Trevor Rogers has been a tremendous fantasy steal
D.J. Short says fantasy managers should absolutely stick with Marlins SP Trevor Rogers amidst his breakout season due to the heavily depleted starting pitcher market.
Video Transcript
As left-hander, Trevor Rogers wasn't on your radar in Fantasy Leagues coming into spring training, you certainly weren't alone there. Sixto Sanchez, Sandy Alcantara, Pablo Lopez, and Eliezer Hernandez had bigger profiles at the time. But Rogers has been better than them all, posting a 2.22 ERA through 18 starts as of Thursday, July 8th.
With glove popping velocity and an untouchable changeup, the 23-year-old has struck out 118 batters with 32 walks in 97 and one-third innings. The most amazing thing has been the consistency. Rogers has allowed 3 earned runs or fewer in all 18 of his starts. And he's actually allowed two earned runs or fewer in 16 of them.
It has been an impressive start with all the advanced metrics to back up that success, earning him a trip to his first All-Star game. The tricky part similar to other emerging young pitchers is how Rogers will deal with the increased workload.
Rodgers through 28 innings in the majors last year and 136 in the 3rd innings the year before between Double-A and High-A. Does he hit a wall at some point during the second half? Recent results suggest that isn't going to be the case as he topped out a 97.5 miles per hour on its fastball and its most recent start, which was among his hardest thrown pitches of the year.
This doesn't mean he won't tire eventually. We still have a long summer ahead. But be careful about getting too cute here in regard to a possible trade as a number of big name pitchers are already hurt and a number of young pitchers will run into similar workload questions. Rogers is healthy right now and he's succeeding. So just keep writing that wave in Fantasy Leagues.
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