Last season, Stephen Strasburg was selected for an average price of $28 and was taken 13th overall in Yahoo! snake drafts. An 8-9 record over 183 innings prevented him from living up to his pre-draft hype. Despite a 3.00 ERA, 1.05 WHIP, and 191 strikeouts, Strasburg delivered just $14 of value to his owners. Strasburg is entering his age 25 season with concerns about his durability, so the question on everyone’s mind is “should I target him in my draft?”

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Besides the 2014 starting pitcher disabled list (DL) predictions, have a few notes on some players.

• A few weeks ago I re-examined my 2013 starting pitcher DL predictions. The results were dead on as usual. For the 2014 predictions, I have put them in a spreadsheet for everyone to complain about. The main DL percentage chance is based off of age, MLB experience and past injuries.  Additionally, I have added an indication if the player has any other injury inducing traits like heavy breaking ball usage and the inability to throw strikes. While the entire list is available on the spreadsheet, here are the 10 least likely pitchers to go on the DL who also have no other injury indicators.

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He’s 27, so maybe it’s not surprising. But over 1800 innings into his career, Felix Hernandez isn’t really showing any signs of decline yet. Well, if you ignore one stat.

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In many ways, this article is going to be a rehashing of the Marco Estrada article I wrote prior to the 2013 season. The core aspects haven’t changed. Estrada continues to offer an above-average strikeout rate, a stellar WHIP due to a low walk rate and encouraging fielding independent numbers.

I stated in August:

If the home run rate doesn’t become too unworkable, there’s so much to like about Marco Estrada.

Those words epitomized his injury-shortened performance last year. The right-hander saw his home run rate skyrocket in the first half to an untenable 1.82 HR/9. Expectedly, his overall numbers suffered as he compiled a nasty 5.32 ERA and 4.75 FIP, but the above-average strikeout-to-walk ratio remained. It was unreasonable to project his home run rate to stabilize at such a high level, which is why Estrada was a prime buy-low candidate late in the season for owners who were searching for improved pitching for the playoff stretch.

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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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The 2013 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. This week focuses on starting pitchers.

The players were ranked based on their 2013 production, using the evaluation system explained and updated on this site some time ago. To keep things manageable and avoid skewing the numbers, players were only considered if they amassed 140 innings over the course of the year to be factored into the baseline stats, but pitchers with 100 innings or more are shown below.. The replacement level was also adjusted to account for players eligible at multiples positions. The valuations are built for $260 budgets and traditional 5×5 roto fantasy leagues, where only one catcher is started.

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. So, a player who missed time due to injury but put up great numbers during his time on the field would be worth less.

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

It seems like every time I bring up how excited I am about Jonathan Gray as a fantasy prospect, the first thing I hear in response is some variation of, “Yeah, but what about Coors Field?” It’s a fair question, to be certain. While the Coors Field effect has been lessened since the installation of the humidor, it is still a very hitter-friendly park. Part of the explanation for this is that the thin air in Denver decreases the spin on breaking balls, thus making them easier to square up as a hitter.

But let’s back up a bit and talk about Jonathan Gray first, shall we? I live in Oklahoma, and was lucky enough to see the No. 3-overall pick pitch more times than I could count when he was in college at the University of Oklahoma. First and foremost, Gray has one of the absolute best fastballs in the minors right now. He has huge velocity, sitting comfortably in the 95-97 mph range and dialing up triple-digits when he reaches back for a little more. The pitch has explosive late arm-side movement as well, making it incredibly difficult to barrel up for right-handed hitters. I have seen him crank it up all the way to 101 mph, and it isn’t unusual at all to see him unleash one in the upper-90s in the 9th inning. When scouts talk about an 80-grade pitch, this is what they’re talking about.

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Last week, I talked about the youngest regular position player in the Appalachian League: Mets shortstop Amed Rosario, who was named the circuit’s top prospect by Baseball America after the season. Sticking with the youth theme in the Appy, this week I’m going to focus on the league’s youngest regular starting pitcher, 18-year-old Rays righthander German Marquez. Marquez did not appear on BA’s top 20 postseason Appy prospects, but with solid performance (3.50 FIP), a nice arsenal, and plenty of time and room to develop further, I’d argue he deserves to be placed squarely among the circuit’s most intriguing players, and is definitely a player to watch.

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Down in Arizona to get one last fix of baseball before the lean winter months, I had the distinct pleasure of getting to watch Alex Meyer pitch three innings of shutout ball against the AFL East All-Star lineup — while sitting behind two excellent young fellows from Trackman baseball. There’s very little PITCHf/x in the minor leagues, and usually competitor Trackman’s data is proprietary and under lock and key. But in Arizona, the company enjoys its best chance to openly market their radar-based approach to pitch tracking, and the numbers their system provided were an interesting guide to a dominant outing by the Twins’ best pitching prospect.

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James Paxton, Enny Romero, Danny Duffy, Derek Holland, David Price, Chris Sale, Brad Hand, Martin Perez, Francisco Liriano, Jon Lester, Clayton Kershaw, Gio Gonzalez, Scott Kazmir, Matt Moore, Ross Detwiler, Patrick Corbin, Kris Johnson, Hector Santiago, Tony Cingrani, and Cole Hamels. A distinguished group of twenty, is it not?

The above list constitutes all lefthanded MLB starting pitchers who averaged 91.5 mph or more on their fastballs in 2013. As you can see, it consists largely of two groups: good, established MLB starters and unproven but exciting young guys who only got a few starts in the majors during the past season. Almost none of these guys have neither exciting presents nor exciting futures, and thus, anyone who projects to join this relatively selective club merits a closer look. One such pitcher is Pirates southpaw prospect Joely Rodriguez.

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