Adam Wainwright

The Cardinals’ success without Adam Wainwright last season was a minor miracle. Chris Carpenter had a fantastic season at the top of the rotation and Jaime Garcia and Kyle Lohse did enough in the middle to make up for the fact that they struggled to find a capable back end of the rotation until the trade deadline acquisition of Edwin Jackson.

So far this season, Jackson is gone, Carpenter has yet to make his debut, and Wainwright isn’t exactly leading the team into the fields of glory. Lance Lynn has been a pleasant surprise and Jake Westbrook has already nearly equaled his 2011 WAR total, but it’s hard to blame Cardinal fans — to say nothing of fantasy owners — for wondering just when the pre-surgery Wainwright will show up. Read the rest of this entry »

Gavin Floyd has been a rather consistent pitcher the past few years, as his xFIP has been nowhere below 3.64 and nowhere above 3.73 over the past three seasons. This year, Floyd’s ERA looks great, with a 2.53 mark through seven starts and 46.1 innings, but once again his xFIP is comparable to season’s past, with a 3.77 mark.

The worry with Floyd is that his ERA has consistently been above his peripherals, which likely has something to do with his home ballpark. He has an 11.4% home run per fly ball ratio for his career, with a 12.4% mark at home and 10.6% away. Homers have not been kind to Floyd in his career, and especially not when pitching in his hitter friendly home ballpark.

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It seems like every other day a member of the Tampa Bay Rays is being put on the disabled list. Kyle Farnsworth, Evan Longoria and Desmond Jennings are the main players sidelined by injury, but they’re joined by the likes of Sam Fuld and backup catchers Jose Lobaton and Robinson Chirinos. The latest to catch the injury bug is big right-handed starter Jeff Niemann.

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Every season starts with stories of how pitchers are losing fastball velocity. While pitchers that lose velocity fill the headlines, a few actually see a velocity spike. A velocity spike is great for a pitcher because it usually means better performance and less time on the DL during that season.

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We’ve finally come to the end of this long dance, and it feels good. The hope all along was not to impose our belief system on anyone with these rankings, but to show what a projections-based ranking system would look like: sober and difficult to budge. After all, true talent changes much less often than results do.

As for the major disagreements, they seemed to surround a few issues.

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One Yankee and one former Yankee in today’s waiver wire post. Coincidentally enough, expectations for both players were low coming into the season but they’ve since proven to be more useful than anticipated.

Raul Ibanez | OF | Yankees | Owned: 26% Yahoo! and 47.2% ESPN

Both Robinson Cano and Mark Teixeira got off to slow starts this season, but the Yankees survived thanks in part to Derek Jeter’s insane April and unexpected contributions from Ibanez. The former Phillie is off to a .273/.330/.568 start with seven homers and 21 RBI through his first 97 plate appearances, and a slight uptick in BABIP (currently .233) will boost his average even more. Keep in mind that as a fly ball hitter, it’s not guaranteed to rebound all the way to his .302 career mark. Ibanez’s strikeout rate (9.3 K%) is a career-low (by far) and I have to think that at some point he’ll run into a 12 K in 20 PA slump or something like that. Hopefully not though.

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Jeff Samardzija is the real deal. After winning a rotation spot with the Chicago Cubs this spring, Samardzija was seen as a very deep sleeper. His spring training stats were great, but he had never shown that type of dominance during the regular season. That’s all changed now. Through seven starts, Samardzija has been one of the best pitchers in baseball. Based on his the early numbers, Samardzija’s breakout looks real.

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As you no doubt have noticed, this week we have been rolling out our updated positional tiers and consensus rankings. Today is American League starting pitcher day, which means that I have not actually forgotten to rank Lance Lynn, and no, this does not mean I think Tim Lincecum is not roster-worthy. Most importantly, these tiers are based strictly on how I rank the pitchers going forward. What’s done is done, so I don’t care what a pitcher’s results are right now, aside from how it may help me project them going forward. You can check out my pre-season tiers again to compare.

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If the vast majority of the baseball world lost track of Chris Capuano somewhere around 2009, I can’t really blame them. Capuano had one really good season in 2006 that was flanked by two middling seasons in 2005 and 2007, and then succumbed to such a rash of arm injuries that I have to wonder if they considered amputating it to save him the trouble. Undeterred — and with his arm still attached to his person — Capuano made his triumphant return in 2010 with the Brewers, but only made nine starts and didn’t look particularly compelling doing it.

His change of scenery to New York in 2011 saw him make 30 or more starts for the first time since 2006, and while his numbers weren’t fantastic, they did portend some of the success he has had this year with the Dodgers. He posted a K% over 20 percent for the first time since 2004 and the first time ever in a season where he made more than 20 starts, something that has carried over into this season, as Capuano is striking out nearly a batter an inning so far this year. Read the rest of this entry »

I almost wince when I get my handy text messages from the variety of baseball-update services that I’ve subscribed to. The news on my pitching across fantasy baseball leagues has been so bad that I actually have a physical reaction to the little jingle my Samsung Galaxy makes when there’s a text incoming. Now what?

The referrals to Dr. James Andrews and other associated arm experts have been so frequent that it’s sent me to the waiver wire early and often, and in a couple situations, I’ve turned up golden. For instance, Ricky Nolasco has been quite successful through his six starts, and while I haven’t owned him for all of these outings, he was nonetheless free. Assuming I won’t be able to trade him, knowing he was free will make it easier to cut him. Cutting him might seem downright goofy, but I’m not sure I’m too comfortable starting him right now.

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