Rookie Wars: Carlos Rodon or Lance McCullers

Fantasy baseball has been flooded with high quality position players this year, from Kris Bryant and Addison Russell to Joey Gallo and Carlos Correa. Those are all guys who made the jump from the Minors to the Majors with relative ease and will need only a few seasons to complete their development as big league players. For young hurlers, however, it can take years to master the art of pitching at the highest level of baseball, and fantasy owners are understandably hesitant to rely on rookie arms.

Aside from your freaks – Jose Fernandez, Noah Syndergaard – it’s rare that a rookie pitcher gets called up and immediately establishes himself as a front-end starter. While Carlos Rodon and Lance McCullers haven’t quite earned that title yet, they have both shown flashes of dominance that could signal big things down the road. While McCullers can’t compete with Rodon’s future value and pedigree, the question that needs answering is who will provide more value this season. Rodon has a few more innings under his belt, but their stat lines have been pretty similar thus far. Let’s dig deeper.

More from FanSided

Rodon was the third pick in the 2014 Draft, and he’s the type of pitcher who takes the mound and lets his raw stuff do the talking. He has a devastating slider that will generate a lot of swings and misses, his fastball sits at around 94 MPH and maxes out at a blazing 99 MPH, and his two-seamer jams hitters and induces tons of groundballs. The biggest red flag is his shaky command. He carries an absurd 5.31 BB/9 through six starts, which would rank as the highest in baseball if he had enough innings to qualify.

On the positive side, he has only allowed one home run so far, and his .328 BABIP suggests he’s been unlucky with weak contact falling for hits. With only 31.2IP of experience between Class A Advanced and Triple A ball, the twenty-two year old is obviously still honing his mechanics and his feel for the strike zone.

With so much raw talent, it wouldn’t come as a huge surprise to see that walk rate start to dip significantly by the end of this season, but in leagues that count BB/9 and WHIP, you’d be better off waiting out Rodon’s growing pains.

McCullers, while almost a year younger, has a polished skill-set that has translated smoothly to the Major Leagues. His biting fastball/curveball combo got him drafted 41st overall out of high school by the Astros, and he can locate both pitches consistently. After making a splash on the fantasy scene with an 11K complete game shutout against Baltimore in his second career start, he has kept his foot on the gas, not allowing more than two earned runs in any start since then and whittling his ERA/FIP down to a sparkling 2.32/2.07.