As a reminder of something I said in the last column, these are guys who very easily could be part of tier three, in fact, if it makes you feel better, consider this less “Tier Four” and more “Tier Three (b)”. Because of the depth of pitching, I find it somewhat unlikely that I’ll be targeting many of the guys in the first two tiers, not because I don’t like them, but because I expect their costs to be high. You can build a staff out of this extended third tier for a much more reasonable cost and you aren’t likely to see a pronounced drop in quality. Read the rest of this entry »

Before we get to the third tier of NL starters, I will tell you that this set is filled with a lot of tweeners. Thursday’s fourth tier will be filled with guys I strongly considered for a spot here, but passed over, typically due to relatively poor strikeout numbers. Stephen Strasburg is one that isn’t likely to underperform this ranking, and I expect everyone on this tier to be right in this area, but if someone from four rises to replace someone that’s presently on three, it won’t shock me too much. Read the rest of this entry »

First things first: As Howard Bender noted yesterday, we’ve decided to move away from a rigid tiering system into something with a little more flexibility. At this point, very little changes in what’s already out there. I still like Ian Kennedy a lot because of the production you get for his value and for some of the reasons I’ll get into with Tim Lincecum below.

I’m still going to list the values for those interested, just know that if a $13 player is listed above a $16 player, it isn’t a typo.

In fact, without further adieu, let’s jump right into the melee. Read the rest of this entry »

With the 2011 season firmly behind, it’s easy to look at Philadelphia’s Four Aces mantra as hubris, especially in light of their surprising exit in the NLDS. And yet, three of the aces held up their end of the bargain. The title was only rendered false by Roy Oswalt turning in a career worst season as the fourth expected ace. While his comparatively poor year didn’t do much to inhibit the Phillies in terms of regular season success, he is something of a question mark in 2012. It must be said, however, that it bodes well for a team’s continued success when one of their bigger unknowns is whether their fourth starter, who was still slightly above league average despite a down year, will return to the team.

When he first came to the Phillies in the midst of the 2010 season, Oswalt looked every bit the ace he was in Houston. He was extremely stingy with base runners and struck out 73 hitters in just 12 starts. In 2011, he struck out just 20 more hitters in almost twice the starts as part of a decline in nearly every fantasy stat. He posted his highest WHIP ever and his highest ERA since 2009 — symptoms of a lot of balls finding holes at rather untimely moments. This could be due to a decrease in fastball velocity, something Michael Barr explored earlier this month.

His BABIP was 20 points above his career average despite a LD% below his typical level. He produced a high number of fly balls — both infield and outfield flies — yet allowed a career high OPS and a near career high slugging despite a HR/FB below his career rate. He wasn’t giving up lasers all over the park or suffering greatly from his home park’s dimensions, yet it seems that balls continually found gaps in the outfield, which makes his overall line look worse than it ought to have been. He’s a pitcher who has outpitched his xFIP for most of his career, so this year was nothing unusual in that sense.

While his back is no longer bothersome to the point that he is thinking about retiring, it is a concern. The injury has flared up a few times in the last few seasons, costing him over two months of time in 2011. The Phillies’ training staff is certainly aware of the injury and are almost certainly working to mitigate it, but we’re reaching the point where their job may be more palliative and less preventative. The hope going forward may well be that Oswalt’s time on the DL will be short, rather than that he’ll be able to make all his starts. He still made 23 starts this season, so it’s not like his injury renders him devoid of value, but it does have to be part of the keeper math.

Without a doubt, part of the overwhelming disappointment with Oswalt was his acquisition price. His ESPN ADP was 71, well ahead of Matt Cain, Yovani Gallardo, Matt Garza, and more than 100 picks ahead of Madison Bumgarner. He didn’t match either his 2010 numbers or the hype surrounding the Phillies’ rotation, and that will reflect poorly on him, perhaps unduly so, when it comes to both keeper decisions and to draft day 2012.

That gap between expected value and produced value is part of what makes him a tough keeper call. I fully expect him to be better next year than he was this year, but I don’t think he’ll be worth the slot he was picked at for the 2011 season. If you have any sort of dilemma about whether he’s worth using a keeper spot on him, I’d put him back in the pot, then hope to get him at a reduced rate or slot. Just because you’re putting him back into the mix doesn’t mean you can’t target him as a solid SP option for the back end of your rotation. If someone else is willing to take him in the 70s again, more power to them, but pitching is so deep right now, I don’t see him being worth drafting that high or keeping.

Being tasked with ranking the NL starting pitchers is a mixed blessing.

On one hand, there’s so much talent here, I don’t have to worry about having to recommend someone like Derek Lowe as a tier three pitcher, which is nice, since Lowe really isn’t a SP3 option in any sense of the term. On the other hand, someone like Matt Garza may end up in the fourth tier or perhaps even the fifth, which always gets someone’s goat. I love Garza — and I’m quite sure I’d never trade him for Theo Epstein — but if you’re giving me the choice between Garza and Roy Halladay, suddenly I love Garza a lot less.

Tiers are derived from Zach Sanders’ retrospective auction values. If I think a guy isn’t likely to stick near the same level next year — either that he’s tiered too high or too low — I’ll let you know in the comments, but this is reflective of what they did this year.

Joining the chorus of keeper rankings that have popped up over the last day or two, here are your NL starting pitching ranks.

Clayton Kershaw — $35

Not much to argue about here. Kershaw may not have saved many games, but he dominated the other four standard pitching categories with nearly 250 strikeouts, an ERA of 2.28, a WHIP under 1.00, and more than a quarter of the Dodgers’ wins this season. He was good last year, so it isn’t as though his success is unexpected, but he took a huge step forward this year and should continue to be dominant for the foreseeable future. If he’s the first pitcher off the board next year, I can’t say I’d disagree with that choice. He’s just 23 after all, it’s entirely possible that he’ll improve from here, which has to be a downright terrifying thought for the divisional rivals that have to see him multiple times a year. Projecting someone to reach Pedro Martinez’s level of outrageous dominance is foolhardy at best, but if I had to put money on some current pitcher to get there, Kershaw would be hard to pass over, though Stephen Strasburg makes a compelling case as well.

Roy Halladay — $30

Doc set a career high in strikeouts last year with 219, then bested that record this year with…220. Ok, he didn’t exactly blow away that mark, but the strikeouts are a relatively recent addition to Halladay’s arsenal, which has made him more valuable in almost every format over the last two seasons; clearly, the move to the National League did him some good, but facing a pitcher instead of a DH will do that. I’m not at all portending doom for Halladay in the near future, but next season will see him turn 35. It’s entirely possible to pitch well at ages more advanced than that, but not everyone ages so well. Of the 10 best seasons since 1960 turned in by a pitcher age 35 or older — determined by ERA+ — Randy Johnson owns five, Roger Clemens and Kevin Brown each have a pair, and Whitey Ford has the remaining one. Halladay looks like he could turn in a season good enough to join the list, but we’ll see what next year brings.

Cliff Lee — $30

Like his teammate Halladay, Lee set a career high in strikeouts this season with 238, and unlike Halladay, it was an appreciable improvement over his previous career high of 185. Concerns over Lee moving to hitter-friendly Citizen’s Bank Park proved to be overblown as his H/9 dropped to a near career-low 7.6 and he allowed opposing hitters to slug just .339 against him. In fact, Lee pitched much better at home, allowing hitters just a .559 OPS in Philly compared to .672 on the road. No one will mistake the Phillies’ rotation for a bunch of college kids, but there’s no reason to believe Lee is going to suddenly “regain” his 2007 form.

Ian Kennedy — $25

There’s no surprise that Halladay and Lee were among the top five pitchers this season; Kershaw and Hamels weren’t givens to join them, but were obviously capable. Kennedy is the man who looks out of place in this list, but he certainly earned it. His H/9, HR/9, and BB/9 all dropped from 2010 while his K/9 rose; the 21 wins are just the icing on the cake. In an objective sense, there are other players who might be better than he is, but if he can keep his strikeout rate reasonably high, there are few who can match his combination of low acquisition price and high production.

Cole Hamels — $24

Hamels did lose a few strikeouts this year, but in exchange he also gave up fewer hits, fewer home runs, and fewer walks. Given that he had strikeouts to spare last year, it seems like pretty a fair trade off to me. He still struck out nearly 200 hitters, so it isn’t as though he turned into Livan Hernandez, and the balance made him a better option across the board. He’s the youngest of the Phillies’ Four Aces, so he’s got that going for him. If he can add in the strikeouts he lost this year, while keeping the other peripherals down, I see no reason he can’t be even higher on this list next year.

My colleagues Michael Barr and Howard Bender did a very thorough job this year outlining the relatively weak crop of third baseman, but here’s the Reader’s Digest version: Just 13 teams had their 3B get enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title, nearly a quarter were more than 10 percent below league average in terms of wRC+ at what is typically considered a premium position for offense.

Casey McGehee’s wRC+ of 68 was the worst of the qualifiers at 32 percent below league average, but he was not the worst at the position — take a bow, Chone Figgins and your wRC+ of 34 — though that’s a fairly low bar by which to judge success. McGehee wasn’t even the worst of the remaining four third baseman, that would be Brandon Inge, who posted a wRC+ of 48. But while Inge is hitting .333/.444/.600 in the playoffs, McGehee has been relegated to a pinch-hitting role and is just 1-for-5 in his limited opportunities.

Jerry Hairston Jr. may have unseated McGehee in the short term, but it’s unlikely that the Brewers will go into 2012 banking on 140-150 games out of Hairston, meaning that they’ll either give McGehee another look or they’ll dig into the free agent market. There are some interesting names in that bunch — Aramis Ramirez chiefly among them — but not many of them stand out as definite upgrades over McGehee, especially since he’s just in his first year of arbitration and therefore likely to be cheaper than a free agent. Read the rest of this entry »

How different would the Cardinals’ season have been if Adam Wainwright hadn’t walked off the mound in spring training with a torn ulnar collateral ligament? Their improbable September run surely wouldn’t have been so dramatic, in fact, they may have been closer to the division-winning Brewers than they were to the Wild Card runners-up. It’s even possible to concoct a scenario where they don’t trade Colby Rasmus for bullpen and rotation help, though there’s ample evidence to suggest that Rasmus would have received his marching orders anyway.

At this point, even though losing Wainwright was a big blow, it’s impossible to say the Cards would have progressed any further than they have without him. They’re tied 1-1 with the Brewers in the NLCS, and while a rotation of Chris Carpenter, Wainwright, Jaime Garcia, and Kyle Lohse looks more imposing than Carpenter, Garcia, Lohse, and Edwin Jackson, St. Louis has done more with less all season.

Next season the Cards may or may not have Albert Pujols to key their offense, but they will get Wainwright back, and while that’s not quite a push, it could soften the blow of Pujols’ absence. Of course that assumes Wainwright’s recovery path looks more like Jordan Zimmermann’s or Stephen Strasburg’s than, say, Francisco Liriano’s. This leaves the Cardinals and fantasy owners in largely the same place, wondering which Wainwright will show up in 2012.

While I can’t promise you that Wainwright will take the mound for his first start as though nothing had changed, three factors make me confident that he’s worth keeping.

First, given the state of both the surgical and rehab plans, successes are now much more common than failures. While J. Carl Cook’s words — “minor surgery is surgery someone else is having” — are certainly accurate, repairing a UCL is no longer exotic and unusual in the way it once was. Teams generally have a doctor they like to use, a rehab plan they trust, and results are getting more consistent because of it. For a sense of what the surgery and standard treatment plan are, I highly recommend this piece by Sports Illustrated’s Will Carroll, who does a great job of laying out what the state of the art really is. Regimentation alone doesn’t guarantee a perfect outcome, but it does make it more likely that a player will make a full recovery.

Second, the Cardinals have a track record of getting pitchers back to form quickly after they return to the majors. Even with some consistency in the rehab plan, some teams seem to be more successful than others at getting pitchers back at or near their previous level. The Nationals, for example, have had two key pitchers go under the knife recently and neither seems too worse for the wear. They’re playing it safe with both Zimmermann and Strasburg, but both showed the stuff upon their return that made them top prospects. The Twins, on the other hand, haven’t seen the same level of success in getting pitchers back quickly. Both Joe Nathan and Liriano found success after their surgery, but both took longer than expected to reach that point.

Carpenter had his surgery in the midst of the 2007 season and while he hasn’t been the healthiest pitcher in baseball since then, his elbow is no longer a source of his problems. More recently even than Carpenter, Garcia had the procedure and is another success story. It’s easy to forget that Garcia’s strong rookie campaign in 2010 was also his first year back from his Tommy John surgery. He showed no ill effects in either that season or this one. Like the fine print at the bottom of every investment bank’s ads, past performance is not a guarantee of future results; that said, the team’s recent success in bringing starting pitchers back effectively gives me high hopes for Wainwright’s return.

Finally, Wainwright’s pitch selection had become more varied over the past three seasons. If he were a two-pitch pitcher, I’d be concerned. A pitcher who has only a fastball and one great offspeed offering runs a larger risk of struggling to find command of the slider or curve and getting shelled as hitters wait for a fastball in the zone.

I hate to keep burying Liriano, but this is what happened to his 2009 season — the team understandably wanted him to throw fewer sliders, but this lead to his fastball getting tagged to the tune of 25.4 runs below average. Wainwright throws four pitches, all of which graded as above-average offerings in 2010, which makes it less likely that he’ll find himself in a position where he can’t throw anything for a strike except the fastball.

There is one caveat I should point out before unequivocally recommending that you keep Wainwright: There are very few pitchers I am in favor of keeping, especially in mixed. Pitching is so deep right now that even if you were to lose Wainwright, there’s a good chance you’ll be able to find a suitable replacement. There are considerations to be made based on more than just Wainwright’s health, but those are going to be based on how many players you can or want to keep, as well as league idiosyncrasies.

Wainwright has been worth about 6 wins in both of his last two seasons. Had he done it again in 2011, it would have made him a top-10 pitcher this season, even in a year of very good pitchers. He may not be as sure a thing as Roy Halladay or Clayton Kershaw, but everything I see points to Wainwright entering the 2012 season as an effective pitcher and a solid, top-of-the-rotation fantasy arm.

Last week I covered the players who went undrafted and finished as some of the top offensive players of the year, as well as those players who were drafted, but who were unable to provide the type of value their owners expected.

The last piece of the puzzle is, of course, the players who added value. Obviously it’s important to get good value out of your top few pick, but these are the players who take a team from good to stacked. The only player in this set who was consistently drafted before pick 100 was Curtis Granderson, who was typically the 91st or 92nd pick, meaning it would absolutely have been possible in a 10-team to draft Miguel Cabrera and Matt Kemp early, then supplement them later with Granderson, Carlos Beltran, and David Ortiz, while using the middle rounds to stock up on pitching.

Obviously we can all construct an ideal draft after the season’s over; hindsight is a harsh mistress that way. If you weren’t able to draft perfectly, these are the players who helped soften the blow of a mistake like Carl Crawford, Joe Mauer, or Kendrys Morales in the early rounds. The number in parentheses is their ADP minus their oRank. Read the rest of this entry »

A slight change of plans from what I said on Tuesday, as — perhaps unsurprisingly — the disappointments and those who failed to qualify for the batting title featured more than a little crossover.

Injury is one of the dominant reasons players ended up here — whether one major blow like the one Buster Posey suffered, or a seemingly endless cavalcade of issues that hit Joe Mauer or Shin-Soo Choo — but some simply just couldn’t produce this year.

This is a value ranking of position players only, produced by taking their average draft position according to ESPN and subtracting the oRank I introduced on Tuesday. The more negative the number in parentheses is, the worse the value the player provided. Not everyone here was objectively bad, but all were overdrafted.

15. Martin Prado (-32)
14. Ryan Howard (-33)
13. Buster Posey (-33)
12. Nelson Cruz (-35)
11. Ryan Zimmerman (-36)

Howard may not have had a great year, but he’s hard done to be listed among this lot. A -9 in baserunning does him no favors, but even if that’s generously reduced to 0, he still struggles to make the top 40 in batting runs alone. You could have gotten just slightly worse production from Nick Swisher, who was drafted about 125 picks later in most drafts.

Posey, Cruz, and Zimmerman all spent more than a month of the season on the DL, so it’s not surprising that they failed to reach expectations for this year. I’ll draft both Posey and Zimmerman without hesitation next year, but Cruz, who had the most playing time of the three, turned in an uncharacteristically poor year. I have concerns about his ability to avoid this list again next year.

10. David Wright (-39)
09. Jason Heyward (-40)
08. Shin-Soo Choo (-44)
07. Justin Morneau (-52)
06. Joe Mauer (-57)

If you didn’t watch much of the AL Central this year and are wondering what happened to the Twins, well, here’s a pretty good clue. Once Mauer was healthy, he was more productive than fans seem to remember — an .810 OPS in the second half isn’t stunningly good, but it’s nearly 200 points better than his first half — but pneumonia made his resurgence short-lived. Morneau had so many injuries and issues this year, it was hard to keep track of them all. Even when he was on the field, he wasn’t right; his best month was May when he had a .723 OPS, his next best was his .612 in August.

Heyward is an interesting case. This season was a big disappointment for him and he has been told that he is not guaranteed the right field job next year. If an MRI on his shoulder shows damage, that could go a long way towards explaining his poor year, but this could just be a case of a player and new manager not gelling well.

05. Ichiro Suzuki (-61)
04. Alex Rios (-65)
03. Adam Dunn (-85)
02. Hanley Ramirez (-86)

Before mock draft season started, I was deadset on drafting Dunn, but he consistently went just a little higher than I wanted. Consider that a bullet dodged. Dunn’s issues versus left-handers got plenty of press — going 6-for-94 against them will do that — but Dunn just flat out didn’t hit anyone this year. I refuse to believe this is the sudden and permanent end to Dunn’s career, so perhaps he’s worth targeting in the late rounds of next year’s drafts. Just a thought.

Like Morneau above, Ramirez was alternately hurt and profoundly disappointing, which was a kick in the teeth to owners that took him second overall, or worse, above Pujols with the first pick in the draft. One of the most compelling storylines for the early part of the 2012 season will be how he and new manager Ozzie Guillen get along. Keeper owners are surely hoping for a good bond between the two.

01. Carl Crawford (-102)

There’s nothing like kicking a man while he’s down. 2011 was an immensely disappointing year from Crawford, who would have provided owners good value if he had been taken some 100 picks lower than he was. For redraft owners, there’s not much beyond the old Ron Washington quote “that’s the way baseball go,” hopefully you traded Crawford to some sap early in the season and weren’t forced to watch him stumble his way through. You have my condolences, for whatever that’s worth.

For keeper owners however, there’s some good news. Crawford last swooned like this in 2008, when he hit .273/.319/.400 with 8 HR and 25 SB — better than this year’s line of .255/.289/.405, 11 HR, 18 HR, but still disappointing. He rebounded in 2009 to .305/.364/.452 with 15 HR and 60 SB. While this doesn’t mean he’s a lock to swipe 60 bases in 2012, it’s at least a glimmer of hope after a regrettable year for Crawford.

A classic “which player would you rather have?” scenario:

Player A: .299/.366/.541 with 37 HR, 105 R, 99 RBI, and 9 SB
Player B: .301/.412/.547 with 31 HR, 90 R, 94 RBI, and 2 SB

From a fantasy perspective, these two players are pretty close. B has a better slash line, while A has better counting stats and doesn’t lose the slash categories by a meaningful amount. If we’re looking at AVG instead of OBP, I’d rather have A, but if I’m stuck with B, I’m hardly rending my clothes in mourning. If we introduce opportunity cost into the equation, my preference is stronger: Player A likely wasn’t available to you unless you had the first overall pick in your draft, while Player B was probably on the wire until about mid-April. Give me B and a first-round pick. Read the rest of this entry »