Fantasy Baseball: 5 Pitchers Who Must Build Off a Strong Second Half

Blake Snell, SP, Tampa Bay Rays

For a team that continually has stud starting pitcher prospects like the Tampa Bay Rays do, it looks like southpaw Blake Snell has a shot at being the next one in line.

His second MLB season doesn't look fantastic on the surface -- his 4.04 ERA in 129.1 innings wasn't bad, but it was accompanied by a 4.72 SIERA, and 10.8% walk rate -- but there is plenty to get excited about with regard to the left-hander moving forward.

Snell's age-24 campaign didn't get off to a good start in the bigs, as he struggled to a 4.85 ERA with an even worse 5.59 SIERA. If he registered enough innings to qualify for the ERA title, that first-half SIERA would've been the worst in baseball. It doesn't help that those numbers were "supported" by a 19.4% strikeout rate and 14.5% walk rate to go along with a 38.4% fly-ball rate and 36.5% hard-hit rate allowed.

But as is the theme here, the young hurler flipped the switch following the midsummer classic. Over Snell's final 77.1 innings of work, his ERA dropped to 3.49 (with a much more manageable 4.12 SIERA) with a 23.7% strikeout rate and 8.0% walk rate that were accompanied by a similar fly-ball rate (37.3%), but a much lower hard-hit rate (30.3%).

Snell was able to get opposing hitters to chase pitches out of the zone much more often in the second half (25.5% to 34.0%) while also watching his swinging-strike rate rise from 8.8% to 12.4%. He didn't have as much success with his changeup compared to 2016, but hitters only posted a 69 wRC+ (nice) and a .111 ISO against his slider this past year, a big drop-off from 2016 (156 and .235, respectively).