Zach Eflin
Who the Eflin is he?
Zach Eflin is a former 1st round pick in the 2012 draft and he turned 26 in April. He also has a fun last name you could use in fantasy team names like “Are you Eflin Kidding me?”
Anyways, he is entering his fifth season in the bigs with the Phillies and had a pretty solid year in 2019. In his first two years he struggled, and had ERAs above 5.00. But in 2018, he dropped it down to a 4.36 ERA.
And last year, he lowered it to a 4.13 ERA, a 10-13 record, two complete games, and a 7.1 K/9 rate. I thought he was an under the radar Phillies starting pitcher last season, and he still is this year.
Eflin would have had more starts but he was dealing with back spasms. He would eventually make his first 2020 start against the Yankees.
He went four innings against a good hitting team and gave up just four hits with five strikeouts. Although this is a small sample size, I believe the young 26 year old will continue his trend of lowering his ERA.
Eflin has potential to lower his ERA under 4.00 this year and his first start against the Yankees gave me extra hope. He is worth adding to your watchlist to keep an eye on. He is only rostered on 6.6% of fantasy baseball teams, and I am part of that 6.6%.
In addition, he is on a solid Phillies team with a lot of star power which could provide him extra fantasy value in the Win category. The Phillies are a key team to look for in the playoffs led by Realmuto and Harper. Eflin could be a nice back of the rotation pitcher for the Phillies this season.
Make sure to check the box score for his next start against the Orioles.