBA vs Pitch Usage on Fastballs from 2017-2018, courtesy of baseballsavant.com
So the first thing that stands out (other than the mess in this middle of the graph. That’s Snell, Clevinger, and Strasburg by the way) is just how bad Chad Kuhl’s fastballs were over this period. Despite elite velocity, Kuhl’s .404 xwOBA on these pitches was 3rd worst in the majors over this period, ahead of only Matt Moore and James Shields.
The other obvious thing about this graph is that good pitchers tend to have good fastballs. The only highlighted pitcher with an xwOBA on fastballs over .350 was Patrick Corbin, which is easily explained by his breaking ball percentage of 44.1%. (39.5% slider). This is a pretty simple concept that seems to elude many MLB organizations; pitchers should throw their best pitches more often. I personally think pitchers could throw secondary pitches 100% of the time if their secondaries are good enough and their fastball is that bad, but I won’t try to push those radical beliefs on you guys.
The reason that even guys with fastballs this bad throw them a lot comes down to being able to throw strikes. The concern when raising secondaries is always that BB% will rise, which is true, but if K% rises enough as well, then it’s a worthwhile move because strikeouts are worth much more in the positive direction than walks are in the negative direction. Contrary to popular belief, adding 10 points to your K%+ while also adding 10 points to your BB%+ would actually be a huge improvement for a pitcher. The key here is finding a balance, which Chad Kuhl clearly hasn’t done, and something that the Pirates barely tried to do under Ray Searage.
The natural question here would be “how good can a pitcher be with a really bad fastball?”. Well in this sample size alone, there’s a pretty good answer, and his name is Carlos Carrasco. Of all pitchers who threw 2,500 fastballs from 2017 to 2018, Carrasco ranked sixth-worst in xwOBA at .393, just three spots ahead of Kuhl himself. Over the same time period, Carrasco posted 10.4 fWAR (7th highest in baseball) to go along with a 3.04 FIP across 386.2 IP. In the same sample, Patrick Corbin ranked 25th worst in fastball xwOBA at .364, and it got even worse in 2019. That didn’t keep Corbin from accumulating 13.9 fWAR over the last three years (7th highest in baseball). Marcus Stroman and Luis Castillo ranked 20th and 16th worst in fastball xwOBA over the same period, but still managed to put up 4.8 fWAR and 4.0 fWAR respectively. I think you get the point.
Do I think Chad Kuhl can be as good as these guys? Actually, yes. Yes I do. The thing is, he doesn’t even need to be that good to return value. Chad Kuhl’s current ADP is 929 on Fantrax. Let me repeat that so it truly settles in. 929. For reference, some players with a similar ADP include Andrew Knapp, Tyler White, Pat Valaika, Chris Owings, Kelvin Gutierrez, Manny Banuelos, and Stevie Wilkerson. Kuhl is currently the 293rd SP off the board on Fantrax behind a plethora of unimpressive names. I am almost 100% confident that Chad Kuhl will return much better value than this. The only way I see him not, is if he gets injured again and doesn’t pitch or just completely forgets how to pitch. And neither of those are likely. Even if he gets moved to the bullpen, and loses to Brault in the battle for the fifth spot, Kuhl’s pitch mix is the ideal closer mix. Out of the bullpen, he could throw way more breaking balls than he could as a starter, and his already elite velocity would play up out of the pen.
Assuming he comes back healthy, a pitcher who Kuhl reminds me of is Dinelson Lamet, one of the Fantasy Baseball world’s favorite players this offseason. Lamet’s .211 xwOBA on his breaking balls in 2019 is identical to Kuhl’s from 2017-2018, and they actually have the same exact pitch mix (Fourseam, Sinker, Curveball, Slider, Changeup). Like Kuhl, Dinelson Lamet has elite velocity, but still has a really bad fastball, with a .373 xwOBA in 2019 and .391 in 2017. It’s also perfectly fitting that Lamet missed all of 2018 recovering from TJ and was dominant in 2019, while Kuhl missed all of 2018 and is going to dominate in 2020. Lamet’s fastball/breaking ball split was 54.6%/43.8% in 2019, compared to 58.7%/32.9% for Kuhl in 2018. I actually think Lamet could throw more breaking balls too, but if Kuhl can raise his usage up to Lamet’s at the very least, I think he’ll see massive improvements. Lamet’s ADP is currently around 130 (SP #41). While I don’t see Kuhl being quite that good in 2020 as I think the Pirates will limit his innings, I do think Lamet and Kuhl could end up posting ratios that aren’t too far off. If the Pirates actually adjust Kuhl’s usage (which seems more likely with Searage gone) and he comes back healthy, then I roughly project him for around a 3.85 ERA, 1.30 WHIP, 26.0 K%, and 9.0 BB% in around 120.0 IP.
Kuhl will be available towards the end of most drafts, so rather than wasting a pick on a guy that you’re just gonna drop, you should take a chance on Kuhl instead. I have a feeling you won’t regret it. Kuhl is only 27 too, so he’s a great pickup for dynasty and best ball as well.