SubscribeLast year, I highlighted 17 pitchers who showed signs of becoming very good pitchers in 2009: They struck guys out and limited the walks and homeruns. Despite these indicators of success, they were still priced cheaply enough to provide a good fantasy return on investment.
As we saw last week, 12 of those 17 pitchers improved on their 2008 marks in 2009. Felix Hernandez, Adam Wainwright, Matt Cain, Randy Wolf, and Jon Lester surged to greatness. Even players who the projections panned (John Danks, Wandy Rodriguez, Jorge De La Rosa) made a fantasy impact in 2009.
So let’s try the same thing for 2010. If 2009 is any guide, these are players whose skills may be a better indicator of future fantasy success than the projections on the Price Guide.
We’ll first eliminate the top tier of pitchers who meet the LIMA qualifications — LIMA is about building a cheap staff and Roy Halladay and Zack Greinke aren’t coming cheap. It’s interesting that several names from last year’s list (the aforementioned Hernandez, Wainwright, Lester, and Cain) have graduated into the top fantasy tier.
We’re left with the following 18 pitchers with K/BB >= 2, K/9 >= 6, HR/9 <= 1, and IP >= 100 in 2009:
Very Good and Probably Not Cheap
Josh Johnson
Jair Jurrjens
Wandy Rodriguez
Clayton Kershaw
Tommy Hanson
Known Commodities Off a Down Year
Roy Oswalt
Chad Billingsley
Jake Peavy
John Lackey
True LIMA Pitchers
Gavin Floyd
Ryan Dempster
Kevin Correia
Hiroki Kuroda
Jeff Niemann
Colorado Rockies
Ubaldo Jimenez
Jorge De La Rosa
Jose Contreras
Jason Hammel
(That’s right, the Colorado Rockies get their own tier of LIMA pitchers. Despite solid peripheral stats, the projections uniformly hate them all, presumably because of their home ballpark. Of course, the projections already missed once on De La Rosa last year, so take that how you will.)
We’ll break down those categories one at a time throughout the coming week.
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Good read. These are always interesting since some guys like Correia and Kuroda sound so boring yet could be so valuable.
But, wanted to let you know, Jose Contreras is with the Phillies now.
@Luke: I knew about Contreras, but I still couldn’t resist grouping him in with his three teammates from last year.