2017 MLB Draft Guide Player Profile: Lance McCullers

Lance McCullers

23 years old

Bats/Throws: L/R

Height/Weight: 6’1”, 205 lbs

Position: Starting Pitcher

THE NUMBERS

Minor League Overall Rankings per season.

X = outside the top-100 overall

He was the 41^st overall selection out of high school in the 2012 Entry Draft.

THE SKILLS

A quick summation follows. McCullers has a dynamic arm that produces copious strikeouts. He also loses control of the strike zone frequently and has a history of health issues. Let’s dig in.

McCullers has had a lot of injuries and slowdowns through the years. Before we get there, let’s look again at his innings pitched marks. Here are those totals again:

26, 104.2, 97, 157.2 and 89

That’s one season in his professional career of 105 innings. That’s a very small number. Remove his 2012 effort and the last four seasons McCullers has averaged 112.1 innings pitched. Again, that’s a very small number for a pitcher that is routinely being drafted to be a 3^rd or 4^th starter in a mixed league (for more on that see below).

Let’s talk health.

McCullers began last season on the shelf as he dealt with shoulder issues. That cleared up, and then he had elbow issues which caused him to have to shut things down in early August. Don’t know about you, but when a guy has shoulder AND elbow issues... that’s a huge concern for me. He’s apparently healthy now according to agent Scott Boras. "There's nothing from the doctors that we've heard that would suggest that there's going to be any problem for '17," Boras said. Not much in his history suggests we should have such a rosie outlook when it comes to McCullers health.

In an effort to stay healthy, McCullers has tweaked his mechanics to help lessen the strain on his arm. He’s trying to make his motion a bit more compact to keep everything aligned better. McCullers says he’s trying to stay “more even with my body, not letting my arm float so far behind." This sounds like a good idea from a health standpoint, but is it a good thing for his performance outlook? We will have to wait and see on that front.

Lance’s heater is borderline elite, at least in terms of velocity. The average mph of the pitch is 94.1 mph according to PITCHf/x data. He throws the pitch just about 50 percent of the time in his young career. Through two seasons of heat, the results have been extremely poor. On the 1,701 four-seam fastballs he’s thrown batters have crushed the pitch to the tune of a .329/.441/.508 line. Batters have treated the pitch like it was thrown by a 49 year old coach in batting practice.

His curveball is pretty epic and is a much better pitch than his heater. He threw the curveball 35.7 percent of the time as a rookie before jacking that rate up to 49.6 percent last season. Amongst pitchers who threw 100-innings last season, no one in baseball threw their curve more than Rich Hill at 49.7 percent with the next arm in line being Drew Pomeranz at 39.2 percent. Obviously, McCullers curveball use last season was off the charts high. Batters had no chance against his knuckle-curve as it induced some of the weakest production in baseball of any pitch last season (.140/.188/.194 leading to a .173 WOBA). For his 206.2 innings McCullers has limited batters to a .182 wOBA on the pitch.

There are some concerns are out there that because he throws his curveball so much with the belief being that the curve puts lots of strain on the elbow. According to surgeon Neal ElAttrache, one of the leading orthopedic doctors in baseball, the curve shouldn’t be an issue. "He said that the way I throw my curveball probably puts the least amount of stress on my arm of all my pitches. Hearing that was nice because Scott was with me and he wanted him to say something else in that," McCullers said.

A two-pitch pitcher, McCullers is working on adding a changeup this spring. "Everything I throw is hard, hard, hard, and I'm trying to get a little 'stop and go' in my game, a little more 'pitchability,' so to speak," he said. "So, I think I'm going to try some new things out." We will see how that goes.

McCullers has thrown 206.2 innings in his career, a level we expect from an ace, so let’s look at his career work through that lens.

McCullers has generated 10.23 strikeouts per nine with a swinging strike rate of 11.1 percent. His K/9 rate in the minors was 10.2. He’s clearly an elite strikeout arm.

McCullers walked a pathetic 5.00 batters per nine in 2016 to push his career mark to 3.83. The league average the last two seasons is 2.88. That means McCullers has walked nearly a full batter more per nine than the league average. Moreover, only six qualifying pitchers in baseball walked 3.83 batters per nine innings. In the minors the number was even worse at 4.47 per nine.

This leads to an ongoing issue for McCullers – strike throwing. McCullers isn’t very good at it. For his career he has a 56.9 percent first strike mark. The last two seasons the league average was 60.6 percent. For his career, he has thrown 43.7 percent of his pitches in the strike zone. The last two seasons the league average was 44.7. He hasn’t even been league average at throwing strikes. Until he consistently harnesses his fastball, and throws more strikes, it won’t matter how dominating his curveball is. Batters can just spit on the curveball early in the count and look for him to make a mistake with the fastball as they never really have to worry about the off-speed pitch until they fall behind in the count.

The increase in his curveball usage last season led to his groundball rate moving from 46.5 percent as a rookie to 57.3 percent last season. All told, he owns an impressive 50.5 percent mark through his 206.2 innings. Of the 16 men who posted a ground ball rate last season of 50 percent only two of them struck out more than 8.75 batters per nine in Francisco Liriano and Noah Syndergaard. The result of all those grounders for McCullers is a 1.81 GB/FB ratio which is a mark that only 11 men outpaced last season. All those grounders have led to a total of 15 homers allowed at an excellent 0.65 rate per nine over two seasons.

PLAYING TIME

He starts as long as he’s healthy. Simple as that.

AVERAGE DRAFT POSITION DATA

As of this writing, here is McCullers' ADP data.

Fantasy Alarm Player Rankings

CONCLUSION

McCullers has a huge arm which has tons of health concerns. He’s an elite strikeout arm who also generates copious grounders, two parts of the trinity of pitching (strikeouts, grounders and no walks). The third part of the trio though, the walk, shows him to be as bad as he is good in the other two categories. There are things to love with McCullers, but there are also huge negatives.

10-Team Mixed: Can play it two ways. You can make him your 5^th because you’re worried about his health. You can make him your fourth thinking that there are so many options on waivers in a league this shallow that you can try to hit a homer, and if it fails, so what?

12-Team Mixed: I want him as my fourth here if I can get a stable 5^th. If my top-3 have health risks, I would likely avoid McCullers.

15-Team Mixed: Be smart here. Guys like Ervin Santana and Ian Kennedy are boring as all get out, but when you take a shot on a guy like McCullers you would be wise to roster an arm or two that can give you solid innings since it’s likely you will need them.

AL-Only League: It’s about your risk/tolerance here. He’s got the stuff to be a Cy Young contender. He’s got a track record of ill health like Stephen Strasburg. Sometimes he struggles to throw strikes like Francisco Liriano. There’s a huge breadth of potential outcomes with McCullers.

Ray Flowers can be heard Monday/Tuesday and Thursday/Friday, 8 PM EDT, Wednesday 7 PM EDT on SiriusXM Fantasy Sports Radio (Sirius 210, XM 87). You can also hear Ray Sunday nights at 9 PM EDT PM on the channel talking fantasy sports. Follow Ray’s work at Fantasy Alarm and on Twitter (@baseballguys).