It has been a while guys. I will be entirely honest; I have thought about baseball for approximately five minutes over the last month prior to writing this article. The lack of clarity on the 2020 MLB season puts me at a stand still in how to approach it from a fantasy perspective and without a full picture it is almost impossible to determine a strategy. That said, it is evident that there are a few obvious winners from a delayed season. One of those winners is assuredly Mike Clevinger. It does not take a rocket scientist to embrace the idea that if a player was guaranteed to miss a percentage of the season, he has less value. However, the coronavirus has given him a new outlook on the 2020 season, with the ability to be a rotation mainstay from day 1. While I was as low as you can be on Clevinger in my original top 100 rankings a second look is needed under an entirely new scenario.

Mike Clevinger made a monstrous jump in the 2018 MLB season. He morphed from an upside arm having difficult to square up stuff into a complete pitcher. Most of this jump can be attributed to simply attacking the strike zone. His zone percentage in 2017 was 40.5%. In 2018, it jumped to 48.2%. His walk rate dove and he started showing signs of an elite arm. This set the foundation for a thrilling 2019 season in which Clevinger was a top 20 fantasy starter in only 126 innings thrown. This season was made possible by a 1-2 MPH increase in fastball velocity year over year. Clevinger’s fastball averaged 95.6 MPH in 2019 and the pitch went from a career negative to one of the best pitches in baseball with a 19.5 pVAL. Clevinger has always held a true 4 pitch mix but needed that fastball velocity leap to make the final jump to ace arm. Clevinger is only 29 years old meaning the velocity gains are not likely to fall off overnight. These gains will only help in making Clevinger’s best pitch, his slider, more effective. His slider has a positive pVAL in every MLB season he has thrown. He threw the pitch 5% more in 2019 to a batting average against of .176 and 21% whiff percentage. An underrated component of Clevinger’s game is that he is highly effective the 3^rd time through the order. In my mind, this means he understands how to vary his approach and is using all his pitches to the full effectiveness. The ability to pitch a third time through the order is rare and something pitchers with only 2, or even 3, MLB pitches struggle to perform effectively.