Fantasy Baseball: 10 Surprises So Far in 2017

Chase Anderson, SP, Milwaukee Brewers

Preseason ADP: 612.81

The Start

With the raking that Eric Thames and Travis Shaw are doing for the Milwaukee Brewers, it's easy to overlook other areas of the roster. That's where starting pitcher Chase Anderson and his 3.43 ERA come into play. He's just 2-0 through eight starts (44.2 innings), but his 1.3 fWAR tells us he's already been more valuable to Milwaukee this year than in 2016 when he accumulated a 0.6 fWAR in 151.2 innings of work.

One noticeable difference is Anderson's increased usage of his cutter -- after throwing it just 0.4% of the time in 2015, the usage went up to 5.8% in 2016 and is now currently sitting at 12.9%. This can help explain the slight increase in his chase rate (24.6% in '16 to 27.9% in '17).

How Sustainable Is it?

Anderson isn't a power pitcher, and with a 37.0% hard-hit rate that looks awfully similar to the 36.6% mark he produced last year, he's depending on a lot of variables for his success.

Despite a 72.6% strand rate that doesn't look very different from years past (73.9% for career), along with a .323 BABIP and 35.4% ground-ball rate, his HR/9 rate of 0.40 probably isn't sustainable, especially since his 41.7% fly-ball rate is basically the same as last year (41.1%).

His 20.4% strikeout rate also doesn't differ much from his career (19.1%), and a 9.6% swinging-strike rate tells us that a huge pile of punchouts isn't on the way.

So, his ERA could resemble that 4.37 SIERA he's currently sporting sooner rather than later.