Ask The Experts: Lance Brozdowski (Marquee Sports Network)
Lance Brozdowski (Marquee Sports Network) shares his thoughts on pitchers Roki Sasaki, Logan Gilbert, Chase Dollander, Max Meyer and more.
We’ve recruited a star-studded lineup of fantasy analysts for the remainder of The Buzz’s ongoing positional preview series to tackle pivotal questions at each position group that include their draft strategy tips, insights on top prospects and favorite sleeper candidates, arming savvy fantasy managers with the insider knowledge required to dominate their leagues. This week’s guest expert is one of the most insightful pitching evaluators in the entire baseball media ecosystem and my go-to resource for any pitcher-related questions.
Lance Brozdowski is a player development analyst for Marquee Sports Network, which carries Chicago Cubs broadcasts. He focuses on discussing data and how it connects to evaluating and improving players. He also writes a Substack that tracks what pitchers are changing, ranks pitching prospects, and more. He also has a YouTube channel where he discuss nerd-baseball topics. If you’re not already a subscriber, what are you waiting for?
How does Roki Sasaki’s arsenal translate to the major leagues and what variables should fantasy managers monitor as he continues his development and acclimates to pitching in the big leagues? What are realistic expectations for his rookie season?
Roki Sasaki's present mix is very shallow. He has a fastball that regressed in shape between 2023 and 2024, a slider that's too slow for its shape, especially relative to his 97-mph fastball, and an insanely good splitter which I struggle to find any critiques for. The consensus among organizations is that Sasaki started cutting the ball more in 2024 compared to his historic 2023. This led to a worse fastball and regression on his slider (it picked up sweep but lost too much velocity in the process). If anybody will fix his fastball shape and mechanics to get him back to what he flashed in 2023, it's the Dodgers.
I also expect the Dodgers to emphasize velocity on his slider, pushing it into the 90-mph-plus area, a strong divergence from his 83-84 mph slider in NPB last season. The question for me is how much they expand his mix. A curveball is likely, even if his spin capacity is poor. The Dodgers gave Yoshinobu Yamamoto about a month before introducing a new slider and sinker. I'd expect a similar path for Sasaki. I'll defer to FanGraphs Steamer on Sasaki, which gives him a 3.30 ERA in 139 innings with an elite 24 percent K-BB. I expect a slightly worse outcome than that, which isn't a bet against the Dodgers, but simply just an assumption that he takes time to acclimate and adjust rather than the Dodgers accomplishing things in roughly 2-3 months.
Who is your favorite breakout candidate for 2025?
Max Meyer is my 2025 breakout pick. He was terrible last season, but he has a great slider and the Marlins organization made a bunch of changes in their on-field and off-field pitching departments. Given projections bake in regression to the mean and age-related improvement, often the place I find myself looking for breakouts relates to things a projection isn't going to bake in, like a usage or shape change that could nullify prior year results. For Meyer, it's pretty obvious to me he'll start using a sinker more this season and we might see a bigger slider in his mix to combat right-handed hitters. His four-seam shape just isn't good enough to be thrown around 40 percent of the time to either-handedness. Balancing his usage out to align with more modern philosophies feels like a slam-dunk and with Braxton Garrett going down, he has a wide-open path to roughly 140 innings. Steamer projections aren't too far off on his ERA (4.21), but I think they're way undershooting his strikeout rate at 20-21 percent.
Which starting pitcher made the biggest changes (pitch mix, mechanics, etc.) during last season that impacted their on-field performance?
Logan Gilbert made some dramatic changes last season. The central one was a stride direction change to become more linear toward the plate. As a byproduct of this, his slot dropped roughly 10 degrees per Baseball Savant's arm angle metric. He also added a cutter, reshaped his curveball into a sweeper (although it's still tagged as a curveball) and pulled his fastball usage down over 10 percentage points. Steamer rewarded him with a top-15 projection among starting pitchers and pushed him over teammate George Kirby. I can't foresee this much of a rework this coming into next season (duh), but I think everything he did bulletproofed himself from split issues. I'd take him this season over guys like Framber Valdez and Pablo López. I think projections are baking in some regression relative to last season, which I don't see coming.
Who is your favorite top pitching prospect that you think will make the most significant fantasy impact for 2025 and beyond?
The industry is clouded by Chase Dollander's home park to correctly gauge how good of a starting pitching prospect he is. If he pitched in any other park and developed with another organization, I think there'd be a lot more clamoring for him to sit near the top with Jackson Jobe and Andrew Painter as opposed to below them. Dollander is a fastball, slider, changeup, and curveball pitcher with a below-average release (5.5') and average extension. He has a plus fastball, sitting 96 with two-plane carry from his low slot. His -4.0 VAA is a combination of the approach of the pitch but also how consistently he locates it at the top of the zone, given how location-dependent VAA is.
His slider emulates the old Warthen slider shape with some vertical break and glove-side movement, but still hard enough that Stuff+ models should like it a lot (88 mph average velocity). He also has a peripheral changeup and curveball. The latter is a hair too slow to be a deep-count weapon (78 mph) and the former still needs a bit of work. The slider shape and his command are good enough that he'll rely heavily on both to either handedness. On top of all this, he has present average command that you can argue is already above-average.
Coors is going to hurt his fastball movement a lot. I get it. But if there's anybody who can post a 2018 Germán Márquez season more than once, it's Dollander. I'm buying the fastball and slider shape here, and hoping the Rockies can not mess him up.
Which starting pitchers are you going to be monitoring closely during spring training and what are you looking for specifically?
Tough question to answer. I often feel like I spot changes in spring or we hear about changes from beat writers and I tend to gather a list of "guys to monitor" off that. I'll say that I'm most interested to monitor what changes bad pitchers from last season suggest in spring they've made. This includes guys like Justin Verlander (any potential usage change? Did Buster Posey convince him to add a pitch?), Griffin Canning (is he throwing a ton of sweepers?), Graham Ashcraft (is he throwing a curveball?), Edward Cabrera (does he have any zone feel?), Walker Buehler (do the Red Sox kill the four-seam to righties?). And although we may not get clear answers on a lot of these, we should be able to take educated guesses based off spring usage and approach.