The full MLB Opening Day is set for Thursday, with 26 of the league’s 30 teams set to play after Brewers-Mets and Braves-Phillies were postponed to Friday due to rain.
Although the season technically began last week with the Seoul Series between the Padres and Dodgers, most baseball fans will welcome the sport fully back on Thursday as the Orioles host the Angels at 3:05 p.m. ET.
Each year, I write two preseason columns highlighting pitchers I’m looking to bet on and another with pitchers to potentially bet against early in the upcoming season.
Trying to find potentially overvalued is a more difficult task, but here are six I’m lower than the market on in 2024.
Corbin Burnes, Orioles
Corbin Burnes is one of the favorites to win the American League Cy Young after his notable offseason move from Milwaukee to Baltimore. I’m wondering where his strikeouts went.
It’s a tricky story to explain. On one hand, Burnes still has an elite cutter that grades out as one of the best pitches in baseball by Stuff+. But you look at his results and he’s just not missing bats anymore.
Even if Burnes still allows very low BABIP numbers because of the cutter, his underlying metrics continue to trend downward. Burnes’ strikeout rate peaked in 2020 at 36%. Since then, he was 35% in 2021, 30% in 2022 and 25% in 2023.
The Orioles have had some success in pitching development and tweaking, but his spring training numbers don’t offer any real encouragement. Burnes allowed five homers and had 13 total strikeouts in 16 spring training innings.
His SIERA jumped from 2.92 in 2022 to 4.02 in 2023. His projected 3.4 ERA may be overselling what Burnes currently is.
Zac Gallen, Diamondbacks
Zac Gallen had an immense workload and appeared to run out of gas in the NLCS and World Series last season. Including the playoffs, Gallen threw 243 innings and his spring data is pretty alarming thus far. Not only does Gallen have eight earned runs allowed in 13 spring innings, but the right-hander has just nine strikeouts, seven walks and has shown a noticeable dip in velocity on all of his pitches.
He’s never had overpowering stuff, and the public projections have a consensus 3.60 ERA for him, but I think there’s real risk in backing Gallen this year. Watch the velocity numbers closely, because his current spring training stuff would great out as average at best.
When you compare him to other top arms in the National League, his stuff has always been a notch or two worse.
Josiah Gray, Nationals
Gray doesn’t have plus stuff, especially with his middling fastball that he tries to hide by spinning a bunch of secondaries. When you combine that with his mediocre command, high walk rates and alarming underlying metrics from 2023, his 3.90 ERA last year looks like more of a mirage.
He’ll start on Opening Day against the Reds in the Great American Ball Park, and he recently walked seven batters in a spring training outing.
The projections don’t like Gray at all — most of them see his ERA up near or even above 5.00. There’s still some market respect for the right-hander based on the Opening Day ML price against Frankie Montas, but he even kept the homers down last year and posted a 4.93 FIP.
Charlie Morton, Braves
The Braves' winter acquisition of Chris Sale suggests the end could finally be coming for Charlie Morton. As much as Morton still has an elite curveball, his declining fastball command and stuff make it more difficult to use the curve as an elite out pitch.
His 4.44 SIERA from last season should set off alarm bells, and his underlying peripherals were in steady decline last season prior to his injured list stint at the end of the playoffs.
ERA projections still price Morton around a 4.04 ERA for the upcoming season, but the cliff could be coming sooner than we realize for the 40-year-old big game legend.
Morton’s fastball is still down a tick in spring and his skyrocketing walk rates have continued from last year.
Blake Snell, Giants
Blake Snell is the ultimate rollercoaster pitcher. He’s worth buying at his floor and selling at his ceiling and then riding the fluctuations between those two points.
Even though he went unsigned for most of the offseason, Snell will be moving to a new team. That creates inherent risk. Petco Park played super pitcher friendly, the Padres were an elite defense behind Snell and he just had one of his classic run-good years with BABIP and stranding runners.
Like Burnes and Gallen on this list, it’s not that Snell isn’t a very good pitcher, it’s just that he’s likely not as good as the market will overrate him after winning the NL Cy Young last year.
Snell’s xERA, xFIP and SIERA were all hovering around 3.50, and yet his elite BABIP and LOB rate helped him post a 2.25 ERA. Snell followed his 2018 Cy Young campaign with a 4.29 ERA in 2019.
Mitch Keller, Pirates
Keller has been on both ends of the column at various points of the last year. He was a preseason buy last year, and then a second half sell.
Those takes aged well, and I remain quite skeptical of Keller start to start this season. Keller has a fastball, sinker and cutter, all of which grade out as below average by Stuff+. He has one elite pitch, his sweeper, but he struggles to get out lefties consistently because his curveball and changeup also are average at best.
When Keller is commanding well, he can be an effective pitcher. Otherwise, he’s quite overrated by the market and betting public as the “ace” of a generally bad team.
His underlying stats were quite good last year, but his strikeout rate was much higher than his swinging strike rate would imply. There’s strikeout negative regression coming, and his fastball velocity was down in spring.
All significant concerns, and I’m selling Keller this season.
