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When Dylan Bundy got his first taste of the majors in September of 2012, that cup of coffee was expected to be just the start of a long career full of All-Star games and Cy Youngs Awards. Bundy tossed a scoreless inning on Sept. 25, 2012, and, though he was just 19 at the time, it didn't seem like it would be long before we saw Bundy routinely starting in the majors.
Instead, he didn't throw another pitch in the majors for 1,290 days. Bundy, like so many young pitchers, underwent Tommy John surgery, and then suffered a series of setbacks that largely ruined his 2014 and 2015 seasons as he recovered. Service time concerns pushed him onto the major-league roster to open this season, but the Orioles opted to have him pitch in relief for the first few months of the season.
Bundy finally made his first major-league start Sunday, three years after emerging as the top pitching prospect in baseball. His path hasn't been how anyone might have hoped, but Bundy is still just 23 and still possesses a fastball he can dial up to the high-90's. That means Fantasy players should still be interested in what he can do.
Especially because he had been absolutely overpowering in the month before getting his turn in the rotation. The Orioles started stretching him out in June, allowing him to throw what was at the time a season-high 51 pitches on June 4. He tossed 17 innings in his next seven appearances, and looked unbeatable, striking out 30.6 percent of batters and walking just 5.6 percent. He surrendered just two runs in that span, while holding opposing hitters to a .246/.310/.292 line.
This was the Bundy we've been hoping to catch a glimpse of over the last four years, and he did it while throwing at least 46 pitches in five of seven outings. It's not like he was just blasting through lineups for an inning at a time with max effort. The Orioles were ramping him up to start, and he was putting it all together, it seemed.
Of course, his first actual start, Sunday against the Rays, didn't go quite as well as all that. Bundy was pulled after throwing 70 pitches in 3 1/3 innings with four strikeouts on his line, but also three walks, five hits and four runs on three homers. Those results certainly weren't what we were looking for, but there are reasons to be interested here, starting with that fastball.
Bundy has averaged 95.4 MPH with his four-seam fastball this season, and was able to keep that up in the outing, averaging 96.2 MPH. He wasn't able to keep it up all start long, but Bundy was sitting at 98 in the first few fastball-heavy innings, and hit 96 as deep as pitch No. 45. Considering he has only thrown more than 45 pitches six times this season, that isn't a huge reason to be concerned.
Of course, it might be an open question whether Bundy can truly stretch out and be an effective starter, but if his body can handle it, he probably has the repertoire. Bundy has a changeup and curveball he has thrown about 18 percent of the time each this season, and the changeup has been especially useful; he has a 25.9 swinging strike rate with it, good for third in baseball. The curveball hasn't been quite as good so far (5.0 percent whiff rate), though he has yet to give up an extra-base hit on the pitch on 140 pitches, so that is a pretty good sign.
That changeup has actually helped him post reverse splits thus far, though Bundy hasn't been particularly good against either side so far: .818 OPS to LH, .859 to RH. He has also been an extreme flyball pitcher, a tendency that bit him in his first start, as he gave up three homers to the Rays, all on the fastball. If he can't turn that around, Bundy has no chance to last as a starter.
Still, the stuff is promising enough that taking a flier on Bundy makes sense. The transition to starting again could be a rough one, but we've seen Danny Duffy manage it with tremendous results in Kansas City recently. Once he built up his pitch count, Duffy's stuff continued to play up in the rotation, and he has been an extremely useful option for Fantasy players since late May.
Bundy has less of a track record than Duffy did at the time, but from what we've seen so far, I believe he has the talent to make it work. Pitching hasn't been as deep as we expected this season, but guys like Duffy, Matt Shoemaker and Michael Fulmer have emerged from relative obscurity to make a difference, and Bundy has the talent to be the next. If you need help at pitching, betting on that talent makes some sense.
