The holidays lead to some dereliction of duty on my part, which is why instead of focusing on the National League starters taken in rounds six through ten, this is really more of a catch-up piece. Without further ado, here are the starting pitchers who have come off the board already, the order in which they were taken, and the round and pick at which they were taken.

A few things stand out from the top of the list. First, half of the pitchers taken before Round Seven came from two teams: the Dodgers (Kershaw and Greinke) and the Nationals (Strasburg, Gonzalez, and Zimmermann). In the first ten rounds, the Phillies also contributed three pitchers and the Braves put in a pair; while this isn’t fundamentally different from years past, the fact that nine of the first 19 pitchers taken come from the NL East does not bode well at all for the hitters in that division.

A reminder so that no one asks in the comments: R.A. Dickey is in the AL East now; he went toward the end of the third round.

As someone noted in the comments on Eno’s piece from Monday, Halladay’s fall to the middle of the ninth round might be the steal of the draft. We’ll know more in a few weeks when more mocks are done, but I’m inclined to believe that will end up being more of an artifact of this draft than a consistent feature of 2013 drafts in general. Halladay still has strong name recognition, didn’t suffer a major injury, and still put up workable numbers even in the midst of a down season. The headier the draft room, the more likely Halladay is to slip on lingering concerns about his shoulder health as well as his age, but I strongly suspect he won’t last deep into the ninth round in the average ESPN or Yahoo! public league.

One of the players who is likely to see a wide spread of draft positions — in much the same way that Yoenis Cespedes did last year — is Chapman. The nice thing about Chapman is that, barring injury, his worst case scenario is that he moves back to being an elite closer for a team that looks poised to generate a ton of save opportunities. That’s hardly a bad thing. Yes, if we knew he’d end up in that role, he probably would have been drafted lower than he was, but Craig Kimbrel had already come off the board and Jason Motte went one pick after Chapman, so it isn’t as though he’d be grossly out of phase for being drafted in the first ten rounds if he ends up as a full-time closer rather than a starter. This is just one data point in the vast space of mock drafts, but I suspect Chapman will rise and fall substantially based on his performance as a starter in camp.

Cain’s ascendency to the top of the Giants’ rotation appears to be complete. He was fantastic in 2012 and Tim Lincecum — conspicuously absent from this set of names — is now a far, far riskier pick than either Cain or Bumgarner. This does make Lincecum a candidate to provide unexpected value in a way the others have limited ability to do, but those looking to target the Giants’ top pitcher this year will be looking at Cain and settling for Bumgarner rather than Lincecum for the first time since the drafts prior to the 2008 season.

I can’t decide whether I like grabbing Haren at the end of the seventh round. I like his move to the National League, I think he’ll be better than he was last year, and yet I think I’d rather have Latos or Gallardo, both of whom went shortly after he did. In abstract terms, I feel like the seventh round is good value for Haren, but the depth of pitching this year may mean that he’ll have to fall a round or two further to actually be considered a value pick.

Most of the time, you can determine if pitchers were unlucky over the course of a season by looking at few factors like LOB%, BABIP or HR/FB%. Today, I am going to look a little further to find pitchers who may have been even more lucky or unlucky on batted balls by looking at their wBABIP.

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Trevor Cahill has mostly been a disappointment in fantasy leagues. Much of that has to do with lofty expectations from his owners following a lofty 2009 prospect ranking. Cahill happened to win a spot in the Oakland Athletics’ rotation that season, but wound up disappointing, failing to carry his above-average strikeout numbers in the minors to Oakland. An inability to record strikeouts has been Cahill’s major flaw over his four big league seasons. Last season, Cahill made some strides in that area, posting the highest strikeout rate of his career, which contributed to his strongest season to date. While Cahill is far from a fantasy ace, the improvement could make him a solid mid-to-late round pick this season.

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This morning, we published the results from rounds 6-10 in the early RotoGraphs mock draft. Apparently, I was asleep at the wheel because I missed the request for drafters, which is why you don’t see my name as a participant. Though it is unfortunate to miss another chance at experiencing the best part of every fantasy season, at least I can remain an unbiased observer. As the resident American League starting pitcher analyst, let’s go through those pitchers who were selected at this point in the draft, including where they were picked in last year’s RG mock, of which I did participate.

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Yesterday, the Cubs officially inked Edwin Jackson to a four-year contract. Good for Edwin, now he has a chance to actually be with one team for four seasons. In just 10 seasons in the Majors, he has been with a whopping 7 different teams! Let’s see how the move from Washington to Chicago might affect him.

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The “will he start or will he relieve?” game continues on as Brett Myers is once again moving back into the rotation. This time, he heads to Cleveland after apparently agreeing to a one-year deal yesterday. Myers began his career in Philadelphia as a starter in 2002, then became the team’s closer in 2007, returned to the rotation the following year, then was forced back into the bullpen after returning from injury in 2009, rejoined the rotation as a member of the Astros in 2010 and 2011, then pitched in relief all year once again last season, which included his move to Chicago. Phew. Let’s figure out how he might before as a starter again with the Indians.

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When preliminary announcements suggested the Twins had acquired two pitchers for Ben Revere, you’d have to understand my immediate worry. I figured the big piece of the trade might be Tyler Cloyd — he of the 87 mph fastball — and maybe the Twins would nab Kyle Kendrick for good measure.

I was wrong. Read the rest of this entry »

A couple of weeks ago, I was helping fellow writer, Chris Cwik, look for possible reasons James McDonald fell off the cliff in the second half of the 2012 season. As Cwik pointed out, the 27-year-old McDonald started falling apart after he threw 122 pitches for his only complete game (CG) of the season. I decided to see how young pitchers performed after throwing just one complete game during a season.

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Jon Niese has turned into a steady, decent fantasy play. While he is not one of the biggest names in the league, he has given consistent results over his short career. He is a nice addition to fill out a fantasy pitching staff as a draft progress.

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The Chris Capuano rejuvenation tour made its second trip around the NL in 2012, and with it came similar results. Capuano appeared in the same number of games (33), but made two more starts than he had in 2011, leading to 12.1 more innings pitched, a 0.5 increase in WAR, and pretty much everything fell into place as it had in 2011. Read the rest of this entry »