Archive for Starting Pitchers

Coming off a season in which he posted a gruesome 5.18 ERA, James Shields is a favorite sleeper and undervalued asset of the statistically-inclined fantasy owner. The majority of these owners will cite Shields’ career high strikeout rate of 8.3 in 2010 as a primary reason to be bullish. In fact, I even mentioned it when I boldly predicted that Shields would post a sub-3.80 ERA in 2011. However, we are being slightly fooled by relying on that sneaky K/9 ratio.

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Much has changed for Michael Pineda since he was a lanky, projectable 16-year-old who signed with the Mariners out of the Dominican Republic in 2005. The right-hander now stands 6-foot-7, 260 pounds, pops mitts with upper-90s gas, and is considered a potential ace by the prospect pundits: Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus’ Kevin Goldstein, ESPN’s Keith Law and our own Marc Hulet all rank Pineda as a top-25 farm talent.

The M’s have named Pineda their fifth starter to begin the 2011 season, and the 22-year-old is primed to make an instant fantasy impact. Seattle will be careful with Pineda’s innings, but King Felix’s sidekick has it all — K’s, control, a quality defense and a friendly home ball park.

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Over the weekend the Chicago Cubs and Washington Nationals each did some house cleaning, dispelling themselves of  a couple of volatile and disgruntled players in Carlos Silva and Nyjer Morgan. The impact of these moves is minor in the world of fantasy, but will be felt nonetheless.

The Cubs released Silva on Sunday after one season with the team while still owing him $11.5 million dollars. It’s not hard to see why the Cubs chose to part ways with the pudgy starter. While his numbers weren’t awful in 113 innings last season – 4.22ERA/3.90 xFIP – Silva has a 5.87 ERA in 55 starts since he signed his big contract with the Mariners. He’s also gotten into a few dugout altercations, has never been in shape, and criticized the team publicly – and that was just this spring. There had been rumblings that the Cubs were trying to trade Silva, with the Yankees and Nationals reportedly scouting him, but no deal could be reached. Silva shouldn’t have been owned in mixed leagues, so his joblessness won’t be felt by many. The most interesting aspect of Silva’s departure is the man replacing him in the Cubs’ rotation.

Andrew Cashner has limited MLB experience, his 54.1 IP last season all being in relief. While he walked too many hitters (4.97 BB/9) in those 54 innings, his K/9 was a healthy 8.28 and ERA and xFIP of 4.80 and 4.40 were respectable for a rookie. Many publications believe Cashner’s best value would lie in being a power reliever, maybe even an eventual closer, but the contract that Carlos Marmol received this off season made that less of a reality. Instead, he’ll slide into the back of the Cubs’ rotation. The Marcel projection system has Cashner down for a 4.24 ERA and 4.25 FIP for 2011, but that is in 52 innings of relief work, so take that for what you will. He has a plus fastball that sits in the 92-94 range, a passable changeup, and a slider that gets strikeouts with the same frequency as his fastball. He’s mostly an NL only play for now, but possesses the tools and pedigree to have value in mixed league formats as well.

Unlike the Cubs, the Nationals were able to find a take for their malcontent, trading Nyjer Morgan to the Milwaukee Brewers for Cutter Dykstra and cash. Morgan had been in a battle this spring for playing time with Rick Ankiel, Jerry Hairston Jr,  Roger Bernadina, and Mike Morse among others. That battle is clearly over, and Bernadina has since been demoted. If Morgan hadn’t worn out his welcome with two suspensions last season, he certainly had this spring, telling reporters that he expected to be traded and that a change of scenery might be best for him. An extremely productive player as recently as 2009 – .307/.369 with 42 SB – he slipped a bit last season but still produced 34 steals.

If Morgan was unhappy with his playing time situation in Washington, he’s really going to hate it in Milwaukee. Carlos Gomez is the incumbent starter and has been assured by the manager and GM that the job is still his. Morgan will serve as a suitable 4th outfielder and pinch runner unless an injury occurs – effectively killing his fantasy value. Back in D.C. early signs point to Rick Ankiel and Jerry Hairston Jr sharing the centerfield duties, which isn’t encouraging for fantasy owners. For a team that is going nowhere this season it would seem like giving the younger Roger Bernadina and Mike Morse more playing time would be the smart way to go for the Nationals. You know exactly what you’re getting from Ankiel and Hairston, why not explore the talents of the younger (though Morse isn’t exactly a kid) players. The four outfielders would all be platoon players, which isn’t something fantasy owners like to see. The situation is a mess at the moment, and I’d recommend staying away until things get settled.

Continuing this series of comparing FanGraphs Points league scoring to traditional scoring, we’ll begin looking today at pitching.  To start, I decided to look at a traditional points scoring system compared to the ottoneu points scoring system.  There is no apparent “standard” fantasy points system, but I chose the points scoring used at CBSSportsline as my comparison, as it seems fairly typical of systems you see out “in the wild.”  Let’s start with a list of the top-10 pitchers by their system in the 2010 season:

For reference, I also included their rank according to total FanGraphs Points.  Overall, it doesn’t look that different, right?  The top three are identical, and most of the top-10 are ranked similarly in both systems.  There are two pitchers who had a ranking disparty of at least 10 spots, however: David Price and Tim Hudson.

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We’re splitting the outfielder and starting pitcher rankings into two leagues so that your positional correspondents can handle the workload. But you’re in a mixed league and drafting this week. So, for your use, we smashed the outfielder rankings together this week.

Now it’s time for the pitchers.

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Yesterday afternoon, it was reported that everyone’s favorite sleeper Brandon Morrow would start the season on the disabled list due to right forearm inflammation. Those loud arrrghhs you heard at that time were the collective reactions of the fantasy owners who drafted him. Sure, it was noted that the Blue Jays would backdate his DL-stint to ensure he only misses one start, but this is quite concerning. As you may or may not know, forearm tightness, or inflammation in this case, is often a precursor to the dreaded Tommy John surgery. So Morrow owners should prepare for the worst. In the meantime, former Braves prospect Jo-Jo Reyes, who was acquired along with Yunel Escobar last season, was named to the rotation as Morrow’s replacement. Does he have any potential to generate at least some AL-Only league value?

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In fantasy baseball, there are a couple of loopholes owners can abuse and one of my favorites is SP/RP qualified pitchers. These pitchers can be used in either the starting or relief spot and, depending on your league structure, they can be quite valuable. Today, I will be looking at how to use SP/RP qualified pitchers that are going to be used as relief pitchers to start the season.

Basically, they are useful in leagues that have each of the following:

1. Allow daily transactions.
2. Have both SP and RP slots

Here is how to use them.
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The American League Rookie of the Year award may have gone to Neftali Feliz last season, and deservedly so, but the two sophomores I’m looking most forward to following this season are Wade Davis and Brian Matusz.

Each pitcher resides in the middle of our AL starting pitching rankings, and each also have the unfortunate assignment of playing in the American League East this season. Neither the Rays nor the Orioles will depend on the performances of these starters to succeed – the Rays are too good and the Orioles have too many other problems – but both will get ample opportunity to add on to their successful rookie campaigns.

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The regular season has yet to begin, but let’s take a look at two players that are owned in less than 50% of Yahoo! leagues…

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I have always been tempted to draft as cheap a pitching staff as possible, though I have never used this strategy before in a mock draft or a real one. In an auction, this strategy is simply called the $9 pitching staff. In a snake draft, you would draft all your hitters in rounds 1-14 and then fill out your pitching staff over the remaining 9 rounds. Unfortunately, the $9 pitching staff auction strategy will put you at a severe disadvantage versus your competitors who are all likely spending at least $55 more than you on pitching. However, a straight draft puts teams on a much more even playing field, so although your rotation would likely be worse than the rest of your leaguemates’, the difference would not be as large as it would be in an auction league. So let us use actual average draft position data from CBS Sports leagues to construct a cheap pitching staff.

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