Fantasy Baseball Advice

I hate guys that are injured before the season even starts.  I should’ve emphasized that more in the preseason.  I should’ve followed my gut on that with Stanton too.  At least Stanton can play through the nagging pain (hopefully), on the other hand, Mike Morse is shut down for 6 weeks and he has a history of injuries.  (Can you tell I’m still reeling a bit on the Stanton news?  It’s like a teenage love…Don’t…Don’t hurt me again…) As for Morse, he was a former roider (RIP, Lyle Alzado, I don’t know football, but I enjoyed your random guest spots on bad 80′s TV shows) and they say that tends to break down a player’s body.  It’s all very sad (actually, I’m still thinking about Stanton; don’t worry, I’ll move on by Monday).  I don’t think this moves up Bryce Harper’s ETA. (Doesn’t ETA always make you think of business-speak by people who do jobs that you don’t understand even after they explain them?  “I’m a marketing consultant for our foreign sales team.”  You’re making up a job and you hide in a cubicle.  Why don’t I have one of those jobs?)  I think you should lower your expectations for Morse to 17 homers and 90 games played.  Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:

Sike!  Before we get into the roundup, just wanted to say you should sign up for the Draft Day freeroll.  What’s a freeroll?  Honestly, I have no clue.  I think it’s, like, a season of fantasy baseball in one day.  “But I want players to annoy me for 162 games!”  I know, but it’s free and Rudy did it last week and had fun, so I guess there’s no harm in it.  You can win some cold hard cash and get yourself a $12 salad!  The cut off is Saturday at 1:05 PM EST.  Anyway II, here’s the roundup:

Mat Latos – 5 IP, 2 ER, 8 baserunners, 1 K.  He didn’t pitch incredibly well (1 K — belch), but he only had one bad inning, which was because Ryan Ludwick is playing the outfield instead of Heisey.  Ludwick barely moved over to get a Gio Gonzalez blooper that started the inning where Latos gave up two earned.  Get Ludwick out of there and play The Juice Box (Heisey — Hi-C — The Juice Box — what?).  Juice Box!  Juice Box!  Juice Box!

Ryan Ludwick – 1-for-4, 2 RBIs.  Why is he playing?  He’s batting .133.  We need to see more? Okay, .240 and 18 homers, that’s more if he plays the whole season.  Who cares?  Dusty, take the toothpick out of your mouth and bench him!  (I’m only slightly annoyed at him because he drove in the two runs that cost me my Gio win, which was a whole nutter shizz show.  Zimmerman should’ve had that Ludwick grounder.  Get off your heels and dive!  How do I not get the win from Gio…Wait, not even there yet…)

Gio Gonzalez – 7 IP, 0 ER, 2 Hits, no walks, 7 Ks.  How do you not get this win?  Pick a closer — or just pick Henry Rodriguez — and let him close games!  Dive, Zimmerman!  Juice Box!  Juice Box!  Juice– Okay, Grey, breath… Being completely objective, the home plate ump had a nice strike zone and the Reds get pretty neutralized by lefties.  Gio still pitched a great game.  Though the no walks thing will be a rarity.

Anthony Rendon – Nats prospect fractured his left ankle and will miss a few months.  He was fitted for a walking boot, which Bryce Harper signed in pine tar, writing “wuz” instead of “was.”

David Wright – Was cleared to return to game action (if his finger doesn’t hurt him).  I put that second part in parentheses because that’s the part you leave off when you try to sell Wright to someone in your league.  It’s April.  If you’re the Mets, do you let your star 3rd baseman play with a broken finger or do you sit him for a month?  Okay, try and think about that again, but this time don’t pretend you’re the Mets.  Still same answer?  I had a different one.

Madison Bumgarner – 7 1/3 IP, 1 ER, 6 baserunners, 2 Ks.  Great game from the Bum, but why was he brought back out for the 8th inning?  He was over 100 pitches and he hit 3rd the previous inning.  He needed to face Tyler Colvin for 13 foul tips?  Colvin — singer/songwriter/fouler.  You’d think if anyone would be a fouler on that team, it’d be Dexter.

Brian Wilson – 1 IP, 1 ER.  Was far uglier than that, and I’m not talking about the beard.  Wilson loaded the bases, walked in a run, needed the trainer to come out because it looked like his arm was bothering him (was hard to see around Bochy’s head) and could barely find the plate even when he was getting hitters out.  I grabbed Casilla while the trainer was still on the mound.  Romo is the better arm, but Bochy seems to favor Casilla for saves.  Looking for the next big closer to go down, here ya go.

Francisco Liriano – 5 IP, 5 ER, 10 baserunners, 2 Ks.  Giving up 10 baserunners in 5 innings is bad enough, but the Liriano-Mauer battery ended up giving up 5 SBs in 5 innings to the Angels (whose team speed is not to be confused with the ’85 Cardinals).  In 134 IP last year, Liriano only was stolen on 9 times.  Is there any other part of his game that Liriano can regress for us — maybe bite his tongue when chewing on sunflower seeds?

Matt Capps – 1 IP, 2 ER and the save.  Almost had a Cappsizing.

Denard Span – 4-for-5, 1 run, 1 RBI and a steal.  Here’s a fun thing for Topps baseball cards.  They should do one of those novelty dual cards with Span and Billy Butler.  Have it titled, “Spanning the Globes,” and Span stands behind Butler cupping his moobs.

Joe Mauer/Justin Morneau – The M&M boys both homered in yesterday’s game against the Angels in Target Field.  The odds on that exacta were so tiny that, if anyone bought it, Scott Downs would’ve been bankrupted.  Just in case Downs got any ideas, someone made sure he couldn’t walk off the field.

Josh Willingham – 3-for-5 with his 4th homer of the year.  The Other White Meat is red hot.  That is all.

Lance Berkman – Has a small tear in his left calf.  A small tear on a calf?  That sounds like a Guatemalan harbinger of doom.  Berkman says he can return on Tuesday.  Not sure how someone of his age is going to be playing in less than a week with a muscle tear in his calf, and I don’t mean that like, “Hey, he’s going to be playing next Tuesday at 100% and I’m gonna be surprised.”  No, I meant it like, “He’s going to be at 75% and then need the DL at some point.”

Dan Haren – 5 IP, 9 H, 1 BB, 3 ER, 7 Ks against the Twinkies in Hubert H. Homerfree Retrodome with all the runs scoring on a 3-run HR by Mauer.  As Rudy mentioned on the Risky Pitcher post, Haren was heavily dependent on his cutter last year — wouldn’t be surprised if his April struggles (6.97 ERA) are a harbinger of Haren’s first non-borderline ace year in a long time.

Mark Trumbo – 2-for-4 with a slam & legs.  He’s going to be in this afternoon’s Buy/Sell.  It’s gonna be a doozie to end all doozies!

Carlos Pena - 2-for-3 with his 3rd homer.  Remember, he won’t stop hitting homers until around Monday, when he’ll go so ice cold you’ll be looking to chuck Pena.

Jeff Keppinger – 0-for-5 batting cleanup yet again for the Rays.  The Rays are so against giving Longoria any protection that they’ve disabled his home alarm system and are poking holes in his condoms.

Kyle Seager – 1-for-4, and a homer.  He’ll also be in this afternoon’s Buy/Sell.  I told you it’s got doozie written all over it.

Matt Garza – 8 2/3 IP, 0 ER, 5 baserunners, 9 Ks.  It’s an ExtravaGarza!

Drew Smyly -  4 IP, 1 ER, 7 baserunners, 4 Ks.  He has very little experience as a professional, which doesn’t seem to stand in the way of the Tigers (see Porcello).  He looks like he has strikeout stuff, but as I tell my girlfriends, beware the small sample size.  I wouldn’t go near him outside of AL-Only leagues for the time being.  For now, Drew’s a consolation prize SP on his dad Guy’s game show.

Jed Lowrie – Should return from the DL on Friday.  Watch out rusty Astros lineup, here comes your booster shot!

Zack Greinke – 3.2 IP, 8 ER, 10 baserunners, 5 Ks.  We love Greinke, but this gave us bad flashbacks to his infamous “Greink’d” moments prior to his Cy Young year.  Hopefully next outing he’ll be able to put away batters when he gets to 2 strikes.  If I were the type to calculate xFIP and not just read it at other sites, I’d say Greinke was hella unlucky yesterday.  Then I’d fist bump someone and explode my fist, or something equally douchey that is done by people that say hella.

Jamie Moyer – The last remaining Leftosaurus threw about as good a start as you can hope for him @COL (5.2 IP, 2 ER, 9 baserunners).  Pitching Moyer in the mile high air is like pitching Justin Verlander on the moon.

I’m not putting that title up there to brag.  That’s really the name of the league.  But within a few rounds of bidding I tittered like a little school girl when Troy Tulowitzki went for $42 and Miguel Cabrera went for only $40 as proof that even Gods don’t do everything right.  I mean, have you seen what a platypus looks like?  But I digress, the draft didn’t go as perfectly as I wanted but I don’t feel bad about the end result.  With it being a 14 team league with no bench positions except for two DL spots, having a strong hitting crew was important; so important I broke a bit from the 180/80 strategy posted here.  I overspent by about $20 on hitting and left $3 on the table when it was done.  In hindsight, looking over my pitching staff and that remainder on the table, I wish I’d thrown a couple more bucks at Jordan Zimmermann who went for $12, but that’s what auction drafts are for: 20/20 thoughts about a time when you weren’t as strapped for cash as you perceived.  For the list of the entire draft results, click here.  Fooled!  Sorry, they didn’t make the league public but you should still click on that link for random awkwardness.  Now without further ado or foofaraw, here were the experts:

Razzball – ONC

FP911.com – Rich Wilson

FP911.com – Paul Greco

RotoRob – Tim McLeod

CBS Sports – Scott White

Fantasy Alarm – Ryan Hallam

Fantasy Baseball Sherpa – Bob S and Scott Swanay

Fantasy Sports Empires – Jeff Boggis

FantasyBaseball.com – Chris McDonnell

FB Tonight – RC Rizza and Todd Farino

FB365 – Charlie Saponara

RotoExperts.com – Dave Gawron

The Fantasy Man – Mike Kuchera

TPFS Baseball – Mike Myers

Full disclaimer here: I was a little nervous at first.  I mean, I was drafting to represent Razzball here.  I had a quick ‘palms sweaty, mom’s spaghetti’ moment as I had two spreadsheets on the right screen, draft on the left screen with my two hands on the keyboard and my third hand reaching for a slice of pizza.  Well, at least that’s what I must’ve been thinking when I ordered one.  Barely got a bite when nominations were posted and were alotting 15 seconds to bid.  But more to the ‘stop whining ONC, we don’t care just bring us the goods’ point: my offense is stacked.  Like a game of Jenga where the blocks haven’t been moved stacked.  With there being no bench, that’s important.  I can stream pitchers if I need it, but it’s harder to stream hitters.  I will probably move a bat in the near future for at least one solid arm to go with my core staff of Anibal Sanchez, Brandon Beachy, Shaun Marcum, and Ubaldo Jimenez but the trade will be on my terms.  I wanted guys like Zack Greinke and Madison Bumgarner but couldn’t justify their respective $25 and $20 pricetags.  The lone regret of my crew was the dreaded click slip – an embarassment on par with Tara Reid’s nip slip if she hadn’t been too coked out to notice - as I went to nominate Max Scherzer and wound up with Neftali Feliz for a $1.  I quickly fixed this, grabbing Henry Rodriguez for K’s and saves potential but did curse at the screen for a bit afterwards.  Thankfully, everyone had left work by that time or I might have been visiting HR the next day.

True to form from my catchers post, I treated my backstops like pole dancers, throwing singles at Josh Donaldson and Wilin Rosario at the end which oddly matched my keeper league catchers for the year.  I was saved from spending any money on Ryan Doumit when a mini-bidding war for his services came to pass, pushing his price up to $7 at the end of the draft.  I don’t have extremely high hopes for either of my guys but with how the rest of my offense came to be and how much Doumit went for – especially with the Justin Morneau as near full-time DH news – I don’t have to worry much about it.  My Evan Longoria steal left me feeling saucy.  So saucy, I actually dove right in on Hanley Ramirez when he came up and then shocked myself with a $17 Starlin Castro.  Auctions make for weird drafting patterns.  Its from SS I feel I have a good chance to grab myself a solid starter via trade if I need it.  I really wanted one of the top end first basemen but the prices were just too high to justify so I ended up with the savvy veteran – code word for ‘old as the hills’ – Paul Konerko for $17.  Not my most favorite pick, but even if he gets me 25 HRs and a .275 average, I don’t see a reason to complain.  With Eric Hosmer going for $30 and my Paul Goldschmidt and Mat Gamel pickups only costing me $11 in total, I’ve left myself plenty of trade space with Konerko as well.

Based on CBS projections and going off of this helpful Razzball post, we’re a little light in steals (148), almost in line with runs (1021), up on average (.274) & RBIs (1039) and flat out obliterating HRs (305) for a 14 team league.  As to be expected based off the draft, we’re behind on our pitching stats at the moment in wins (83), saves (66) and ERA (3.65) but are still far ahead in strikeouts (1226) and good in WHIP (1.24).  Considering there is no innings cap, we can stream for wins as needed and where appropriate.  As far as saves and steals well…SAGNOF suckas!  All and all, a bit off the beaten strategy path but still a team set to compete in a roto setting for 2012.

We at Razzball realize that exporting our views across the country has damaging consequences on the blogosphere. To help make amends, we are reaching out to leading team blogs and featuring their locally blogged answers to pressing 2012 fantasy baseball questions regarding their team. We feel this approach will be fresher, more sustainable, and require less energy consumption (for us anyway). The 2012 San Francisco Giants Fantasy Baseball Preview comes courtesy of Trevor Cole from Giants Baseball Blog and their GiantsCast.

1) I’m slightly crazy with my Madison Bumgarner fantasy this year.  I know it’s a lot to ask a Giants fan to temper my enthusiasm, so I won’t!  What’s your prediction for Bumgarner this year?

Your excitement is completely justified. He’s legit and I really expect him to come into his own this season. It’ll be his second full year in the bigs and judging by the way he ended 2011, he’s in for a real breakout this year. He really only had one abysmal start in 2011, vs. the Twins in June during interleague play, in which he was knocked out in the first inning. All he did was come back his next outing and strike out 11 in a dominant win over Cleveland. In 2011, he wound up at 13-13 with a 3.21 era, a 1.21 WHIP and roughly a strikeout per inning while cracking the 200 innings barrier. And as solid as those numbers were, I expect further improvement in 2012, especially if the Giants offense improves. I think 15 wins, a sub-3.00 era and 200+K’s are certainly attainable for the 22 year-old and that’s about what I expect from him. He get’s overlooked a bit because he’s in a rotation with Cain and Lincecum, but I think 2012 has some big things in store for “MadBum.”

2) How’s Buster Posey’s rehab going?  Better yet, will he play more than 50 games this year?

Yeah, I think he’s a pretty safe bet to play in over 50 games this year. I’d look for him to get a lot more time over at first base, just to ensure he doesn’t have too heavy a catching load, too early on. Buster will be fine and will be out there behind the plate on opening day, barring a drastic set-back. The real question is, what kind of form he’ll be in.

3) If you look at Aubrey Huff’s year-in and year-out numbers he tends to alternate good and bad years.  This held true in 2010 and 2011 too.  Besides this anecdotal flimflammery is there any reason to think Huff is good in 2012?

Well, the Giants are surely banking on him returning to form, and it’ll be awful tough for him to be worse than he was in 2011. The thing that really rubbed Giants fans and his teammates the wrong way last year was that it didn’t seem to bother Aubrey that he was struggling so badly. In fact, he was quoted in September saying “some years you’re good, some years you aren’t”, which in other words says ” oh well, I’m not having a great year this year, but we won the Series last year so it’s OK”. That has kind of fueled Huff this winter, and he’s supposedly worked harder this offseason than any other in his career. One of the major complaints about Huff was that he showed up completely out of shape in 2011, and now he’s trying to get back to that 2010 form. He even has sent the Giants management and training staff weekly updates and pictures of the progress he’s making, and he appears to be in much better shape this time around. I expect Huff (in a walk year) to be around .275 with 20 homers and 80 RBI’s by seasons end, not great numbers but a marked improvement over last season.

4) How many at-bats does Nate Schierholtz see and what kind of numbers does he put up?

I think this is a question yet to be determined. The Giants have kind of been hush-hush on what their outfield plans are, but general consensus is that Nate will enter the year as the starting right fielder. However, if Brandon Belt and Aubrey Huff are each hitting, come the end of spring, the Giants could end up moving one of them to left field and re-shuffling the outfield accordingly. I really like Nate, but he’s a very streaky player, and I’m not sure he’s cut out to be an everyday, 500+ at-bat player. I think he’s the ideal 4th outfielder because of his defensive flexibility, that cannon of an arm and his streaky good bat. At times in 2011, he looked as if he’d be go on to hit .300 by the end of the year, then he’d hit a slump and drop back down, then get hurt. No matter what, Nate will get his at-bats though, and if he does take advantage of getting the starting job early on, he could certainly entrench himself into that right field gig full-time. In a lot of ways, he reminds me of former Giant Randy Winn, and Winn didn’t really come into his own and become an all-star player with Seattle until his late 20′s. The same could hold true for Nate Schierholtz.

5) What semi-plausible scenario would upset you more as a Giants fan?
A) Brian Wilson reveals a crystal meth addiction.
B) The Giants name Barry Bonds as hitting coach.
C) Pablo Sandoval trips over Bruce Bochy’s enormous head and falls on Tim Lincecum.

The only one of these things I’d actually like to see happen is Barry return as the hitting coach for this team, and I think any Giants fan would be on board with that as well. This offense has been a rough one to watch the last few years, even when they won the series, they didn’t have a top-notch lineup. I mean, Bonds was one of the best all-around hitters of his era before steroids became a factor, and there’s no doubt he’d be an asset at teaching the approach he took at the plate to the young Giants hitters. Now, unlike Mark McGwire, Bonds would probably never consider taking a lowly hitting coach job, but it was actually bantered about quite a bit on sports talk radio and Bay Area sports tabloids last summer when the team’s offense was sputtering. Barry Bonds is still a huge part of the Giants family, so who knows, maybe he does re-join the organization in some capacity…. I guess, pertaining to this question, B or D would be the worst scenario for the Giants.

As we mentioned earlier this month, we created an ‘expert’ league that follows the same rules as the Razzball Commenter League and will be included in the master standings.  Will the Expert League reign supreme (Iron Chef^TM) in competitive index or will several RCL leagues put the experts in their place?  We shall see…

Here are the participants in the first annual Razzball ‘Expert’ League (links if they posted a draft review):

Razzball – Grey Albright
Razzball – Rudy Gamble
Yahoo! – Brandon Funston
Yahoo! – Scott Pianowski
Yahoo! – Andy Behrens
FanGraphs – Eno Sarris
Hardball Times – Jonathan Halket
MLBTradeRumors.com/RotoAuthority – Tim Dierkes
Mastersball – Ryan Carey
Rotowire – Dalton Del Don
SI.com – Eric Mack
Steamer Projections – Dash Davidson

Here’s a link to the entire Draft Recap:

Grey:

As mentioned in our 2nd podcast, ESPN screwed me for messing with them for the last five years.  Right before my 1st pick, my computer crashed.  Here’s me during the draft.  “Hey, I have the 7th pick.  Awesome.  I’m gonna have a 1st baseman.  I might even get Votto.  I wonder who that lady is watering her lawn across the street.  Maybe I’ll stand up carefully to make sure I don’t knock over my coffee and get a better look–NOOOOOO!  Crap, mother-effin’, son-of-a-motherless-goat!  Reboot!  Reboot!  Reboot!  Okay, it’s rebooting… I have a minute and thirty seconds… Reboot!  DAH!  I drafted Robinson Cano!”  And then that dictated just about all my other hitter picks.  Since I had Cano, I couldn’t grab Kinsler, didn’t want a shortstop and the only 1st baseman or 3rd baseman within the vicinity was Tex and I wasn’t drafting him with my 18th pick.  So I took Giancarlo.  Then I really felt like I needed to make sure I had some sorta corner man so I reached for Zimmerman.  Not feeling totally comfortable with Zimmerman as my 3rd baseman, I reached for Hosmer for my other corner.  Then I felt like if Zimmerman got hurt again, I should have another 3rd baseman, so I grabbed Aramis, then I realized later on that Aramis wasn’t a clean bill of health either so I grabbed Chisenhall.  Then I dropped Chisenhall when he was demoted and grabbed Smoak for the two game Japaning Day, then, when those games ended, I grabbed Eric Thames.

I may have 5 aces when it’s all said and done.  I wouldn’t even need Gio on this staff, but he fell so far down that I wasn’t going to let him go.  I’m not worried about saves, even if my closers are little iffy.  SAGNOF!  Since I had Cano and Hosmer, I took some guys that may be average drains, but should give steals and power.  Though, I do think average will be one of my biggest concerns.  In true Grey fashion (I love to pick up and drop players and talk about myself in third person), I’ve already made a few moves on pitching too.  Dropped Fuentes (right after Balfour became the closer) and grabbed Bourgeois.  Bourgeois is the kinda of guy that if he sneaks into a large playing role or if I switch him in only when he plays, he could get me 30 cheap steals.  SAGNOF!  I dropped Stauffer and grabbed Lidge when Storen was hurting (Clippard was drafted) and dropped Crain for Henry Rodriguez.  It’s a bit of a shizzshow, but, in some ways, I like to be able to juggle my last roster spots so I don’t care I wasted a pick on Chisenhall, Fuentes, etc.  Rudy gets a lot more tied to his drafts than I do.  In the end, I think I still have a solid team.  By the time you read this, I may have made three more pick-ups and drops.

Rudy:

At this point in the draft season, I’m starting to get predictable in my early round draft behavior.  I was really happy picking 10th with the confidence that either Joey Votto or (more likely) Adrian Gonzalez would fall to me and I wouldn’t have to worry about overpaying for a 1B later in the draft.  As luck should have it, Grey’s computer crashed and he auto-picked Robinson Cano vs. his preferred Joey Votto pick who came gift-wrapped to me at #10.   Longoria was an easy choice at #15 as I figured there would still be top SPs on the board by the time I picked next at #34.  The experts were more aggressive than I figured at drafting SPs however as Halladay, Kershaw, Verlander, Lee, F-Her, and Lincecum were all off the board.  Luckily, I liked Greinke slightly more than F-Her and Lincecum.  But I also liked Jay Bruce for this pick and, in retrospect, probably should’ve gamed Greinke was the more likely of the two to make it me at pick #39.  Hunter Pence was the consolation prize.

I spread out my SP selections and seemed to have a lot of success nabbing K-friendly pitchers (Lester, Beachy, Morrow).  I specifically drafted Lewis and Nolasco in later rounds because of their solid WHIPs (which help balance out Morrow).  For the first time in years, I drafted the first closer off the board (Kimbrel – 6th round/63rd pick) as the value was too great given his obscene K-rate.  Marmol and Putz came at decent values at Rounds 11/12 and I was glad to be done with closers before a closer run occurred (10 closers went in the next 33 picks after Putz).

As for offense, I just drafted for value and was able to avoid inadvertently punting AVG or SBs.  I reached for Jose Altuve whom I think has 30 SB upside with solid AVG and, like several of my teams this year, got solid R/RBI value out of my other MI spots (Alexei Ramirez, Neil Walker).

All in all, this was about as good of a draft as I could’ve hoped for.  I don’t think my team has any major weaknesses and hopefully my team has good injury karma.  It’ll be interesting to see how well I do in this type of format (12 team, daily changes) – especially without Grey as co-manager

This post is not going to get into drafting strategy because Grey has already got that lined up so well and in such alignment with what I’d do, it’s not worth repeating.  Plus deep leagues usually don’t have a change to their pitching format so you don’t need pitcher pairings like you need SS pairings.  Madison Bumgarner will be the first pitcher I draft this year with how ADP shakes out and I hope to find Anibal Sanchez as well as Jordan Zimmermann on my team along with him.  I’m jumping straight to the do’s and don’ts and situations.  You don’t like it?  Don’t read it (though I secretly want you to).

I’ll Avoid:

Stephen Strasburg - The guy is a stud, no question.  He’s also got an ADP higher than Bumgarner and won’t pitch a full season…say what?  Sixth round is a little early for me to take a pitcher I know I have to get off my team by July or August.  I prefer my team to get me off, personally.  Let the other guy in your league gloat that he got Stras’ then watch as you get those ‘SUBJ: Strasburg’ emails by summer.  ‘Hey guys, Stephen’s having a great year and the Nats are pushing for the playoffs.  I’m willing to sell him for Ricky Romero or Matt Garza or something.  That’s, like, MAJOR value dudes’.  No it’s not, hypothetical Strasburg drafter and don’t call me dude.  I prefer not to be forced to replace 6th round value partway through the season.

Johnny Cueto - Yes, pretty stats:  2.31 ERA and a 1.09 WHIP.  Those stats sparkle brighter than Edward Cullen after getting bedazzled (as an aside, I’m really angry I had to look up Twilight to find that name; be thankful).  But under the hood we have a K rate less than 7 per 9, and a lucky 5.8% HR/FB rate and a 76% strand rate.  He’s looking like a high 3, low 4 ERA guy with minimal K upside and a 1.20+ WHIP.  I’m not drafting that when Gio Gonzalez is going quite near his 113 ADP.  Nope, not gonna do it.  Wouldn’t be prudent.

I’ll Go For:

Homer Bailey - This is what I love about pitching.  Even in deep leagues, when your late round guys flounder, you can drop them for someone else and have a reasonably good staff.  If Homer doesn’t build on his 2011 campaign, you’re not going to be hurt.  The Reds have been quite good at keeping his innings at a reasonable level over the last 3 years.  Or maybe its his injuries that have done it.  Well, whatever, most places have him only pitching 160 innings this year with a K/9 over 7.  I’m a bit more bullish and think you can get 180 to 190 innings out of that with a 1.30 WHIP and around 155 K’s and a won’t hurt you high 3, low 4 ERA.  Hey, you don’t like that, you can take Cueto 11 rounds earlier with less K’s.  It’s your bad idea/horrible season/death knell team, not mine.

Chris Capuano – I liked Capuano so much this year, I gave him his own post.  I’ve got a thing and it’s called Greydar love.

Situation to Monitor: St. Louis

There’s a lot of situations to watch when it comes to pitching so its hard to narrow down to one.  Personally, I’ll be watching and waiting for the Cardinals to call up Shelby Miller in the summer.  When I look for a rookie pitcher to pick up, I focus on three things.  First, are they coming up in an organization that has a history of success with their pitchers?  I’d say the Cardinals have a great history of turning guys like Kyle Lohse into serviceable pitchers and that says a lot.  Secondly, will they be brought up at just the right time so their flaws won’t be exposed?  I say this as I truly enjoyed Madison Bumgarner and Daniel Hudson on my team in 2010.  They were good pitchers who had a great end of season runs that weren’t hiccup’ed by a bad start with a 2nd or 3rd turn against a team.  When those guys are your 6th and 7th pitcher, you’re pitching drifts into the ‘kinda awesome’ area.  Third, are they talented?  I’d say Shelby’s minor league stats speak for themselves on that question.  Well, not literally, they’re numbers written in the next sentence.  In 86 2/3 IP in Double-A, 9+ K-rate and a 2.70 ERA.  Okay, they’re very good numbers.