My more intense baseball-nerd friends are getting ready for the 2012 Fantasy Draft. I've been researching starting pitchers a lot recently and had a few thoughts about a handful of players I believe are underrated or overrated. A lot of these picks will be focusing on the
NL & AL West, especially the Giants.
Underrated:
Madison BumgarnerAs a Giants fan I'm not sure how well known
MadBum is to those outside the NL West despite his great postseason performance in 2010. However I still believe he is relatively unknown for the caliber of pitcher he is, especially after his terrible beginning to the season when he went 3-9 with a 4.06 ERA including the June 21st meltdown where he posted 8 ERs in a third of an inning.
However, a lot of this can be attributed to a very fluky .342
BABIP and the Giants historically bad offense. During this initial stretch
Bumgarner received a decision in 12 of the 15 games he started, and in 7 of those games the Giants put up 1 run or less.
Though his ERA suffered heavily for this his peripherals were all outstanding during that stretch, allowing only 4
home runs in 84.1
IP, which tracks to 10 in a season. His SO/BB ratio stayed very strong at 2.75 while his HR/9 was 6
th best in the majors. Adjusting his 93 hits to a more reasonable .300
BABIP yields 81.5, which combined with his 24 walks yields a more acceptable 1.25 WHIP. His
FB/HR% seems likely to regress in the coming year but Dave
Righetti seems to be some sort of wizard at preventing home runs, as all of San Francisco's starters have consistently low home run rates. Matt Cain actually owned the lowest HR/
FB% in the majors by nearly a percent and a half at 3.7%. While some would quickly attribute this to the fact he plays half his games at AT&T, Cain only had one more home run pitching away than he did at home with five & four, respectively.
Bumgarner had twice as many home runs away than he did at home, but still held his season totals to 4 at home and 8 away.
After that terrible start against the Twins he seemed to find a bit more control, and perhaps the whole first third of his season can just be put up to sample size. His season numbers after the previously mentioned start are truly impressive, throwing 120.1 innings at 2.62 ERA & 1.088 WHIP coupled with a gaudy 5.68 SO/BB ratio.
According to FIP, xFIP, tRA, and SIERA Bumgarner was the 4th, 7th, 7th, and 8th best pitcher in the MLB this last year. The player with the most similar advanced metric rankings and peripherals to him in the 2011 season was Justin Verlander, and he actually had a pretty good year. BABIP is obviously not the only difference between the seasons they had but it does cast a lot of light onto it, Verlander enjoyed a season of .236 BABIP, which is ridiculously unsustainable, while Bumgarner's settled at .322. Part of this is obviously due to park differences, different levels of defensive skill, and random chance, but in the long run BABIP fluctuates randomly and almost always averages out.
The last remarkable thing about Bumgarner is the fact that he just turned 22 in August and has already put up a 5.5 WAR season. The Giants have him under team control until 2017 and should see him be far and away the best WAR/$ pitcher in their rotation at least until he hits arbitration. Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain obviously make a formidable duo but the next few years might see Bumgarner become the best pitcher on an already outstanding staff.
2012 will see the Bum put up around 210 innings at 2.9 ERA. At 6'5" and 225 he's built for a large workload, and coupled with the fact that he has a very low-stress delivery should ensure he'll be healthy all season. He could easily be the ace of most rotations, but should go fairly late in the draft.
RotoChamp Ranking: 21st
My Take: If his BABIP simply regresses to the mean he's an easy top 10. I'm placing him at 8th.
Matt Cain
I really wish that I could put Cain up as underrated, but sadly I think this may finally be the year that people recognize that he is arguably just as good as Lincecum. Lincecum will definitely put up more K's, but Cain allows less walks and home runs. They both finished the season with an ERA near 2.8, and Cain actually had Lincecum beaten in most of the advanced metrics other than xFIP which notoriously hates Cain. Cain again topped Lincecum in WAR, with 5.2 and 4.4. Given the fact that Cain has gotten a bit better every year while being insanely consistent he's a better fantasy pick than The Freak.
Expect 220 IP, 2.95 ERA, 1.075 WHIP with 180 K's. He'll probably finish the season 11-13 though because at this point I'm convinced he's doomed. I'm not sure how many pitchers have six seasons of 4 WAR baseball with a 3.3 ERA and have a losing record, but it can't be a long list.
Rotochamp Rank: 9th
My Take: 6th
I'm such a homer.
Overrated:
As a side note to most of these picks, obviously quite a few of them are going to sound insane. Most of these players will obviously be big contributors to their teams, but for a multitude of reasons won't be able to put up the same numbers they did the season before either due to a fluky season helping them out tremendously or signs pointing toward their regression.
Jered Weaver
Weaver had a career year and took a hometown discount to stay with the Angels when he undoubtedly could have made more in the FA market. It's hard to say a guy whose ERA never even got as high as 2.5 is overrated, and in fact I do think Weaver will put up another solid season next year. You can count on him for at least 15 wins and a WHIP of 1.15 or less, but hoping for a sub-3 ERA would certainly be optimistic.
The last two years have seen improvement in H/9, BB/9, and minor improvements in HR/9, which have obviously led to his shiny ERA, second only to Verlander. His SO/9 has stayed unchanged over the last 6 years other than a large jump in the 2010 season. Despite having almost identical stats in '10 as he did in '11 plus an additional ~1.8 SO/9 he still posted 13 wins and a 3.01 ERA. Weaver has a very low BABIP compared to league average, with a career rate of .276. Incidentally he also had a BABIP of .276 exactly in his 2010 season, and an even lower rate of .250 in 2011 which helped pad his ERA tremendously. I do think that his low rate of hits on balls in play is sustainable, but not to that degree. It should regress to his career average in 2012.
Weaver should rack up at least 15 Wins & 220 IP in 2012, and I expect around a 3.05 ERA. If his command and stuff stays the same and he witnesses a regression in BABIP he should have a season very similar to 2010. He's outperformed his FIP and xFIP in the last few seasons but never to the level he did in 2011 which saw him beat his FIP by .8 and his xFIP by a full point and a half. He's a solid candidate for the ace of your staff, just don't buy any claims he's in the same tier as Halladay, Lee, or their contemporaries.
Rotochamp Ranking: 6th
My Take: He'll have a good year, but expect a higher ERA. 11th
Justin Verlander
This one is pretty simple. He pitched exactly how he does every year, with K/9, BB/9, and HR/9 all staying very close to career average, while his HR/FB% and FIP actually went up marginally. His insane amount of wins and ridiculously low ERA were helped by a high LOB% and a BABIP of .236, 50 points lower than career average which was also the second lowest in all the majors.
He's a machine as far as work load, expect him to put up at least 235 innings next season at 3.00 ERA and be worth 6+ WAR. His team should ensure him at least 17 wins, but back-to-back seasons of 20+ is probably hoping for too much. He's obviously a top pick but again, Halladay, Lee, Hamels, and possibly Kershaw should all have better ERAs and a similar amount of wins, even if only due to league differences. Coming off winning both the Cy Young and the MVP (the first time a starting pitcher has won it in 25 years) his hype should be through the roof and will probably be inflated beyond his value.
Rotochamp Ranking: 5th
My Take: He's just slightly lower in my book. I have him at 7th.
Tim Lincecum
It really pains me to write this as a Giants fan, but Lincecum was arguably the third best pitcher on the Giants this season. tERA is historically the most accurate advanced metric for predicting future performance and by its standard both Cain and Bumgarner were in the top 8 in all the MLB while Lincecum was 14th. As everyone knows he erupted in his first two full years in The Show, winning back to back Cy-Youngs and posting 2.62 and 2.48 ERAs. With a league-leading strikeout rate of ~10.5 SO/9 in both Cy Young years he was truly dominant. In 2010 bad luck and an extended slump in August saw his stats fall to more reasonable levels, as his ERA of 3.43 was ~.33 higher than both his FIP and xFIP. He still posted 16 wins and had almost 10 SO/9, and seemed to be poised for a rebound year in 2011. While his '11 ERA would seem to prove that he has, the peripherals are concerning. His strikeouts per nine were at an all time low, while his walk rate crept up around 10%. His HR/9 rate was quite low in '08 and '09 at ~.42, but both '10 and '11 have seen it up at ~.7.
To sum it up, Lincecum posted career highs in FIP, xFIP, SIERA, tERA, and BB/9 and also posted career lows in K/9, K/BB, and WAR. His career so far can be divided fairly cleanly into two groups by date, his seasons in 08-09, and 10-11. His stats have slowly declined every year since 2009 though they are still elite numbers. The question remains whether or not this is something that Big Time Timmy Jim will eventually get over or if his numbers from the past two years are what we should expect from him going forward. There are a number of reasons to suggest he's still every big as good as he was then and perhaps sample size, fatigue from the post-season, or a number of other factors led to his decline. Due to his build (and with it perceived fragility) and unorthodox delivery there will always be lingering questions about his durability and the sustainability of his performance. The last two years Lincecum has been drafted very high due to his name and prior performance, but it may be time to reevaluate.
Best case Lincecum should post 225 IP at 2.6 ERA with 220+ K's. I have very little faith this will be the case though, and believe his actual line will be closer to 210 IP at 3.1 ERA with ~200 K's. I believe the best case scenario is he repeats last years line with possibly an increase in K/9, a decrease in BB/9, and a sub-3 ERA. Worst case is Lincecum may be declining more quickly than usual due to his build and possible lack of durability.
Rotochamp Ranking: 11th
My Take: 15th
All statistical information was taken from Baseball Reference and Fangraphs. Fangraphs WAR numbers were used.
