Collette Calls: Breaking Down Dylan Bundy

Written by

Updated on January 13, 2018 4:24PM EST

Happy New Year to everyone. Now that fantasy football is finished, we are officially into the 2018 fantasy baseball season. Although I've already seen a number of mock drafts on Twitter, I have not yet participated in one because I have been too distracted by watching my alma mater do something nobody else did in college football in 2017 – go undefeated. To watch that just two seasons after UCF could not manage to win even one game is something I will never ever forget.

In a way, it's a good lesson about believing what is possible. That 0-12 2015 team came one season after the 2014 team won the conference and went on to throttle the Big XII champs, Baylor, in the Fiesta Bowl. I have talked about having a short memory with fantasy baseball players many times here, and even have an annual piece in the RotoWire magazine looking back at players from the previous season that disappoint that could be very profitable in the coming season.

That brings us to a pitcher that I have had a long love-hate relationship with, but have not given up on. Dylan Bundy first ended up on my roster as a $1 minor leaguer the year he was drafted out of high school as I saw some video and fell in love. Over the years, I have traded him, re-acquired him, and flat out released him in the leagues I have played in as he went through all of his trials and tribulations coming up through the Baltimore system. I did draft him in one reset AL-Only league last year, and was rewarded with a decent season in comparison to the league context for starting pitchers.

SPLIT	ERA	FIP	HR/9	BABIP	LOB%	HR/FB	K%	BB%
AL Starters	4.54	4.56	1.4	.297	72	14	21	8
Bundy	4.24	4.38	1.4	.273	74	12	22	7

One side-effect of all the home runs last season is how the average ERA for starting pitchers spiked.

It is a point I will hammer home all off-season, but we need to adjust our appetites for what is an acceptable ERA, regardless of league format.

Getting back to Bundy, a big reason why I was excited about him in 2017 was because he was going to bring his cutter/slider back. It is a pitch that Jason Parks, who went from Baseball Prospectus to the Cubs and now the Diamondbacks, once called "a supreme piece of aerodynamic filth." Bundy threw the pitch exactly zero times in 2016 because he was concerned the pitch led to some of the forearm issues he had while pitching in the 2015 Arizona Fall League. Previously, it was the organization that would not allow him to throw his cutter hybrid.

Anytime a pitcher adds a new pitch, especially one with that type of accolades, there is a potential for a surge forward that coming season. 2016 was an interesting statistical season for Bundy in that his splits against lefties and righties were rather neutral despite the reputation:

SPLIT	TBF	AVG	OBP	SLG	K-BB%	BABIP
vs. L	244	.255	.317	.439	12	.284
vs. R	230	.257	.348	.428	15	.319

Sure, the outcomes are a bit different there because Bundy lacked a great chase pitch against lefties. He struck out 25 percent of the righties he faced in 2016 and that rate dipped down to 19 percent against lefties because he was a two pitch guy, fastball and curveball, against lefties.
Enter the slider.

Bundy came flying out of the gate in 2017 with a 5-1 record and a 2.26 ERA over his first eight starts, but then went 4-7 with a 6.25 ERA over his next 12 outings through the end of July. That path of success and failure aligns rather well with the decline in usage of his slider, particularly against lefties:

The reason for the decline in usage was due to the fact Bundy was not happy with the behavior of the pitch. In his own words, he discussed that pitch got too loopy at times but that work in the bullpen got the pitch back to more consistent movement. We see that he regained his confidence in the pitch over the final two months of the season and began using it at his highest levels all season:

Bundy finished the final two months of the season with a 4-1 record along with a 3.58 ERA and a 24 percent K-BB%. The recipe seems simple: throw the slider a bunch and success follows Bundy. We're talking about a pitch that had the seventh-highest swing-and-miss rate for all starting pitchers throwing at least 250 sliders in 2017 trailing only Carrasco, Stephenson, Scherzer, Clevinger, Snell, and Kluber. Opponents .216 weighted on base average (wOBA) off his slider was the 5th best in the league for all pitchers throwing at least 150 sliders last season behind Scherzer, Lamet, Santana, and Severino. His expected wOBA (xwOBA) of .199 was right there with Sale, Stroman, and Lamet.

Bundy's incorporation of the slider gave him three pitches to use against both lefties and righties, but his splits declined a bit which matched his previous reputation.

SPLIT	TBF	AVG	OBP	SLG	K-BB%	BABIP
vs. L	333	.257	.321	.452	9	.280
vs. R	365	.220	.282	.392	20	.266

If we reflect back to the earlier graph, we see that Bundy's slider usage against lefties all but disappeared by the end of July as he was utilizing the pitch a mere five percent of the time. The utilization was back to 14 percent in August and 13 percent in the little time he worked in September, but the monthly splits show the improvement before he tired out in September:

SPLIT	TBF	AVG	OBP	SLG	K-BB%	BABIP
April	52	.225	.269	.271	6	.256
May	82	.288	.366	.549	4	.310
June	55	.229	.327	.489	-2	.200
July	47	.357	.426	.738	4	.344
Aug	62	.155	.210	.211	26	.210
Sept	35	.324	.343	.500	20	.400

In all, Bundy still has fewer than 300 innings at the big league level and has pitched as a different pitcher in each of the past two seasons. The addition of the slider gives him a full arsenal to attack opposing lineups and the ability to reduce his exposure to splits issues that have held him back.

He went in the 14th round in an NFBC Draft Champions League. His ADP is 273 as the 70th starting pitcher off the board. I feel strongly that the pieces are there for him to finish in the top 50 for starting pitchers when the 2018 season is all said and done. He may get hurt with wins due to a projected poor season in Baltimore and the knock the pen recently took with Zach Britton's injury, but the stuff is there for him to outperform his projections and ADP and someone you should target in the back half of the draft.