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October 2, 2012

Value Picks

Starting Pitching Review

by Paul Sporer

It is review time at Value Picks. Since I wasn’t here writing the starting pitcher VP from the jump, I don’t have any preseason picks to review, so we’ll dive in around late-April when I signed on and break the season up into a few segments.

April-May
Best Calls: Though he was just a week away from his worst start ever, I stand by A.J. Burnett as a top call; from April 26 (my BP debut) forward he gave fantasy owners 189 2/3 innings of 3.56-ERA ball with a 1.24 WHIP, 170 strikeouts, and 15 wins. After the disaster start in early May, his stock plummeted, but I stuck with him and included him in the May 23 and May 30 editions.

If you didn’t make a move for Chris Capuano until he appeared in VP, you missed his brilliant April, but you still enjoyed plenty of valuable outings from the veteran lefty. He maintained a sub-3.00 ERA deep into July, and only a handful of bad outings (including turns in the ever-dangerous Coors Field and against the potent St. Louis offense) have pushed his ERA up to 3.69 on the season. The solid strikeout rate and 1.21 WHIP have given him plenty of value given the cost of acquisition.

On May 9, R.A. Dickey was still available in 70 percent of Yahoo! leagues and 80 percent of ESPN leagues because an ugly mid-April start (eight ER) against Atlanta left him with an unimpressive 3.76 ERA through six starts. I won’t even pretend I saw this coming, but from that point on he had a 2.74 ERA and 1.02 WHIP in 189 1/3 innings with 190 strikeouts and 16 wins. His season has been positively amazing.

Worst Calls: Erik Bedard was a good short-term call (3.54 ERA in the six starts following his VP debut), but that ended in disaster. Bedard had a 6.35 ERA from June on and was eventually cut from the Pirates. Thankfully, he was no doubt cut from fantasy teams well before the Pirates finally made the move themselves.

As bad as Bedard was, Jake Arrieta would kill for those numbers. He appeared in the May 24 edition of VP because I liked his peripherals despite what the surface stats were telling us. Turns out I should’ve listened to the surface stats because the peripherals remained sharp (9.4 K/9 and 2.9 K/BB in 52 2/3 innings), but he has a horrid 7.69 ERA since being recommended.