Marco Gonzales, Seattle Mariners
There are a couple of long shots on this list, but none may be more of a long shot than Gonzales. He’s not a huge strikeout guy (career-high 21.1% mark in ’18), but controls the strike zone well (4.7% walk rate last year), and made a significant leap this past year. Through his first three seasons (77.1 innings), the southpaw owned a 5.47 ERA and was worth exactly 0.0 fWAR. In his most recent 166.2 frames, he posted a 4.00 ERA to go along with a 3.6 fWAR.
The 26-year-old was on his way to an even better year heading into the All-Star Break (3.41 ERA in 113.1 innings), but lost steam down the stretch (5.23 ERA in 53.1 innings). One would assume it was partially due to workload, as his previous MLB high in innings pitched during a single season was 40.
An intriguing development last year for Gonzales was instituting a cutter, which he had never thrown before and ended up tossing it at a 22.2% clip. It was his only offering that produced a strikeout rate above 30.0%, a swinging-strike rate above 10.0%, and a wRC+ allowed below 100.
About Matt Musico
Matt Musico currently manages Chin Music Baseball and contributes to The Sports Daily. His past work has been featured at numberFire, Yahoo! Sports and Bleacher Report. He’s also written a book and created an online class about how to get started as a sports blogger. You can sign up for his email newsletter here.
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