Fantasy Baseball: 4 Undervalued Pitchers Who Own Superb Swinging-Strike Rates

Tyler Anderson, LHP, Colorado Rockies

Swinging-strike rate: 12.4 percent

Tyler Anderson is a surprise contestant at 19th on the aforementioned leaderboard, tied with Alex Wood at 12.4 percent. It has not been a pretty season for Anderson, as he’s been limited to just 12 starts and 63.1 innings due to injuries, and even when he’s been on the mound, it has not been good (6.11 ERA, 5.41 FIP).

The swinging-strike rate feeds into his strikeouts-per-inning rate, and he’s still managed to keep the walks in check (3.3 per nine). But the ball has flown out of the park at an obscene rate against Anderson (2.13 homers per nine), which is never promising for a pitcher who makes roughly half his starts at Coors Field.

What we like about Anderson -- with his ability to get strikeouts and limit walks -- is that in the past he’d done so with a groundball rate in excess of 50 percent. That has dipped to just 43.5 percent -- slightly below league average -- and it's coupled with an unsustainably-high 25 percent home-run-per-fly-ball rate, which led to the bloated ERA. It’s unclear where the Colorado Rockies see him moving forward, but the rotation could get crowded with Jon Gray, German Marquez, Kyle Freeland, Antonio Senzatela and Chad Bettis already in-house.

We still like Anderson’s skill-set at Coors moving forward -- like, as in one of the last pitchers drafted in standard fantasy leagues -- but if he gets shipped out of town, he might get even more of a boost in a better home park. Tuck this name behind your ear like a woodworker’s pencil.