I did this with three young outfielders and really enjoyed it so I’m running it back with some pitchers. In fact, I might do a couple for pitchers given the remarkably vast pool of arms. Are these guys good? We’ll look at a couple key elements of their game and then give a recommendation.

One guy had some nice highs, but also some remarkably painful lows and injuries have dogged him throughout his career. Another guy held a sub-3.00 ERA through August 21st, but struggled so hard in his final eight starts that he wound up with a mid-3.00s figure by season’s end. Our last guy is 33 years old so we probably already know the answer, but a remarkable 11-start run to close out the season has re-opened the question about his goodness.

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Valuing injured pitchers who plan on returning at a later date can be tough to do correctly. Yu Darvish an example of such a pitcher. After having Tommy John surgery in mid-March this past season, Darvish should return some point after mid-May (14-month rehab is the norm now). An owner can expect above replacement level from Darvish, but for a couple months, a lesser pitcher will be used. I will step through the process of valuing Darvish by combining his value with a replacement level pitcher.

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For the previous Steamer and I reviews, I separated the two players into their own recaps, as there was simply too much to discuss for one post. However, for the motley pair of Shane Greene and Jesse Hahn, this is unfortunately not going to be a problem. You see, both of them saw their seasons cut short by injury and one of them was so bad that including his name as part of the title of an article will do little to motivate potential readers from clicking. So, combined they are.

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Look at the leaderboards and love Jacob deGrom. Love his flowing locks, love his luscious command, love his top-ten ranking. Love the fastball velocity he added, love the full arsenal. Love the slider, the Warthen slider, and love the changeup, the Johan changeup. Love him.

But all your love won’t make him any better. You’ll have to pay for your love. Instead, maybe we could find another young man that you can love, and won’t cost as much. And don’t worry, for all this talk of love, we’re not talking about the kind that will get you arrested in some countries.

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A month ago, I compared Depth Chart projections — a composite of the reputed Steamer and ZiPS projection systems — to fan projections, compiled on each player’s page as “FANS.” I proceeded to look at the largest differences between the two systems — loosely considering the aggregation of independent fan projections a “system” — and identify which system better projected that particular player.

For hitters, the Depth Charts won by a landslide, 7-2. Turns out that fans frequently projected better production from prospects than what said prospects actually produced. It’s the cognitive bias I expected to see; I anticipated that fan(tasy owner)s associate hype with swift, robust production. I call it the Mike Trout Syndrome, named after the generational talent who has conditioned fans to expect immediate and immense production from all top prospects.

So how did the fans fare versus the Depth Charts regarding pitchers? Funny you ask. Here are the five starting pitchers whose Depth Charts FIPs varied most dramatically from their FANS FIPs:

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It’s the final Pod’s Picks recap of the season! Finally, we get to my favorite position for nerdy analysis, the starting pitchers. Refresh your memory with my original starting pitcher Pod’s Picks post.

Bullish

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The 2015 fantasy baseball season has come to a close, so it is time to look back at the season past and determine which players were the most valuable at each position. We’ve worked our way through the position players, and now we head to the starting rotation.

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2015 Visualized: Outfield
2015 Visualized: Shortstop
2015 Visualized: Third Base
2015 Visualized: Second Base
2015 Visualized: First Base
2015 Visualized: Catcher

* * *

As it has done for the past several weeks, the RotoGraphs staff will devote an entire week to a particular defensive position. After a three-week lull during which outfielders (and the hot stove) dominated our conversations, we will turn our collective attention to starting pitchers.

In past posts, I utilized Depth Charts projections, which combined two premier player projection systems (Steamer and ZiPS) while using playing times allocated by FanGraphs staff. However, I missed the boat on accessing pitcher Depth Chart projections from 2015. So, instead, I pulled them from Steamer’s website, on which they hosted a Google Doc of 2015’s preseason projections.

Using these projections, I compared projected xFIP (expected fielding independent pitching) to actual xFIP (1) by team and (2) by player within team. Because xFIP is a rate metric, I did not need to scale performances by playing time. I hope FanGraphs’ database split performances by starting and relieving because that’s what I asked it to do; if a pitcher who split time between the rotation and bullpen appears to have wonky numbers, it could be his splits, or it could be I’m an idiot.

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Jordan Zimmermann signed by the Tigers

The move to Detroit for the 29-year-old Zimmermann would be considered a downgrade based mainly on him facing a DH more often than a pitcher. The other factors are about the sasme. The ballpark factors are both league average. The 2015 Tigers defense was better than the Nationals according to UZR, but the Tigers also lost their top-rated defender in Cespedes.

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I will continue to implement player grading on the scouting scales of 20-80. I will use Dan Farnsworth’s scale he discussed in this article.

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