THE STARTING LINE: Starting Pitching Strategy

by Evan "the Censor" Dickens

Welcome to the first of the Censor's ruminations on that most wonderful, and most heartbreaking, position in fantasy baseball: the starting pitcher. It's well-known that there are few fantasy pundits with as much pure, masochistic love for the SP as yours truly, but I don't plan on apologizing for my devotion to starting pitching any time soon. Every article will shine the statistical spotlight on one important starting pitcher, but since this is my first time I thought I'd go for the quadruple-play.

These four things I know are true...

Justin Duchscherer is absolutely not this good.

If you consider yourself an above-average fantasy player and you do not move The Duke for the best offer you get at the deadline, I'm officially busting you down to average status. The marquee numbers are oh so juicy: 10 wins on a bad team, along with a closer-like 1.87 ERA and 0.89 WHIP. But here's what else you need to know: Duch has already thrown 20 more innings than he has ever thrown in a single season, so the possibility for a late-season breakdown physically is all-too-real, especially considering he only threw 72 innings total the previous two seasons. His K/9 rate is a troubling 5.4--which wouldn't be a problem for a groundball pitcher like Wang or Carmona, but Duch's groundball-to-flyball ratio is almost exactly 1-to-1, and that is very dangerous when you can't strike guys out. So how has he been so good? The answer is that he has a ridiculous .215 BABIP (batting average on balls in play), by far the lowest in the majors. It's a stat that
measures luck, basically, and if you've enjoyed his stats this year so far, you're equally lucky. Cash in your chips now and do not be the guy regretting your lack of a trade.

(The preceding was written before Duchscherer's Saturday start. Looks like I was right!)

Cliff Lee is absolutely this good.

It seems like Lee is due to crash any moment now--doesn't every rise this meteoric come with a glaring Sell High sign?--but try as I might, I can not find statistical evidence to tell me anything other than the 29-year-old Cliff Lee is a dynamite pitcher. His strikeout numbers are significantly higher than the three prior seasons, all the way up to 7.6 K/9, but at the same time he is striking more guys out, he has increased his ground ball rate from a career average of 34% all the way up to 47%. I'd expect some regression if the strikeouts weren't there, but it's obvious that Lee has simply figured out how to locate his pitches and use his disgustingly effective curveball like never before. As a result, his walks have plummeted, and his K/BB rate which hovered around 2.2 for his career is at a filthy, majors-leading 6.0. As for that tricky BABIP, luck has not been a factor: Lee's .302 BABIP shows that, if anything, he is slightly below-average in the
luck department. Cliff Lee won't be the first pitcher taken in any midseason draft, but he's the best pitcher in the major leagues right now and there is no reason to believe a precipitous decline is coming. If you want to trade him, you should demand second or third round value. And if you want to go get him, whatever you do, don't mention this article to the owner you're trying to pull the rug from under.

I was so right about Ubaldo Jimenez.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not thrilled about it--after all, I drafted him on all five teams I'm playing this year and put my vaunted Ultra-Sleeper tag on him, only to systematically be forced into cutting him five times throughout the month of May. I haven't been able to snap him back up in every league, but if for some reason your fellow owners are all late to the party, Jimenez has far too much stuff to spend another second on anyone's wire. His success has come mostly from simply learning how to throw his dynamite fastball--and dynamite is the word; Ubaldo's average fastball speed trails only Felix Hernandez and Dustin McGowan across the majors, and it needs to be since he throws fastball 70+% of his pitches. In his first seven starts of the year, Jimenez only threw 57% of his pitches for strikes; over his last seven starts, that number is at 62% and climbing. He's also proving the ability to last deep into games; excluding an entirely excusable
four-inning, four-run speedbump in Detroit, his last seven starts find him averaging seven innings and 104 pitches per start. That's a large enough sample size to make you believe that the kinks are being worked out, and if the walk rate can stay below 4.0, Jimenez should be a solid option going forward--especially at home (yes, dreaded Coors Canaveral) where his ERA now hovers around a healthy 2.80.

I was so wrong about John Maine.

So shoot me--every fantasy writer gets a little bit of hometown giddyness over their team's young studs, and as an orange-blooded Mets fan I already put a deposit on my John Maine 2008 Cy Young commemorative plate at the beginning of the year--and Maine has been totally, emphatically, blah. A 4.20 ERA and a 1.34 WHIP, along with regression into basically a two-pitch pitcher. Maine used his slider very effectively last year but has dramatically reduced its usage this year, while doubling the amount of change-ups thrown. Batters are able to wait more for a good pitch up the middle, and this increased batter patience has caused Maine to fall into the trap of zone-nibbling, ultimately leading to a 4.2 BB/9 rate--by far the highest he's posted in his Mets career. To add insult, Maine hasn't even been unlucky--if anything, his .281 BABIP has room to regress negatively. He is still a good pitcher, but still lacking the pieces to be a great one. I'd love to
recommend buying low--and my Met pride may still lead me to try--but even when you feel like you're buying low, you may still actually be paying fair price. Looks like that Cy Young award will have to wait.