2015 Fantasy BaseballAndrew Miller

2015 Fantasy Baseball: Week 1 Rookie Report

This will be a short edition of the Rookie Report due to the young state of the season and the limited number of games and appearances.

Chris Heston made his second Major League start Wednesday, picking up a win over Arizona in six innings. He struck out five and walked two, while allowing zero earned runs (two unearned). Both runs actually scored due to Heston miscues, including a wild pick-off throw and a wild pitch. But he pitched reasonably well filling in for the disabled Matt Cain. Heston doesn’t have gaudy minor-league numbers, but he looks like he might be able to have some value in deep mixed leagues. According to Giants’ beat writer Andrew Baggarly, Heston is scheduled to start the Giants’ home opener Monday. I wouldn’t pick him up, but he’s someone to keep an eye on especially with both Cain and Jake Peavy injured. 

Daniel Norris was arguably the most hyped pitching prospect in spring training who seemed ready for the Majors, and he picked up his first big-league win Thursday against the Yankees. He pitched 5.2 innings, giving up two solo shots in the sixth to account for the two earned runs he allowed. He struck out five and walked two. Mike Podhorzer touched on Norris’s control here, and it’s still something he needs to work on: he threw less than 60 percent of his pitches for strikes in his 2015 debut. Short outings will probably be the norm for Norris due to his control, but he was close to a strikeout an inning, which is also something you can expect from him. The projections systems peg him for basically a strikeout an inning this year, and he struck out 10.6 per nine innings in the minors. I’d pick him up in some 12-team leagues and deeper leagues.

I heard some hype for Kendall Graveman this spring, but the new Oakland A couldn’t even make it out of the fourth inning in his first start against Texas. He gave up eight runs (seven earned) in 3.1 innings with more home runs (two) than strikeouts (one). The Rangers had only scored three runs in their first three games against Oakland. Graveman had a career 58 percent ground ball rate in the minors, but his strikeout rate was an ugly 6 per nine. In the future he’s a more valuable pitcher to Oakland than he would be to your fantasy team. There’s just nowhere near enough upside here to consider rostering him.

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