If you’ve never heard it used in a fantasy sense, to “plant your flag” in a player basically means that said player is your guy. Someone who you will reach for in standard drafts, overpay for in auctions and offer up whatever it takes in a trade. Plant your flag players are players that you are fully backing and expect big things out of and you’ll defend them until your last breath goes out.

So we reached out to each of the baseball contributors to get their plant your flag guys. This article will feature their picks for starting pitchers.

Jeff Clowers – @ethosjeff on Twitter

Jeffery Springs – ATH

This feels like my riskiest pick of the bunch but I have long been a fan of Springs’ profile and I am also riding a particular hunch when it comes to park factors. Let’s focus on the player first.

Since joining the Rays in 2021, Springs has accumulated a 2.63 ERA and 1.08 WHIP with 10.53 strikeouts per nine innings. Sounds like an ace to me!

Sadly, those four seasons count for only 229.0 innings pitched across 86 games (35 starts) so betting on volume from Springs is going to be a bit of a fool’s errand this season as he has only thrown 33 frames since returning from Tommy John reconstruction.

Just prior to blowing his arm out early in 2023, Springs was in the midst of pitching as well as he had in his career, posting bests in xERA (1.66), xBA (.153), strikeout rate (43.6%), hard-hit rate (30.8%) and Barrel % (3.8%). There were some bumps in the road upon his return late in 2024 but even then he showed reasonable stuff with a 29.9 K% and a 3.70 xERA.

Given more time to rehab and regain velocity over the winter, I’m a believer that Springs will be able to provide quality outings even if they are on the short end.

So that’s the profile – what about the park?

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