In yesterday’s Corey Kluber article, a commenter pointed out a Steamer quirk – only three starting pitchers are projected for a sub-3.00 ERA. Last season, 22 qualified pitchers finished the year under the 3.00 benchmark. If you set the threshold at 50 innings pitched, 39 starters were below a 3.00 ERA. Clearly Steamer is crazy. Right? I mean, we have to expect a lot more than three pitchers to demonstrate excellence.

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So many things happened. Everyone was traded. Everyone was released. And everyone was signed. It’ll fuel RotoGraphs pieces for weeks to come. You’ll see more in-depth pieces on these guys. But, with the dust settled, it seems like a good time to run all through some of the players that changed addresses, and talk a little bit about how they may have changed their fantasy outlooks for the coming season.

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Jose Fernandez was having a dominating 2014 season until he needed Tommy John surgery last May. The 22-year-old righty could be one of the more dominant arms in the game when he returns. Fantasy owners would love to have him available mid-season as a boost their team.  While he is on the disabled list (DL), some other pitcher must be filling in for him. Fernandez’s projection should include this replacement pitcher’s production. Here is a break down of how I put on value on players who will miss significant time.

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Many fantasy baseball players don’t readily like or even accept Francisco Liriano. He walks too many guys, a lot of them say, and he’s a major health risk. He’s unreliable and difficult to predict, they probably feel.

All those things are true, but probably not quite to the extent that some rotisserie and head-to-head owners believe them to be. Perhaps even before they had become less true since Liriano joined the Pittsburgh Pirates, but at least after that event. All those things have generally helped to depress his cost, even since that move, as well. That should remain true after a season in which he finished 71^st among starting pitchers in Zach Sanders’ end-of-season rankings for the position and has rejoined the Bucs. That’s a good thing.

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This 30-part series will look at the projected Top 5 freshman contributors for each big league club for the year ahead. The rankings take into consideration a mixture of ceiling, readiness and potential playing time allocation, which is to say some players with lower ceilings may be ranked ahead of others with higher ceilings because they project to have a greater impact in the coming season.

In a Nutshell: The Pirates have pretty solid depth on the field, although the catcher and shortstop positions feature fringe-average starters. The pitching staff has a couple of question marks.

1. Tyler Glasnow, RHP: The Pirates should open 2015 with a solid starting rotation featuring a mix of young power and veteran guile. Glasnow is the future of the Pittsburgh staff, although he spent the 2014 in A-ball. The right-hander struck out 157 batters in just 124.1 innings of work and held his opponents to a .174 batting average. He’ll open 2015 in Double-A and has the talent to reach the Majors in the second half of the year despite his inexperience.

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Entering the season, some fantasy owners thought Corey Kluber could turn in a good year – I bet a lot of them frequent these pages. He was coming off a below average 3.85 ERA, but FIP, xFIP, and SIERA all estimated a figure closer to 3.25. Given a decent strikeout rate of 8.31 K/9 and solid 2.02 BB/9, he made for a tidy mid-late draft target. His average cost was $5 (I generally paid about $8).

Now we know that the Klubot was a lot better than “good.” After all, he earned a great nickname like Klubot. Generally, you don’t earn a cool moniker with mediocre performance (unless it rhymes, i.e. Big Game Games). His 18 wins, 269 strikeouts (10.27 K/9), 2.44 ERA, and 1.09 WHIP ranked him as the fourth best fantasy pitcher, worth $28. Talk about profit.

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Nearly a year ago, I introduced you to my 2014 Andrew Cashner. If you had forgotten, Cashner was my favorite sleeper heading into 2013. Although the strikeout rate was a disappointment, he certainly delivered. The 2014 version (before Carlos Carrasco took over as my favorite sleeper) turned out to be Cashner’s rotation mate, Tyson Ross. And boy did he make his fantasy owners happy by posting a 2.81 ERA and punching out 195 batters, while winning 13 games.

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Episode 182

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!

Eno Sarris (live from MLB’s Winter Meetings) and Nicholas Minnix talk about, among other players in the news, Jon Lester, Jeff Samardzija, Jimmy Rollins, Brandon Moss, Jung-Ho Kang, and David Robertson. Eno also touches on his answer to a listener’s question about spin rates.

As usual, don’t hesitate to tweet us or comment with fantasy questions so that we may answer them in our next episode.

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Coming off a pretty fantastic 2013 season, many were bullish on the mustachioed baby-faced Ranger for 2014. But after a freak accident with his pooch left him with microfracture surgery on his knee, Derek Holland was pretty much a lost cause in both real and fantasy baseball. By the time he returned, the Rangers were in the cellar and there wasn’t much reason for Holland to go out there and be quite as fine as he was in years past. Rather, he was merely getting his work in — in preparation for 2015.

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It’s been a few years since Doug Fister was first able to legally drive a car, however 16 still represents a significant number for the right-hander. Last year he accrued 16 wins en route to being ranked as the 19th best starting pitcher, while torpedoing one of my Preseason Bold Predictions. Fister managed to crack the top-20 mark despite a weak 5.38 K/9, the second lowest mark seasonal average of his career, minimum 100 innings pitched.
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