MLB
Fantasy Baseball: 6 Swinging-Strike Stars Who Could Rebound in 2018
Masahiro Tanaka possessed a fantasy-damaging ERA last year, but his sparkling swinging-strike rate indicates he could be in for a much better season in 2018.

Marco Estrada, Toronto Blue Jays

ERA: 4.98 (104th/135)

Swinging-Strike Rate: 10.9% (41st/135)

An All-Star in 2016 for the Toronto Blue Jays, Marco Estrada was a bit of an enigma in 2017. Estrada confused a bunch of hitters on his way to a career-high 176 strikeouts, but he also allowed 186 hits and 71 walks on his way to a dreadful 1.38 WHIP -- a far cry from his spectacular 1.12 WHIP the year before.

Estrada's season seems to have been doomed by bad luck. After posting incredibly good BABIP numbers of .216 and .234, respectively, the prior two seasons, regression struck hard, and Estrada's BABIP allowed shot all the way up to .295 -- still below the league average but a big jump nonetheless.

That happened even though he generated more soft-hit balls in 2017 than he did in 2016, and his hard-hit rate dropped by 4.1 percentage points. One thing he did allow too much of was fly balls, with his 30.3% ground-ball rate well below his 33.9% career average.

Estrada allowed a meager 27.2% hard-hit rate last year, and if he can keep that up while still racking up the punchouts, he could be primed for a bounce-back year

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