Fantasy Baseball 2019 Waiver Wire Advice: Homer Bailey Might Be Breaking Out

Last season, right around this time of year, I wrote that Patrick Corbin’s breakout was real. The lie detector test determined I was telling the truth.

I’m always on the lookout for those types of players so I can either add them on waivers or try to trade for them. The first such pitcher to catch my eye is Homer Bailey of the Kansas City Royals.

Bailey has given us all many, many reasons to not buy this early success. He hasn’t posted an ERA below 5.59 since 2015, and has been higher than 6.00 for the last three consecutive seasons. Bailey, though, was a supreme prospect once upon a time, and has had MLB success before. This season, there are two intriguing aspects to his relatively nice start. First, he’s striking out more than 10 batters per nine, his best rate since 2016, when he only pitched 23 innings.

In his dreadful campaigns, Bailey was striking out fewer than seven per nine, so I’ve looked into the genesis of this development.

Much like Corbin in 2018, Bailey has been using a new pitch and it’s got hitters baffled. Bailey has dramatically increased the use of his splitter, upping it to 26.6% this year, up from 15.9% in 2018. He has also started throwing more curveballs, although not to the extent that he’s firing up that splitter; conversely, he’s shown an 11% drop in fastballs thrown. That’s great, because he has aggressively unexceptional velocity on his fastball, and it’s been a catastrophic pitch for him value-wise.

According to Fangraphs, Bailey’s curveball has been worth 1.64 runs above average, while the split-finger has been worth 3.72 runs. Unsurprisingly, his results are better! Bailey hasn’t suddenly transformed into an ace now; he’s sporting a decidedly not good 4.30 ERA, and a career-low 35.1% ground ball rate. But he’s also posted a 1.09 WHIP thus far, a 2.74 BB/9, 3.86 K/BB ratio, and a promising 3.36 FIP.

Bailey is not going to be for you what Corbin was a season ago. While Corbin wasn’t previously an ace he had been a useful fantasy SP. Bailey, on the other hand, has been an abomination for several years in a row, his usefulness peaking in 2013. If he is fantasy relevant in 2019, that’s an accomplishment arguably on the scale of Corbin’s 2018 explosion.