Richards rose from obscurity to become a capable major leaguer in 2018. An undrafted Division II product whose journey to affiliated baseball included two years in the independent Frontier League, Richards made 25 turns in the Marlins' rotation, posting a 4.42 ERA. Despite a near complete lack of prospect pedigree, his peripherals support his performance and suggest he should be able to stick in the rotation. He managed to mostly offset a mediocre 35.8% groundball rate and 9.9% walk rate with a 23.8% strikeout rate. His changeup in particular looked quite good, being worth 14.8 runs according to FanGraphs' Pitch Values, a total which ranked second behind only Kyle Hendricks. It would be surprising to see him as anything better than a back-end starter, and his team context limits his ability to pick up wins, but the fact that he looks like a starter at all is quite the achievement given his background. Read Past Outlooks