Jake Faria

Simply put, Faria is not as good as he was in 2017 nor is he as bad as he was in 2018. The advanced metrics show Faria was a bit out over his skis in 2017, but they also show he was not as bad as the 2018 surface stats look. He had a major oblique injury that washed away a good chunk of his season, but he was not pitching well in advance of that injury. Faria struggled to strand runners and gave up too many free passes. He's a unique pitcher in that his best pitch is his changeup, so he needs to get ahead early to get to it. He struggled with fastball command last year and pitched behind in too many counts, which is why we saw his fastball utilization jump seven percentage points. Bad things will happen when your below-average fastball is overused. He is one that will benefit from the opener strategy, as it will reduce exposure of his mediocre repertoire within a game.

Rays pitchers not named Chris Archer are rather boring to write up because they are all the same guy. Fastballs up, changeups down and a breaking ball to keep the hitters off balance. Faria followed that same tried and true recipe last season, first at Triple-A Durham and then at the major-league level before an abdominal strain ended his time in the rotation in September. His statistical profile, with all of its plusses and minuses, is very much like Jake Odorizzi’s. He will get strikeouts (8.7 K/9 last season), he will allow some home runs (1.14 HR/9) and likely deliver an ERA on the north side of 3.50. Now that Alex Cobb is gone, this is the best changeup on the roster and he has been deadly against lefties due to it. Now, he just needs a better breaking ball to help neutralize righties who combined to hit nine of the 11 homers against Faria last season.

Faria started 13 games apiece at Double-A Montgomery and Triple-A Durham, putting together a 5-10 record that belied a much better overall performance. The 23-year-old generated a 1-6 record in the former stop, but held opponents to a .211 average over 83.1 innings. He was promoted in late June despite the unsightly win-loss tally and validated that move by excelling at the higher level, upping his record to 4-4 at Durham while giving up only 46 hits and whiffing 64 in 67.2 innings. His slight first-half hiccup in 2016 aside, the right-hander's ascent through the Rays' organization has been impressive. The 23-year-old brings plenty of strikeout upside (three minor league stints with double-digit K/9 rates) and solid control, making him a prospect to watch for fantasy purposes. A bit more seasoning at the Triple-A level is likely necessary, but it wouldn't be surprising to see Faria with the big league club at some point in 2017.

In a farm system headlined by several well-known pitching prospects, Faria is under the radar. That said, his profile is similar to that of Taylor Guerrieri and Brent Honeywell, and after pitching 75.1 innings at Double-A Montgomery last year, Faria has more experience in the upper levels than Guerrieri and Honeywell combined. The 6-foot-4 righty has a big fastball and a good changeup that allowed him to post a 2.51 ERA, 1.09 WHIP, and 96 strikeouts in 75.1 innings last season in the Southern League. That performance followed a 74.1-inning run at High-A where he allowed just 11 earned runs (1.33 ERA). As always, with Rays pitching prospects the tricky thing is determining when they will reach the big leagues, and in Faria’s case, if the curveball will be good enough to profile as a useful third pitch against big league hitters. Don’t look for him to debut until 2017, at which point he could have established himself as a top-50 prospect.