This article is part of our Offseason Deep Dives series.
Full disclosure: I've come to the realization over the years that my multitude of fantasy rosters often lack diversity. That can be a good thing when you hit on most of your guys, and I'm confident in my ability to identify those dudes more often than not.
The reality, though, is that you're going to have some misses. Some years you'll have more than others, and when lots of your rosters have those players in common, it can sting. Let's take a look at one pitcher I whiffed on this year.
Reid Detmers, SP, Angels
I was so confident in a Detmers breakout this season that I would speak to anyone who would listen as if it was a foregone conclusion.
The ingredients were all there. A midseason mechanical tweak last year allowed Detmers to throw his fastball and particularly his slider much harder, helping him to a 3.04 ERA and 78:25 K:BB over his final 13 starts (71 innings) of the season. The former top prospect was also set for a workload bump in 2023 as the Angels modified their six-man rotation to allow their starters to pitch on five days' rest more regularly.
Detmers not only carried over the velocity bump on his slider into this season, he actually upped it even more, averaging more than 90 mph on the pitch for the first two months of the campaign. You would think that would be a good thing, and he did register 58 strikeouts over 45.2 frames
Full disclosure: I've come to the realization over the years that my multitude of fantasy rosters often lack diversity. That can be a good thing when you hit on most of your guys, and I'm confident in my ability to identify those dudes more often than not.
The reality, though, is that you're going to have some misses. Some years you'll have more than others, and when lots of your rosters have those players in common, it can sting. Let's take a look at one pitcher I whiffed on this year.
Reid Detmers, SP, Angels
I was so confident in a Detmers breakout this season that I would speak to anyone who would listen as if it was a foregone conclusion.
The ingredients were all there. A midseason mechanical tweak last year allowed Detmers to throw his fastball and particularly his slider much harder, helping him to a 3.04 ERA and 78:25 K:BB over his final 13 starts (71 innings) of the season. The former top prospect was also set for a workload bump in 2023 as the Angels modified their six-man rotation to allow their starters to pitch on five days' rest more regularly.
Detmers not only carried over the velocity bump on his slider into this season, he actually upped it even more, averaging more than 90 mph on the pitch for the first two months of the campaign. You would think that would be a good thing, and he did register 58 strikeouts over 45.2 frames during that stretch. However, the bottom-line results were not there, with Detmers holding a 4.93 ERA and 1.53 WHIP. He completed six innings in just one of his nine starts.
The problem, Detmers surmised, was that there wasn't enough separation in velocity between his fastball and slider, and because he was throwing his slider so hard that it was acting more like a cutter which lacked downward movement. Hitters were able to hunt for pitches in one location.
Detmers' response was to throw two different sliders. The gap in velocity between his fastball and slower slider was enough that he completely scrapped his changeup, his worst pitch. Detmers then went through a five-start stretch which saw him put up a 1.42 ERA and 43:10 K:BB across 31.2 innings. Problem solved? Well, not exactly.
Detmers collected a 7.56 ERA and struck out less than a batter per inning over his next nine starts, so it was back to the drawing board. As you can see from the graphic below taken from Baseball Savant, he re-incorporated his changeup at that point and dropped his slider usage.
After a two-month lull, Detmers rebounded in September with a 1.82 ERA and 26:7 K:BB over 24.2 innings. For the first two months of the season Detmers' slider was virtually tied with his fastball for his most-used pitch. By September it had fallen to fourth behind his fastball, changeup and curveball. I should note that Baseball Savant never differentiated Detmers' two sliders in terms of classification even as he explicitly said he was throwing two different ones. The 86.8 mph velocity on his slider for September was his lowest of the season, suggesting he was predominantly, if not exclusively, using the slower one that month.
To be honest, I'm not sure how to feel about Detmers going into the 2024 campaign. Even with his inconsistency in 2023, he still finished with 168 strikeouts over 148.2 innings. His 26.1 percent strikeout rate ranked 17th out of 76 pitchers with at least 140 innings, ahead of guys like Zac Gallen and Corbin Burnes. He was 63rd out of 76 on that same list with a 9.3 percent walk rate, though, which helped lead to an unsightly 1.35 WHIP. Detmers' 4.45 xERA virtually matched his 4.48 ERA.
Clearly, Detmers is still figuring out a pitch mix that works for him. His four-seamer had a run value of minus-10 in 2023, per Baseball Savant, ranking it as one of the least successful pitches in baseball. That same pitch had a plus-five value in 2022, though, so throwing fewer fastballs isn't necessarily the obvious solution. I still like the slider as a potentially difference-making pitch for him, but should he continue throwing two or pick one? And if it's the latter, which one?
There's also the team context for Detmers to consider. The Halos ranked 19th in Defensive Runs Saved in 2023, per The Fielding Bible. We don't know for sure what the Angels' roster is going to look like with the hot stove yet to heat up, but Shohei Ohtani is likely leaving. That's a gaping hole for an offense which ranked in the middle of the pack while Ohtani was still there. If there's a potential positive to take away from that, it's that it could allow the Angels to use a traditional five-man rotation and give Detmers and others more innings.
It's going to take a while for the market to set in terms of Detmers' draft cost, but early NFBC drafters do not consider him a top-250 talent. As someone who still sees more positives than negatives in the 24-year-old left-hander's profile, I could certainly see myself buying back in at that price.
