Archive for Starting Pitchers

A pitcher in Petco Park should always be on your fantasy radar. With the trade of Anthony Rizzo, Andrew Cashner became the most recent pitcher to be acquired by the Padres. While Cashner will pitch out of the bullpen next season, he still could have some fantasy value. Things could get more interesting in 2013, when Cashner could move into the rotation. Knowing that Cashner might be far more valuable a season down the road, is it worth it to take a chance on him in a keeper or dynasty league next season?
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The Cubs shipped off a pitcher yesterday, but it wasn’t Matt Garza. Instead, the sent Carlos Zambrano to Miami in exchange for Chris Volstad. Neither player provided much fantasy value in 2011, but could a change of scenery provide a boost to one of the two right-handers?

Zambrano was a fantasy asset as recently as 2010, when he posted a 3.33 ERA and 11 wins while striking out 117 in just 129.2 IP. Of course the season wasn’t perfect, by any means. The sparkling ERA was well below Zambrano’s 3.71 FIP and his 1.45 WHIP was pretty weak. Not to mention the fact that you aren’t typically happy with less than 130 IP out of a starting pitcher. And 2011 was much worse – the ERA blew up to a rotund 4.82, the strike outs and wins dropped, and that was before Zambrano had a clubhouse explosion and threatened to retire.

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Admit it, my post titles are cleverly brilliant, every time. A couple of weeks ago in my look at overvalued AL starters based on the average draft position values at Mock Draft Central, I realized that Ervin Santana has gotten little fanfare for his 2011 performance. He posted a career best 3.38 ERA for a solid 84 ERA- and struck out 178 batters. Should you be starvin’ for Ervin in your 2012 drafts?

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Today, let’s make some useful data available for reference on a couple of a subjects — park factors and pitcher batted ball data.

Extreme Park Factors

With Carlos Quentin getting traded to the Padres and the resulting discussion on how his power translates to San Diego, I decided to make available the most extreme park factors in the league. I used the handedness data available at Statcorner.com. I only looked at values that are 10% higher or lower than the league average. Also, I made available the factors that are the most relevant to fantasy baseball, Line Drives (major component of BABIP and AVG) and Home Runs. The park factors are for hitters with a value over 100 helping a hitter and a value below 100 hurting a hitter.

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The Cincinnati Reds, now with Mat Latos on board and apparently ready to let Mike Leake abscond with the back-end rotation duties, used their plethora of starters to acquire Sean Marshall, whom they view as having the potential to close games. In that deal, they jettisoned Travis Wood along with two youths to the Chicago Cubs, where he will likely slot in as the team’s #3 starter behind Ryan Dempster and Matt Garza, assuming of course that Garza is not traded.

Wood, 24, will be under team control for five years, so there’s certainly time for the Cubs to be patient, but for fantasy baseball purposes in 2012, the more pressing issue is what does this move mean for his value now.

In 2010, it appeared that Wood was establishing himself as a rising star with a 3.51 ERA (3.42 FIP), 1.08 WHIP, and a K/9 of 7.54 in over 100 innings pitched – all as a starter. Some concern was that his 2010 was somewhat buoyed by a .259 BABIP and a low HR/FB rate of 6.3% for a flyball pitcher in a hitters park. Indeed, 2011 treated him to a .324 BABIP although his HR/FB rate still remained low at 6.7%. On the whole, he was far more hittable and he lacked his usual control leading to a disappointing 4.84 ERA (4.06 FIP) and 1.49 WHIP, ultimately resulting in a demotion. When he was recalled, it was mostly as a reliever, and he remained ineffective.

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As some of the commenters pointed out in my first look at ADPs on Mock Draft Central, average draft position figures do have their flaws. However, just like any statistic that attempts to measure a certain aspect of a player’s game, or even his overall value, that doesn’t mean we should just ignore it if it isn’t 100% perfect. The information is still much better than nothing. So, that means you will be getting a lot more ADP analysis from me, whether you like it or not (you will LOVE IT)! I will continue on by looking at some of the American League starting pitchers I believe to be overvalued. I am only looking at them on a relative basis against other AL starters, rather than considering their draft round.

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Heading into the offseason, Roy Oswalt told teams he was looking for a multiyear contract, which severely limited the market for the 34-year-old. Now that he has relented on that demand, and has instead said that he’s looking for a one year deal to rebuild his value after an injury plagued 2011 campaign, he has teams beating a path to his agent’s office — or at least politely calling and leaving a message stating their interest in his client.

Money will of course be a factor in Oswalt’s final decision — money is always a factor in any decision regarding player movement — but it isn’t unthinkable that he might take less to play in a park that will make him a more attractive option this time next year. That said, he’s not passing up $5 million a year from the Mets to take $1.50 and a bus pass from the Cubs, so perhaps not all things are weighted equally. Read the rest of this entry »

Back in 2008, Edinson Volquez shone near as brightly as any young starter in the game. The 24-year-old, acquired from Texas the previous winter for Josh Hamilton, used his low-90s heat and devastating changeup to post a 3.21 ERA and 4.2 Wins Above Replacement in nearly 200 innings. Since then, however, his standing has dimmed considerably. Volquez succumbed to Tommy John surgery in 2009, got slapped with a 50-game PED suspension in 2010 and got lit up and demoted to the minors in 2011. He has been worth just 0.8 WAR over the past three years, with a 5.01 ERA in 221 frames.

It seems odd, then, to suggest that a pitcher coming off three lost seasons could be a bargain in 2012. But Volquez still has strikeout stuff and shouldn’t have near as much of a problem keeping the ball in the park next season as he did in 2011, especially with his move west to Petco as part of San Diego’s haul for Mat Latos. If Volquez can at least show passable control — particularly against lefties — he could provide a nice return on investment in the later rounds on draft day.

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There’s no place like home. No one knows this more than Mat Latos, who called the cavernous Petco Park his home over the last three and a half seasons. That all changed on Saturday, as Latos was traded to the Cincinnati Reds for a bevy of prospects. While Latos has shown flashes of greatness in the past, we’ve seen Petco Park make pitchers look substantially better than they deserve. With Latos moving to one of the more hitter-friendly ballparks in the National League, how much can we expect him to regress?

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I am going to take a break from reviewing my old and limping team to focus on the American League starting pitchers taken in the draft. It is always interesting to see how certain players rise or fall as we head into draft season, even when there is no news out that should affect that player’s value. So let’s see if I could dig up anything interesting. Remember, this was a mock dynasty league, although some of us (me) didn’t realize it was a dynasty until after the fact.

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