Archive for roy halladay

Over the offseason we’ll take a look at each position on the diamond and see how the past season affected the positional rankings and where there might be some potential bounceback value picks going into next year’s drafts. (See shortstops, catchers, second basemen, first basemen, third basemen, right fielders, left fielders and center fielders.)

Of course, when it comes to pitchers, the format suffers. We’re certainly not about to do tiered rankings for the top 75+ pitchers that get drafted every year in mixed leagues – that would be one long post. Instead, I’m going to cover the pitchers by their location on your team. The first group consists of pitchers that could or should be selected to be fantasy aces in 2010. Let’s take a look.

This is where I drop some caveats. Everyone has their preferences, so order this tier as you will. The first tier is meant to be the no-doubt-about-it group. All of these guys won’t give you the strikeouts of Tim Lincecum and Zack Greinke, but they’ll come within a strikeout or two per nine innings. They won’t all have the miniscule WHIPs of Dan Haren or Roy Halladay, but none of them should break 1.2 in that category. They won’t all be the horse that CC Sabathia is, but they’ve all (so far) shown the ability to put close to 200 innings together. There are no guarantees when it comes to elbows and shoulders, but these guys look like bonafide studs.

The next group ain’t too shabby themselves. The first three only have question marks because they’re young and haven’t been doing this for ages. Despite my worries about Jon Lester’s walk rate in the minors, he hasn’t shown any problems since he made his cancer recovery. Felix Hernandez broke out last year, and just needs to show it again. Justin Verlander seems to have fixed his delivery, but will what broke before break again? The next two guys have question marks are about age and health. Chris Carpenter is a walking question mark, and his ongoing health issues make him overvalued after strong years and undervalued after injured years. In other words, I owned him often last year and may not own him once next year. Instead, I may own Johan Santana often this year, who should be next year’s Carpenter, despite his worrisome declining velocity and strikeout rates. Cliff Lee never had great strikeout rates to begin with and is going to the tougher league, but he may get some support for a higher ranking.

Originally, there was a tier between Lee and Adam Wainwright, but that tier was born more of intuition than anything in the numbers. Wainwright made just as big of a leap forward as King Felix in some ways, why should he be in another tier? Perhaps this imaginary tier has a combination of questions. Wainwright broke out – and has durability questions. Josh Johnson can probably repeat his performance, given his history, but he has definite durability questions. He’s put together just 364 innings total from 2007-2009. Josh Beckett is a favorite of mine, but for some reason he keeps putting up ERAs that are much higher than his FIPs, and maybe that’s just how he rolls. Ubaldo Jimenez induces mad ground balls and strikes out plenty, but his stats are still borderline. Aw, heck, put that tier back in.

The “just off” tier gives you a preview of some nice SP2 values that you could pair with a late SP1 for your best strategic approach. Consider that the number one pitcher on this list is projected by Bill James to put up an 2.80 ERA and 1.12 WHIP with 261 strikeouts, while the tenth guy may “only” contribute 3.08 ERA, 1.09 WHIP and 224 strikeouts. That, my friends, is why you wait to draft your starting pitchers.

Recently, reader Pat left a comment on an article, asking:

“Can’t alot of pitchers HR/FB rates be expected to increase in the second half just due to the weather? … [T]herefore it would seem like a good strategy in a points league to stack pitching in the first half (and then look to make moves around the allstar break to acquire hitters).”

The reasoning here is that since bats tend to heat up as the weather gets warmer, hoard pitching early and then pick up hitters when the season is in full swing and 80 and 90 degree days are the norm.

Seems like a reasonable strategy, but would it work?

Since we would hoard pitchers early, let’s look at the top 20 starting pitchers, as determined by the final dollar values from the RotoTimes Player Rater, and check out their monthly HR and HR/FB data.

If HR prevention is the goal of this strategy, 16 of our 20 top pitchers had a HR/FB rate less than 11 percent in the final month of the season. Even August, the month last year where more HR by far were hit than any other, saw eight of our 20 pitchers have a HR/FB rate beneath 11 percent.

And this does not even take into account that the pitchers who were ranked top 20 at the beginning of the year often are nowhere to be found near the top of the leaderboard at the conclusion of the year. Using my friend Troy Patterson’s 2009 Starting Pitcher Rankings, here are the ones that did not make the top 20 at the end of the year:

Johan Santana (1), Brandon Webb (4), Jake Peavy (5), Cole Hamels (8), James Shields (10), Roy Oswalt (11), Ervin Santana (13), John Lackey (14), AJ Burnett (15), Edinson Volquez (16), Scott Kazmir (17), Carlos Zambrano (18), Chad Billingsley (19) and Daisuke Matsuzaka (20).

If you went into your draft convinced to load up on pitching, you could have wound up with a staff of Santana, Webb, Peavy, Hamels, Oswalt, Lackey and Burnett and at the All-Star break found other owners willing to offer you very little hitting in return.

Now, let us look at how pitchers as a whole fared in 2009. Here are the first and second half splits for all of the pitchers in MLB in 2009:

1st half – 4.32 ERA, 1.389 WHIP
2nd half – 4.33 ERA, 1.391 WHIP

It does not always work out this close, but this is yet another example of how easy this strategy could go awry.

Finally, you also have to consider how your league will handle trading with you when you have such an obvious need for hitters. Will your league-mates be willing to help you out and offer fair or even somewhat reasonable trades given how needy you are for offense? In friendly leagues that might not be a problem but it would likely be a bigger issue the more competitive your league is.

The best pitchers can dominate (or like Rodriguez in June – get lit up) at any point in the season. Stacking up on pitching only to turn around and deal it for hitting at the All-Star break seems like the fantasy baseball equivalent of market timing and not the best way to ensure long-term success.

The Yankees clinched a playoff berth the other night and the Cardinals’ magic number sits at 1. It’s going to be an exciting October yet again, with some really intriguing match-ups forming in both leagues.

Major pro sports leagues no longer really have offseasons, especially when it comes to coverage. We’ll be here all winter, up to our usual tricks. And if you haven’t already, check out FanGraphs’ beautiful new iPhone app. I’ve been playing around with it all morning and am simply in love. Let’s check out some other sites who are doing great work…

The fellas over at FakeTeams are beginning to look ahead to next season, starting with a breakdown of the Top 10 fantasy pitchers for 2010. The usual suspects top the list: Zack Greinke, Felix Hernandez, Roy Halladay and CC Sabathia.

Still plugging away in your fantasy league this season and looking for a few spot starters? R.J. White of Fanhouse suggests looking at Bronson Arroyo, who has pieced together 11 straight quality starts, Brett Anderson, who is coming off a 10-strikeout game and Vicente Padilla, who has struggled recently but is facing Washington.

Matt Snyder, also writing for Fanhouse, provides an early preview of the 2010 group of closers. A lot can change in the offseason with free agency and trades, but it’s a nice look into the future.

Rotoworld’s Aaron Gleeman reviews Tim Hudson’s impressive return to action. The veteran right-hander is 2-1 with a 3.56 ERA in five starts since returning from Tommy John surgery and was impressive in damage control Wednesday against the Mets. As Gleeman notes, “His average fastball has clocked in at 90.1 miles per hour after living between 90.3 and 90.9 in the four seasons prior to going under the knife, his breaking-ball velocity is also similar to pre-surgery levels, and perhaps most importantly he’s maintained the extreme ground-ball tendencies that have long keyed his success.”

The Hardball Times’ Derek Carty asks an interesting question, and THT’s Eriq Gardner provides an answer: “What do you think has a greater impact on one’s ability to win a fantasy baseball league: player evaluation or strategy?” It’s something to think about as the 2009 season comes to a close.

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