While most people were wrapping up their day on Tuesday, the Indians, Reds and Diamondbacks shook up the MLB world when they finalized a three-team deal with some major parts being passed around. In a nutshell, the deal looks like this:

• Cleveland Indians receive: RHP Trevor Bauer, RHP Matt Albers, and RHP Bryan Shaw from Arizona and OF Drew Stubbs from Cincinnati
• Cincinnati Reds receive: OF Shin-Soo Choo, INF Jason Donald, and cash ($3.5 mil to offset salaries) from Cleveland
• Arizona Diamondback receive: SS Didi Gregorius from Cincinnati and LHP Tony Sipp and 1B Lars Anderson from Cleveland Read the rest of this entry »

The wait was well worth it. Stephen Strasburg finally pitched (mostly) a full season with the Washington Nationals, and proved the Tommy John surgery couldn’t stop the one-time best prospect in the game. While Strasburg was obviously great, he was also held back by an innings limit, which caused him to miss the final month of the season. It also prevented him from going deeper into games early in the year, as Davey Johnson wanted to preserve his stud pitcher as long as he could. Despite his dominance, Strasburg has never recorded an out during the eighth inning. But all of that is about to change. Strasburg is expected to enter next season with no restrictions. That means he won’t be shut down early, and he should be allowed to work deeper into games. Based on the potential he’s shown thus far, that could make him the top pitcher in fantasy next season.

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Matt Moore. Aside from a (nearly) full season from Stephen Strasburg, was there anyone the majority of fantasy owners were more excited about heading into the year? Well, okay, maybe Yu Darvish. But seriously, after coming up for a cup of coffee and striking out 15 batters in 9.1 innings in 2011 and then allowing just one run in 10.0 innings in the playoffs, the hype was deafening, and for good reason. Moore is a lefty who averages in the mid-90’s with his fastball. That’s not typical of a southpaw. His minor league strikeout record was ridiculous, as his lowest K/9 was 11.5. Crazy! But alas, in 2012, he was a bit of a disappointment. At least to me. But maybe my expectations were too high.

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Prior to the start of the 2012 season when we did our 10 Bold Predictions, I had high hopes for Trevor Cahill. He had taken a step backwards in his third full season with Oakland, but had several things working in his favor that had me thinking there were bigger and better things on the horizon for him. After all, he was just 24 years old, a ground-ball pitcher whose strikeout rate had increased each season, and now he was headed to the National League to pitch in a notoriously weak-hitting division filled with pitcher-friendly ballparks. Maybe his new home was hitter-friendly, but there seemed to be enough working in his favor that would counter that. Unfortunately, things didn’t go as planned and left me wondering if there was any more upside to Cahill or if we had reached the ceiling and the 48th spot in which he inhabits on Zach Sanders’ Starting Pitcher End of Season Rankings was as high as he’d go. Read the rest of this entry »

Plenty of pitchers go through an early season manic phase before crashing back to earth in the second half, but few who pitched as well as Lance Lynn did after being thrust into the rotation find their jobs as unsecure the next season as he does going into 2013.

Lynn was given his shot at starting late in camp last year, less than a month before his regular season debut, and only because it appeared as though Chris Carpenter wouldn’t be healthy in time to break camp with the team. Lynn adapted to the role well and went 8-1 in his first 10 starts with a 2.54 ERA and a 1.07 WHIP. His next 10 starts were less encouraging as he went 5-3 with a 4.40 ERA and a 1.43 WHIP.Still, even after he made the start that finally pushed him out of the rotation on August 24, Lynn’s overall line wasn’t horrific by any stretch of the imagination. A 13-5 record with a 3.93 ERA, a 1.34 WHIP, and 9.0 K/9 is certainly workable, even if he was in the midst of something of a swoon at the time. Read the rest of this entry »

In some leagues, reliever-eligible starters are useful for their ability to rack up starters for a team punting saves. But usually it’s the starter-eligible relievers that can keep ratios down out of the starter spot. Some times, the move back to starting from relieving can work out for the pitcher in question. But usually they are just about as good as they were when they started before. Wade Davis will attempt to buck these trends and be useful next year.

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After weeks of reviewing hitters, position by position by position, it is time for me to offer up my response to Zach Sanders’s rankings of starting pitchers.

As with Zach’s rankings, we are limiting ourselves to pitchers with more than 140 IP this year, giving us a list of 101 starting pitchers, including a few whose values varied greatly between 5×5 and linear weights points leagues. One slight change from hitters to pitchers – because an IP is so valuable in linear weights (almost every team should be using up all 1500 IP over the season in an ottoneu league), we are going to rank pitchers based on Points/IP, not based on total points.

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Yu Darvish’s successful first year in the U.S. was full of some ups and downs. His fantasy owners should have been happy with his final results of 16 Wins, a sub-4 ERA, especially in Texas, and 221 strikeouts. Some signs point to Davish improving during the 2012 season and those changes may follow him into the 2013 season.

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The short version of the old book on James Shields that he was a flyball and strikeout guy with a home run problem. That version of James Shields might care about leaving a home park that suppresses home runs. Except that version of James Shields doesn’t exist any more and his new home park is even friendlier.

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The emergence of R.A. Dickey as an ace-level pitcher made for one of the best stories in baseball. The 37-year-old knuckleballer had started to show promising signs in 2010, but everything finally came together last year. Six seasons after he started tinkering with the pitch, Dickey seemed to finally master the knuckleball. He was rewarded with the Cy Young award, and finished first overall in Zach Sanders’ pitcher rankings. While Dickey’s 2012 performance deserves to be celebrated, he actually comes with some risk.

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