Happ, J.A.

Happ gets surprisingly little love for a guy who won 3/4's of his games and registered a 2.93 ERA for one of the better teams in baseball. People are probably afraid of either his "low" strikeout total of 119 or his strikeout rate of 6.45 per nine.

As for the total, Adam Wainwright was similarly undervalued in 2009 because of his "low" totals for 2008, Wainwright had 91 K's in 2008, but in only 20 starts and went very low in many leagues on his way to 19 wins and 212 strikeouts over 34 starts. Happ had the same "issue" as he only started 23 times (a normal year is 32 or 33). As for the rates, Happ has a 9.3 K/9 in the minor leagues including a sparkling 10.1 in 2008. The strikeouts will come.

Happ has a pretty large home road split (4.18 ERA at home and 1.99 on the road), but he wasn't bad at Citizen's Bank Field. Many projection systems that rely on in-play results project him poorly because of his .270 BABIP in 2009 but as we have discussed elsewhere, some high and low BABIP rates are merely artifacts of strikeout rates. When Happ was striking out 10.07 in triple-A with a .308 BABIP, he gave up 6.8 in-play hits per nine innings. In 2009 when he struck out 6.45 with that .270, he gave up 6.99 per nine. He actually gave up MORE in-play hits despite the "better" BABIP.