This entire offseason we’ve all been hearing about Joe Musgrove and Mitch Keller, and occasionally even Chris Archer. Musgrove has been a baseball twitter favorite for a while, due to his well-rounded pitch mix. And people think with Searage gone he’ll be able to utilize it much better. With Keller, people look at his underlying stats as proof that his debut was actually much more successful than it seeme d, and that he’s due for a big 2020. Even Archer, with all the times he’s let us all down, has people excited following a strong second half where an adjustment to his pitch usage, yielded solid results.

All three of these guys have been labeled as ‘sleepers’ this offseason by many writers, including myself. I even wrote an article a few months ago discussing Keller and Archer, and for good reason too. At their current ADPs, all in the 200-300 range, these guys all have the potential to return solid value, especially Keller in my opinion. I have no problem with the hype these guys have gotten this offseason, but I wouldn’t call any of them sleepers at this point. If you want a true sleeper, what if I told you that the Pirates’ best pitcher could be a guy that almost no one is talking about, and even fewer people are drafting?

Trevor Williams? Nope.

Richard Rodriguez? Not him either, but he’s also being severely under drafted.

Kela? Crick? Burdi? Brault? No, no, no, and no.

With how bad the Pirates 40-Man is currently, you’ve probably already figured out who I’m going to be talking about, but if you haven’t then let me introduce you all to Chad Kuhl, my favorite sleeper pick for 2020 and on. Chad Kuhl isn’t exactly a new name; he had some fantasy relevance as a streamer from 2016 to 2018, but he’s probably better known for his elite fastball velocity (16th highest average FB velo among starters in 2018) than his performance. On top of that, Kuhl had Tommy John in 2018, and hasn’t thrown a pitch in a game since June 26, 2018; so why am I talking about Chad Kuhl? Well, just keep reading and I’m sure you’ll find out.

First of all, I just want to assess the risk associated with Kuhl. As I just mentioned, Kuhl had Tommy John in 2018 and has not thrown in a game since. Some guys get TJ and come back feeling better than ever. Some guys are never the same pitcher again. Some see almost no difference. We have no way of knowing who Kuhl will be upon returning. But in an ideal world, he will be at least a similar pitcher to who he was before the injury, so that’s how I will be assessing him. It’s also important to recognize that Kuhl is not guaranteed a spot in the rotation, so that is another risk that comes with him. He’ll likely be battling with Steven Brault for the 5th spot in the Pirates rotation, which is encouraging, but nothing is guaranteed. There is a possibility he ends up in the bullpen, which could hurt his fantasy value. But that is also an interesting scenario, so I’ll talk about why that’s interesting later as well.

(At the time this was written he was battling with Brault, but Brault just got injured which likely means that only Derek Holland (and his 8.10 ERA in 8 starts last year) is the only person left who could stop Kuhl from ending up in the rotation.)

Ok, so now that all of that is out of the way, let’s talk some Chad Kuhl.

Chad Kuhl was never a big name prospect at all. A ninth-round pick out of the University of Delaware, Kuhl was successful in the minors off the back of his maturity and above-average low-90s sinker that helped him generate an elite GB%. But his lack of stuff or secondary pitches limited him from ever ranking much higher than barely top 20 in the Pirates system. After dominating Triple-A in 2016, he earned a midseason call up, and found a decent amount of success as a rookie. In 14 starts (70.2 IP), Kuhl had a respectable 3.95 FIP, and showed potential in starts like July 17th against Nationals (6 IP, 1 H, 0 BB, 5 K), but his lack of strikeout stuff limited him to mostly a streamer option in fantasy.

The start of 2017 is where Kuhl starts to get pretty interesting. After being a low-90s guy as a prospect, and averaging 93.2 MPH on his fastball in 2016, Kuhl came out in 2017 looking like a new pitcher, averaging 95.5 and even touching triple digits. Despite this increase in velocity, his performance didn’t increase much, as he finished the year with fairly similar numbers as he had in 2016. If you take out one really bad start he had (April 24th vs the Cubs: 1.2 IP, 8 H, 9 ER, 4 BB), then the ERA drops from 4.35 to 3.87 and the WHIP drops from 1.47 to 1.41, but even then he wasn’t great in terms of fantasy.

Again in 2018, before he got injured, he was more or less the same pitcher, as he was sporting a 4.55 ERA and a 1.43 WHIP at the time he went down. For his career, through 313.0 IP, Kuhl has put up 3.7 fWAR, with a 4.37 ERA, a 4.30 FIP, and a 1.42 WHIP, so it seems as if he established himself as a pretty average pitcher. Especially with his career 20.4 K% and 9.2 BB%, Kuhl really wasn’t a guy with much fantasy value and wasn’t worth getting excited over. His 2018 was actually especially unimpressive considering his xwOBA was an unsightly .369, and his xwOBA, xSLG, xwOBACON, and barrel% were all bottom two among all pitchers.

At this point, you’re probably getting frustrated wondering why I’m even talking about such a painfully average pitcher, so let’s just get into that. Remember what I said about how Kuhl’s below-average secondaries kept him from prospect relevance? Well, does a .216 xwOBA slider and a .197 xwOBA curveball sound below-average to you? If you’re not sure, from 2017-2018 Kuhl’s curveball ranked 11th best in xwOBA among starters, and his slider ranked 9th, sandwiched right between Sonny Gray and Luis Severino.