Fantasy Baseball: Who is Dylan Bundy, really?

Who is Dylan Bundy? With nearly a full season's worth of innings under Bundy's belt in the majors, Chris Towers tries to figure it out.

How long does it take to really know a baseball player? Player skill sets tend to fluctuate over the course of weeks, months and years, but how long does it take before we can reliably say we know how good a player is?

Through his first 121 innings of work, Madison Bumgarner sported a 2.90 ERA in the majors, and hasn't seen his ERA rise above 3.37 since. Clayton Kershaw, on the other hand, had a 4.26 ERA in 107 2/3 innings in his first season, before ripping off nine straight seasons and counting with an ERA of 2.91 or below. Max Scherzer, on the other hand, had a 3.05 ERA in his rookie season (working often in relief), before scuffling to a 4.12 EA in 170 1/3 innings in his next.

The point being, when it comes to young pitchers especially it can take a while for true colors to show. Many young pitchers are still harnessing their mechanics, or trying to refine secondary pitches, even by the time they reach the majors, which makes pinning down real talent level hard to do.

This is definitely where we are with Dylan Bundy. He wasn't quite as young as the trio of aces mentioned earlier when they made their major-league debuts, but with his history of injuries, Bundy entered the Orioles' rotation last season about as green as a then 23-year-old pitcher could be. He did a decent job, posting a 4.02 ERA, but has seemingly taken a big step forward this season, posting a 2.89 ERA in his first 71 2/3 innings of work.

However, Bundy has been two very different pitchers in his two partial seasons so far, which makes it awfully hard to judge just who he might be moving forward. Let's take a look at Bundy's 2016 season and then his in-progress 2017 campaign and see if we can figure out just who he is.

2016 version

In 2016, Bundy struck out 21.9 percent of opposing batters while walking 8.9 percent, both roughly league average marks. However, he struggled keeping the ball in the yard, allowing 1.48 HR/9 and a 35.9 percent ground-ball rate shows it wasn't just a fluke. He was basically an average pitcher who got below-average results thanks to his homer tendencies.

If you were looking for a comp for Bundy, he was a worse Drew Smyly, who threw pretty hard but had just average swing-and-miss stuff and strikeout rates. His changeup was a strong weapon, but his curveball rarely looked much better than average. Given his youth, and especially his lack of experience, it was reasonable to think Bundy might improve moving forward, but he still showed more flashes of greatness than anything consistent. He needed to build on what he did well to take a step forward, and the addition of another breaking ball seemed like an obvious place to expect that.

2017 version

Bundy added that breaking ball, and has a nice ERA below 3.00, so step forward taken, right? Not exactly.

Bundy's slider has been reintroduced from his prospect days, and it absolutely looks like a plus pitch for him. He has a 22.6 percent whiff rate with it, and even does a pretty good job picking up groundballs with it, leading to just one homer in 35 balls in play. His changeup has also been a weapon, picking up swinging strikes less often than it did a year ago, but also surrendering just one extra-base hit on balls in play.

However, underneath the 2.89 ERA, Bundy's season doesn't look nearly as promising. He has refined his control, lowering his walk rate to 7.0 percent,  but pretty much everything else has moved in the wrong direction. In spite of the addition of the slider, Bundy's strikeout rate has plummeted to 17.3 percent, led by a 9.5 swinging strike rate.

The issue has been the fastball, and it isn't necessarily a fluke. Bundy hasn't expressed much concern about it, but he has lost 2.1 mph on his average fastball since last season, and his results with the pitch have similarly fallen off. His whiff rate has dipped from 10.9 to 6.2 percent, and his ISO allowed on the pitch has risen from .186 to .208 on the pitch as well.

And, Bundy is allowing more flyballs than last year to boot. Put it all together, and while the ERA is sitting pretty at 2.89, the advanced numbers aren't so kind. His 4.04 FIP indicates there is some regression still to come, and his 4.78 SIERA and 4.84 xFIP suggest he has been an even worse pitcher than last season.

Who is Dylan Bundy, really?

This brings us back to the initial question. We have seen two different versions of Bundy, one armed with a fastball he could dial into the mid-90's regularly and was at least an average strikeout pitcher, with room to grow. The other arguably has two plus secondary pitches, but a fastball he can't really rely on. Neither has the makeup of an obvious difference maker, though both have both positive and negative signs to point to.

It's important to remember what we mentioned in the early going: It's probably still too early to know who Bundy is at this point. He's probably a flyball pitcher, sure, but is he really a 6.2 K/9 pitcher as he has been this season? Is the loss of his fastball velocity such an important factor?

It very well may be, so if you think this is who he is now and moving forward, I definitely advise selling high. However, because he is still so young, and still so early in his career – Bundy threw just 38 2/3 innings between High-A and the majors – Bundy is very much still on the developmental path.

He may never get better than this, but it is also entirely possible Bundy is on the verge of figuring something out. You still see flashes of it, with eight strikeouts four starts ago and seven two starts ago.

Numbers and track record matter, of course, but you draw stronger conclusions with more of a track record. Bundy just doesn't have much of one, in either the majors or minors. Based on what we've seen, Bundy isn't much more than a league-average pitcher. But there are still a wide range of outcomes in his future, so don't doom Bundy to his apparent fate just yet.