I wasn’t a giant fan of Ian Kennedy coming into 2013. Kennedy the pitcher, that is, not the person — after all, he might be as charming as the Dos Equis guy for all I know. But Ian Kennedy kind of registered on my radar as a respectable fourth, maybe fifth starter in a pretty good rotation. He ought to give you a decent ERA, acceptable WHIP, and perhaps a strikeout rate that flirts with about 22%.

The allure of Kennedy’s 2011 season was what likely drove his ADP up into the 10th and 11th rounds, well before the likes of Mike Minor, Matt Harvey, Lance Lynn, and a host of other cherry-picked examples of pitchers who have been far more useful. Indeed, Kennedy’s 21-4 season in 2011 came with nearly 200 strikeouts, 2.88 ERA, and 1.09 WHIP. The predictors didn’t scream fluke, but perhaps the 3.22 FIP was a whisper that he was getting a touch lucky.

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One of the biggest fantasy surprises this year has undoubtedly been left-hander Jeff Locke of the Pittsburgh Pirates. After getting shelled in his first 12 big-league appearances to the tune of a combined 5.82 ERA in 2011 and 2012, the southpaw has suddenly burst on the scene with a 2.15 ERA in 109.0 innings and has been a top-20 fantasy starter in most formats.

We can talk about Chris Davis and Yasiel Puig as fantasy surprises, but no coherent, reasonable person would have predicted Locke’s level of success prior to the season.

It took a while for Locke to gain the trust of fantasy owners. He’s only recently achieved 100% ownership in ESPN leagues. The uncertainty has centered around his 3.81 FIP, 4.56 SIERA and (mostly) his obscenely-low .228 BABIP. Locke is viewed as someone who’s merely riding an intense wave of good fortune, but he’s ultimately destined to crash and become the fringe back-end starter he’s always been perceived to be.

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This year, 252 pitchers have started a game in the major leagues. Exactly 21 of them have maintained an average fastball velocity of 94 mph or greater in their starts. The list reads like a who’s who of current and potential aces: Stephen Strasburg, Matt Harvey, Gerrit Cole, Kevin Gausman, Jarred Cosart, Andrew Cashner, Zack Wheeler, Alfredo Figaro…okay, not all 21 come with heaps of accolades. Still, velocity is undoubtedly a prized commodity in starting pitchers, and anybody who threatens to someday join the 94+ starter club merits our attention.

I recently saw two pitchers who may someday join that club: Texas prospect Luke Jackson and Washington prospect A.J. Cole. Both righthanded pitchers are having excellent campaigns in High-A and have big velocity behind those numbers. Let’s take a closer look at what sort of potential these two flamethrowers have.

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It’s been an improbable ride for Jose Quintana. After signing with the White Sox as a minor-league free-agent last season, Quintana held his own in 22 starts in the majors. While nothing about his game stood out, and the advanced stats were bearish on his ability to repeat, it was nonetheless a win for the club. Quintana entered 2013 as the team’s fourth starter, a position he was capable of filling given his skill set. But a the midway point, Quintana has emerged as the team’s second-best starter. While that may not be impressive given the club’s injuries, it’s clear that Quintana has taken a significant step forward.

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If you are familiar with my feelings on pitchers, you know that I put little stock in ERA over smaller samples. Instead, I choose to largely ignore perhaps the most accepted metric to describe a pitcher’s performance by focusing on his peripherals and ERA estimators, my favorite of which is SIERA. Sure, over a long career, ERA is most certainly the better of the two to judge a player’s performance, but at the all-star break of a season, give me SIERA. With most starting pitchers having thrown only about 120 innings, the sample size remains far too small for ERA to provide significant predictive value over the remainder of the season.

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The demise of Tim Lincecum has been greatly exaggerated. He proved as much Saturday, tossing a no-hitter against the San Diego Padres. While Lincecum hasn’t put up vintage numbers, he’s shown big improvements from 2012. At the same time, some of the reasons for Lincecum’s 2012 struggles are still present. His velocity hasn’t improved, and his walk rate is still less than ideal. The main reason for Lincecum’s improvement has been the resurgence of his change-up.

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Back in 2011, 24-year-old rookie Ivan Nova burst onto the scene, putting up an eye-popping 16-4 record for the New York Yankees and finishing fourth in the Rookie of the Year balloting. Even for those with cold, black, jaded, hearts like myself who try to ignore pitcher win/loss records entirely, that’s a mark that’s difficult to miss, and it of course retains a great deal of value when you’re specifically talking about fantasy baseball. Nova’s peripherals didn’t quite back up that level of success, since he struck out only 98 in 165.1 innings to go with a 4.01 FIP, but for a guy who didn’t even have a guaranteed roster spot with the team entering spring training, it was a pretty fantastic debut.

Last year, he still won 12 games and improved both his strikeout & walk numbers, but a massive jump in his home run rate inflated both his ERA and his FIP, the point where the Yankees left him off the postseason roster. This year, Nova fought off David Phelps to keep his spot, but made it through just four short & uneven starts before a right triceps injury knocked him out for more than a month. After returning in May, he made two relief appearances before being optioned to Triple-A, though he’s since returned to make four pretty impressive appearances.

Nova appears to have regained his spot in the Yankees rotation and has looked good doing it, so we have ask: what Nova are we seeing here? Read the rest of this entry »

Because of last week’s July 4th holiday, these rankings are a bit late. So I apologize to all of you who have been spending this last week questioning how you could continue on with your life without this update.

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In a time where names like Stephen Strasburg, Mike Trout, Bryce Harper and Gerrit Cole are dominating the headlines, rookie hype is making it awfully difficult for fantasy owners to acquire the services of several youngsters who are supposed to be leading us into a new generation of MLB superstars. But occasionally we get lucky and some diamonds-in-the-rough pass through without too much fanfare and linger on your waiver wire until they break out with a big game that lands them on an ESPN or MLB Network highlight reel. Darin Ruf and Sonny Gray may be well-known to the hardcore fantasy players, but without someone standing on a soapbox with a bullhorn, screaming “Pick this guy up now,” both seem to have slipped through the cracks in many leagues. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve reached the halfway point. With the All-Star game looming just around the corner, there’s probably not much to debate with most of the National League pitcher rankings. The biggest areas of contention of the struggling studs and the surprising breakouts. While July seems like a long way through the season, smart owners know that luck can carry this far into the season. Struggling studs will rebound, and early breakouts will turn into flameouts. How should we value these players? Let’s turn to the rankings. This month, the tiers will be characters from the show Lost, one of my first television obsessions.

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