Fantasy Baseball 2017: Stephen Strasburg or Jose Fernandez

When drafting your fantasy baseball team, there are risky players that could be worth it. Stephen Strasburg and Jose Fernandez are two of them. Who would you rather have?

There are a lot of strategies that come into effect when drafting your fantasy baseball team. Do you avoid a certain team’s players? No rookies? Pass on the injury prone? Every decision you make will affect how your team looks at the end of the draft. The latter is what I’m here to talk about. When looking for your ace starting pitcher, of these two, who would you draft? Stephen Strasburg or Jose Fernandez?

That decision is not as easy as it seems.

I’ll start with Strasburg. He started the season strong. In his first 11 starts, he had a 2.69 ERA, 1.086 WHIP and a 9-0 record. He had 90 strikeouts and 20 walks in 73.2 innings. He then missed the second half of June before returning on July 3.

In his next nine starts, Strasburg had a 4.82 ERA, 1.18 WHIP and a 5-4 record. In those 52.1 innings, he had 62 strikeouts and another 20 walks. His August 17 outing was the worst of them all. He allowed nine runs on nine hits and three walks in 1.2 innings against the Colorado Rockies before finding himself on the DL again.

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He was activated for the Sept. 7 start, but was removed in the third inning. He was diagnosed with a strained flexor mass and his status for the rest of the season is in question. This will likely be the second season in a row that he does not reach 25 starts. He reached at least 30 starts just twice in his career, 2013 and 2014.

Do you want to use an early round pick on a starting pitcher that may not pitch a full season’s worth of innings? I know I wouldn’t.

However, Fernandez hasn’t been the healthiest pitcher either. He made only eight starts in the 2014 season before undergoing Tommy John surgery.

His first start back was on July 2, 2015 against the San Francisco Giants. He went six innings, allowing three runs on seven hits while striking out six. Fernandez looked good, but didn’t pitch longer than seven innings.

He started the 2016 with a clean bill of health. Fernandez has made 27 starts. He went nine days between starts three times, one of them being the All-Star break. He’s had a couple of bad outings, but his strikeout total is what fantasy owners draft him for. Fernandez actually gained speed behind his fastball, 94.9 in 2013 and 95.2 in 2016.

The downside to owning Fernandez this season is that the Miami Marlins front office may shut him down this season. The team did have an innings cap for him one year after surgery. He surpassed that, but is still scheduled to make his Wednesday start against the Atlanta Braves.

The only way he will continue to pitch is if the Marlins remain in the playoff hunt. As of this writing, the Marlins are 15 games back of the National League East, but five games behind the New York Mets for the second Wild Card spot.

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Heading into 2017, this decision becomes more difficult. Strasburg will have the offseason to get healthy and start next season on the right foot. Fernandez hasn’t suffered any setbacks this season and with more time removed from Tommy John surgery, he should pitch 180 to 200 innings in 2017.

You will have better clarity of who to draft once I put out my 2017 starting pitcher rankings in the winter. But, in my preliminary rankings, I will easily slot Fernandez over Strasburg.