Fantasy Baseball: Aaron Sanchez, Blue Jays' ace?

Aaron Sanchez has put his command issues aside and surprisingly emerged as the Blue Jays' best pitcher. Chris Towers takes a look at the impressive young right-hander.

The Blue Jays' best pitcher through the first two months is young, former top prospect with a blazing fastball. Just like we all expected coming into the season.

After showing flashes of his upside, this young phenom is putting it all together, combining a massive ground-ball rate with improved strikeout stuff and a better understanding of the strike zone. Armed with one of the toughest sinkers in baseball, he has managed to mitigate the effects of the Rogers Centre, and has been one of the leagues' best breakout stories as a result.

And it isn't Marcus Stroman. Surprise!

Stroman was everyone's favorite Blue Jays breakout, and for good reason. Despite his diminutive stature, Stroman dominated in four starts after returning from knee surgery last season. Based on his minor league track record, Stroman had huge strikeout potential waiting to be unlocked, which would only take him to the next level.

But while Stroman has struggled to the tune of a 4.82 ERA, he has been eclipsed by teammate Aaron Sanchez (and Marco Estrada and J.A. Happ so far). Sanchez didn't engender the kind of excitement Stroman did coming into this season because his flaws were laid so bare last season.

Despite sporting a similar pedigree as Stroman, Sanchez slogged through a thoroughly underwhelming run in the Blue Jays rotation last season, and ultimately found himself pitching out of the bullpen. The results were fine in both roles in terms of run prevention, but Sanchez struck out just 6.5 batters per nine out of the 'pen and 5.7 as a starter, with real control problems in his 11 starts limiting his utility further.

Still, Sanchez entered the season as a 23-year-old with a career 3.54 ERA in the minors, and had the kind of stuff anyone could see might someday lead to good results. If he could just figure out how to find the right mix in and out of the strike zone. So far, he has found it.

Sanchez hasn't had a ton of success inducing swings on pitches outside of the strike zone in his career, which means he really needs to pound the zone in order to avoid walks. He has made a move in the right direction, throwing 48.8 percent of his pitches in the strike zone this season, up from 46.3 percent. The rate of swings at pitches outside of the strike zone (24.6 percent) and overall (42.6) are hardly up at all, so the key to Sanchez's improvement really does seem to be simply attacking the zone more aggressively.

Especially on the first pitch, where he throws a strike 59.5 percent of the time. Last season that was just 53.4 percent, and his command is a big reason. Opposing batters have to be more aggressive against a pitcher who is hitting the strike zone more, and that's what we've seen, with a swing rate on the first pitch against Sanchez up to 28.3 percent, from 24.7 percent last season.

With Sanchez's ability to keep the ball on the ground, it isn't necessarily a bad thing that batters are swinging more often early in the count. He hasn't been able to rack up big swinging strike rates (8.5 percent this season; up from 7.0 last), but his 58.5 percent groundball rate means he isn't at much risk for giving up hits that will really hurt.

We've also seen the introduction of a third pitch to Sanchez's repertoire, which seems to be helping too. Sanchez threw just 67 changeups all last season, a total he has already eclipsed by 30 this season, with good results. Opposing batters are hitting just .087 against the pitch when they put it in play, and he has a 12.4 percent swinging strike rate with it. Combine that with a curveball that went from pretty mediocre last season to an actual out pitch (16.9 percent whiff rate, 9.7 percent last season) and Sanchez looks to have taken a real step forward this season.

Sanchez still leans heavily on his fastball, but he has supplemented them with the development of two useful secondary pitches. Add in improved command and we're talking about pretty typical development for a young pitcher; he just happens to be a young pitcher who consistently ranked among the best prospects in baseball in the minors.

How high can his upside be? Well, he still has room for improvement when it comes to his control, despite the improvements he has made. It might be hard for him to improve too much more with strikeouts, but a K% of 21.4 is nothing to sneeze at either, especially if he can sustain and even build on this improved control.

Sanchez probably won't ever be a Fantasy ace, but he's already been a hugely valuable piece for Fantasy players, who likely picked him up off waivers early in the season. He ranks 20th among starting pitchers in FIP, right behind fellow groundballer Jaime Garcia; he is also ninth in xFIP and 22nd in SIERA.

Sanchez's ultimate destination may still be in the bullpen, of course -- that's been the thought by at least some talent evaluators throughout his career. However, right now, he looks every bit the part of a top-flight starting pitcher, and Fantasy players should be mighty happy to have him on their side.