Mailbag: Keeping Johan or Verlander?
Reader Beau B. asks:
“I get to keep three players. Two of those slots are going to Braun and Wright. The last slot will go to either Johan Santana or Justin Verlander. I’d love your input.
12 team league, 5×5 (basically the standard 5×5, but with OBP replacing BA, pitching categories are typical).”
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Zach is the creator and co-author of RotoGraphs' Roto Riteup series, and RotoGraphs' second-longest tenured writer. You can follow him on twitter.
Do you not think that Verlander’s increased strikeouts were down to him pitching higher in the zone, increasing the chances of a flyball being hit against him, but also increasing his chances of a swing and miss?
There was an article on David Aardsma that documented this – http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/the-high-heat-from-aardsma
I feel as though there has been a lot of Johan hating on this site in the last couple months. I wonder if anyone has looked at his splits from last year. In the first half, before his elbow got worse, he seemed to show the dominance of old. Granted the proof will be in the pudding, but, with a clean elbow, who knows….
Just to clarify – saying you would opt for Verlander over Santana doesn’t qualify as “Johan hating”. Verlander is one of the top five arms in the game. Coming in at, say, 6th or 7th behind the likes of Verlander, Lincecum, et al, doesn’t remotely qualify as “hate.”
(Or if it does, I have no idea how one would classify the utter disdain and downright contempt for the likes of Ollie Perez, Livan Hernandez, et al)
Going beyond his strikeout rate, his BB% has also increased each season since 2005 and he’s a flyball pitcher who just added Bay to his OF and lost Beltran’s superb defense in center for at least part of the season, and perhaps Beltran isn’t the same in terms of glove in CF even when he returns.
At pick 45, im taking Haren over Johan.
Re: Santana’s K/9, I’d at least pay some heed to his fastball velocity dropping off. It isn’t big, he was still near 91 mph last season (and there was the elbow issue), but it’s been happening for a while now since he peaked back in 2006 just over 93 mph. Losing some speed off of his heater will hurt, especially since his changeup speed is the same, so the differential is smaller. It may not be the most important thing, but it’s still a factor, I think.