The man formerly known as Jamie who arrived in the bigs with a meh fastball has made himself into quite the workhorse. Well, workhorse has somewhat of a negative connotation as it’s typically used to describe pitchers who throw a lot of innings, but not necessarily of high quality. James Shields‘ innings, at least over the past three seasons, have certainly been of high quality. He has given his two teams at least 227 innings a year, with an ERA ranging between 2.82 and 3.52. His 2013 performance was good enough to rank him as the 25th most valuable starting pitcher.

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Finally, we have transitioned from the hitters to my favorite group of players, the starting pitchers. This is where the most disparity in opinion comes and so it will be fun to take a look back at how my starting pitcher Pod’s Picks performed.

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Fantasy owners often cite the mantra “you can’t win your league in the first round, but you could lose it”. It reinforces the notion of sticking with the safety of an established veteran, rather than reaching for the sky with a youngster that possesses tons of upside. While Matt Holliday is no longer worthy of first round consideration, he’s exactly the type of player that helps you avoid losing your league. He was once again a strong contributor, earning nearly $26 and ranking 10th in value among outfielders.

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Ever since Eric Young stole 87 bases in 118 attempts in Single-A back in 2006 with the Rockies organization, fantasy owners have been salivating over his fantasy prospects. With respectable strikeout rates and consistently high BABIP marks coupled with playing half his future home games in offense-inflating Coors Field, we simply couldn’t wait for his first opportunity at a full-time job. Unfortunately, that never really came to pass. After being shuffled between second base and the outfield throughout his career, Young finally recorded more than 200 at-bats in a season and earned a smidge over $9 in fantasy value, good for 49th among outfielders.

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Over the last two years, my fellow FanGraphs authors have discussed the effects of aging on player performance and shared various pretty curves. Eno Sarris introduced some hitter aging curves for both batted ball type distribution and isolated power. Then Bill Petti looked at the various plate discipline metrics. The one skill missing thus far has been speed.

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Hovering around replacement level in several categories does have its value. Despite offering near replacement level production in three of the five roto categories, Austin Jackson was still the 41st most valuable outfielder this year. That made him a solid fourth outfielder on fantasy teams even though he really only stood out in one category, runs scored. However, it was quite a fall from his performance in 2012, when he earned the 19th highest fantasy value. Jackson will need to return to being more than a one category contributor to make his fantasy owners happy, but can he?

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Since he was a minor leaguer, I was a big Desmond Jennings fan. I figured he would be the next Carl Crawford for fantasy owners, but perhaps an even better real life player given his stronger walk rates. Unfortunately, that memo never reached Mr. Jennings and for the second straight season, he has disappointed his fantasy owners. In 2012, he was just the 49th most valuable outfielder, no doubt thanks to his .246 batting average and a knee injury that limited him to just 563 plate appearances despite batting lead-off. This year, he once again missed some time due to injury, but even with 11 fewer steals, moved up a couple of spots to finish as the 42nd most valuable outfielder. Of course, that was still a disappointing performance.

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In his second full season with the Indians, Michael Brantley quietly earned the 34th most fantasy value among outfielders. Who would have predicted that Brantley would earn nearly identical value to Yoenis Cespedes? It may not have been obvious after a quick glance at his stat line, but Brantley does a little bit of everything at least decently, without standing out in any one category. That type of contribution package is typically undervalued in fantasy leagues, which is why it may surprise some to learn how valuable he actually was.

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Or stated more accurately, both injuries and a surprise medical procedure hampered Jason Heyward’s season. After coming off a year in which Heyward was the 10th most valuable outfielder, he was limited to just 440 plate appearances as he dealt with a spate of health related issues. While actually on the field, he was still a bit of a disappointment to fantasy owners, especially to the many who figured an MVP-type season with mammoth offensive production was in the cards. Unfortunately, the health and fantasy Gods were not on his side this time.

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Episode 81
Today’s episode of The Sleeper and the Bust stars yours truly and features RotoGraphs editor Eno Sarris. We discuss yesterday’s blockbuster trade and the outfield crop.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @mikepodhorzer or @enosarris on Twitter and tweet us any fantasy questions you have that we may answer on our next episode.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or via the feed.

Intro by DJ Sinton (no, contrary to popular belief, I do not moonlight as a rap star)

Approximately 38 min of joyous analysis.

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