Oakland Athletics pitcher Scott Kazmir did it again. After an amazing comeback in 2013, Kazmir proved his gains were legitimate. Kazmir not only improved his ERA and FIP during the second year of his comeback, but managed to stay healthy enough to log 190.1 innings. The only time Kazmir have ever thrown more innings was back in 2007. On top of all that, Kazmir is 31, meaning he’s not necessarily a candidate for decline just yet.

We can’t just push aside Kazmir’s past, though. Injuries defined his early career, forcing him out of the game during the 2011 season. That year, he was topping out at 88 mph on his sinker, according to BrooksBaseball.net. While the comeback has been inspiring, Kazmir is still an issue with a lot of baggage. Can fantasy owners trust him moving forward?

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After undergoing Tommy John surgery over the summer of 2012, Drew Hutchison returned to the mound the following year, making 15 starts in the minors. Then in 2014, he arrived to spring training supposedly throwing harder. The positive news got me excited, and intrigued me to the point that I boldly predicted he would win a rotation spot and earn positive 12-team mixed league fantasy value.

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We’ve already spent some time with Tanner Roark’s breakout season and it’s mostly about that two-seamer and getting strike one if you ask him. Let’s focus on those things first.

The bad news first. First strike rate isn’t super sticky year-to-year. The correlation is .479 year-to-year, meaning that this year’s first strike rate describes 23% of the variance in next year’s first strike rate. That’s as weak as the year-to-year relationship of home runs per nine innings, or a little bit less than half as strongly correlated as strikeout rate.

Roark may have been above-average in that regard for two years, but that doesn’t mean he’s necessarily going to manage the feat again next year. If you throw 70% strikes on the first pitch, maybe batters start swinging more at the first pitch and then maybe you start throwing fewer first pitch strikes. However it works, this isn’t a skill we can bank on in a 200-inning sample.

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The 2014 season was a cruel one for Justin Verlander. To the fantasy baseball players who owned him for most of it and drafted, bought, kept, or traded for the formerly elite right-hander, the 2014 season felt approximately as cruel.

The pitcher surely expected more after a relatively – extra emphasis on relatively – disappointing 2013 effort that saw his walk rate jump above 8% and his average heat velocity dip below 94 mph for the first time since 2008 on his way to a 3.46 ERA and 1.31 WHIP. He and fantasy owners didn’t get it, though. The 4.54 ERA (117 ERA-, his worst mark in the category since his debut season), 1.40 WHIP, and 17.8% strikeout rate tell the tale of a mostly abysmal season, in fact.

Now what? The last time Verlander had fantasy owners this puzzled was, incidentally, after his 2008 campaign. The next year turned out to be pretty good. That hurler was 26, however, and his four-seam fastball averaged 95.6 mph. This guy will be 32, and … who knows?

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In 2014, Jeff Samardzija had the best season of his career as a starter, finishing with an ERA under 3, a 3.06 SIERA and a miniscule 1.8 BB/9, all during a campaign in which he was traded between leagues.

That’s pretty good. Put another way, it’s so good that even though Samardzija finished 21st in Zach Sanders’ end of the season rankings for starting pitchers, it’s hard not to feel that he was still a bit cheated from fully realizing his fantasy potential.
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Adam Wainwright will be a bust for fantasy owners in 2015. And so we’re on the same page here, by bust, I mean that Wainwright will fail to earn his draft day cost by a meaningful margin. It does not necessarily mean that he will perform poorly and cost his owners value. Since it’s still far too early to get a sense of how fantasy owners will be valuing players next year, and specifically Wainwright, I will again reference the slow mock draft I’m currently participating in. He was selected as the 11th starting pitcher off the board. There’s serious downside at that price.

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I had Garrett Richards on more than a few teams going into the season. I enjoyed his work. I liked him for the wrong reasons, though.

You see, I thought his changeup had promise. Among young pitchers that didn’t throw their changeup much (late 2013, 25 years old, <10% change usage), Richards’ change showed up as having a good velocity differential (8.6 mph). With an excellent breaker and all that velocity, and a good history of command, I thought the changeup would really tie the room together.

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A.J. Burnett was an absolute revelation with the Pirates in 2012 and 2013, as he followed up two lost seasons with two of the best years of his career. In 2012, a 35-year-old Burnett walked just 2.76 batters per nine innings, his best-ever mark in a career that dates back to 1999. The next season, he struck out more batters than ever before, punching out well over a batter an inning.

This year, the 37-year-old Burnett moved across Pennsylvania to Philly, and in many ways, reverted back to the guy he was in his last two years in New York. Suddenly, he was once again serving up more meatballs than the Olive Garden out by the mall, pitching to an unsightly 4.59 earned run average in his 34 starts.

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It’s starting pitcher recap time, woohoo! So let’s kick things off by checking back with my preseason Pod’s Picks. I only included pitchers from my top 78 in the bullish section, while the bearish section lists only pitchers included in the RotoGraphs consensus (which excluded my ranking) top 78.

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The 2014 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. Since it’s such a large class, we’ll be focusing on starting pitchers for a fortnight.

The players were ranked based on their 2014 production, using the evaluation system explained and updated on this site some time ago. The valuations are built for $260 budgets and standard 5×5 roto fantasy leagues, where only one catcher is started. Players are listed only at their primary positions from 2014.

One important thing to note is the premium (or lack thereof) placed on the position a player occupies in your lineup. For example, while a first baseman may be able to accumulate superior overall numbers, the availability of such production lower in the rankings severely dampers the amount the player was worth. These rankings are meant to reflect a player’s value should he have occupied this spot in your lineup for the entire year. A player who missed time due to injury but put up great numbers during his time on the field would be worth less.

This year, I’ve added in RotoGraphs’ preseason consensus rankings so you can see what we thought of each player coming into the year. This ranking can be found in the “Pre” column. “EOS” of course stands for End Of Season, and the rest should be self explanatory.

With all this in mind, here are your rankings. Read the rest of this entry »