Fantasy Baseball: 4 Undervalued Pitchers Who Own Superb Swinging-Strike Rates

Trevor Cahill, RHP, Kansas City Royals

Swinging-strike rate: 11.6 percent

Trevor Cahill checks in 32nd on the list, tied with new teammate Danny Duffy and Matt Shoemaker. After a quick look at Cahill’s strikeout rates this year (9.8 K/9), it shouldn't surprise anyone that he’s put together a decent season (4.27 FIP). But it’s amazing that it hasn’t blown up in his face with all the bad luck he's had -- he’s pitched with a .335 BABIP in his back pocket and an unreasonably high 18.2 percent home-run-per-fly-ball rate.

The tendency might be to think the homer-per-fly-ball rate is here to say since it’s a three-year trend for Cahill to be above 17 percent, but he’s only thrown 43.1, 65.2 and 72 innings, respectively, in each of the past three campaigns. He worked almost exclusively out of the bullpen for his last three teams prior to joining the San Diego Padres this season, and as a result, we don’t have large samples to go on.

If he can normalize to his career homer-per-fly-ball mark of 12.7 percent while maintaining his 55.1 percent career ground-ball rate, Cahill -- who is somehow still only 29 -- might be a really nice find in free agency this winter for some team. Keeping him healthy will be difficult, as he hasn’t thrown 200 innings since 2012, but there’s immense buy-low potential here -- both in real-life and fantasy baseball.

The strange thing about Cahill’s pitch mix is that his sinker isn’t the pitch of his that's inducing a lot of ground balls (47.2 percent). In fact, it's each of his secondary pitches -- all of which have double-digit swinging-strike rates -- that are at or above 60 percent in terms of grounders induced.

This is a really, really fun repertoire, and he’s going to be quite a find for someone this offseason, it bears repeating. This is a strikeout hill we're willing to die on, pun intended.