As I lay on my belly, adorned atop my plush rug with the head of Adam Silver, I noticed a glint of light out of my left eye. I slowly turned my neck like a sloth and began to smirk. One beacon after another began to Buddha Flame, producing a runway of light that could mean only one thing; baseball season is upon us.
I have been summoned to once again don my Waste Management uniform and dive into the trash cans of the fantasy streets to try and unearth some useful pieces of information. Grey and the fantastic crew at Razzball baseball got you covered with everything else, but you already know how dope they are.
I enjoy dumpster diving because Grey gives me free rein to write however and about whoever I want. Except when I write about olds who have a K/9 under 9 and fall short of 10/10 as a hitter. So, basically Grey shits on me every article. Good times!
As I was scrolling up (Yeah, I always start from the bottom and scroll up. Is it a habit from playing DFS or is it an unconscious extension of my plight from rags to riches? Ha! Psyche!) on my good friend, the NFBC ADP page from 1/1/2022 to 2/16/2022, the player jumped off the page. You don’t Jose? Jose it ain’t so? Sad to Jose. He was the perfect player: old, and Grey would hate him! I’m a masochist and life has been too good to me so I needed a beatdown. Who is this vile player that will probably make everyone vomit?
I just vomited, choked on it, regurgitated the sloppy seconds then puked it out again.
Hey, there was a time when Quintana was pitching 200 innings on the regular and was traded for Eloy Jimenez and Dylan Cease. Sorry Cubs fans. Why don’t you go scoop up that vomit off the floor then put it back in your mouth so you can spew it out again.
To be fair, Quintana wasn’t terrible with the Cubs. He pitched over 170 innings in two seasons and won 13 games in each campaign. He was a top 40-ish pitcher for fantasy.
He’s currently the 224th pitcher being drafted and has an ADP of 598. Call me the Son, the King of Trash!
Let’s get into why the precipitous fall. In 2020, he cut his left thumb while washing the dishes and missed the start of the season. Then he suffered a lat injury and he only pitched 10 innings that season. The following season, he suffered a shoulder injury and pitched 63 innings between two teams. The walk rate was 5, HR/9 was 1.71, a career high, and FIP was 4.66. Yuck.
So, why the “optimism?”
He’s been injured the past two seasons. Sure, the shoulder and lat injuries are a concern but all indications are that he’s healthy now, and those injuries likely had an adverse effect on his ability to pitch.
Quintana posted a 12.19 K/9 last season and had a swinging-strike rate of 11.9%, a career high. For most of his career, he languished in the 8-9% swinging strike range and 8 K/9. The chase rate was over 30% for the first time in his career!
Things that make you go hmmm.
He averaged 91.6 mph on the fastball, so not far off for the 92 mph career average. The biggest change was in the pitch selection, as he threw the changeup a career best 14.5%. He utilized the fastball 41.7% of the time, the sinker 17%, and the curveball 26.8%. The curveball and changeup were his put-away pitches as he had a whiff rate of over 30% on both pitches. The changeup, though, got hammered when batters made contact with it, as it had the highest batting average and expected batting average of any pitch. As evidenced by the 5 BB/9, control was an issue last season. There seems to be paths of improvement on that front.
The BABIP last season was a whopping .378 while the LOB% was 64.4%. He was unlucky so there’s room for growth there as well. The ERA was 6.43 but the xFIP was 3.75.
He is now in Pittsburgh on a one-year, $2 million deal. Rosterresource.com has Quintana as the ace of the staff. L. O. L. Let’s see: JT Brubaker, Zach Thompson, Dillon Peters, and Bryse Wilson.
Quintana was brought in to eat innings and, unless he completely shits the bed, he should be given every opportunity.
What if he’s healthy and pitches over 150 innings? What if the control returns? What if the new strikeout prowess is a thing? It’s a lot of what-ifs, I know. That said, health and the strikeouts seem to be the biggest hurdles but his body of work speaks for itself.
In shallow of head-to-head leagues, Quintana is probaby not a thing. In roto and deeper leagues, he could be useful.
He’s cheap. Actually, he’s cheaper than cheap. In terms of risk/reward ratio, it seems heavily skewed towards the reward side of the equation.
