Not Necessarily Low Investments
These are guys who are already on the cusp of greatness: Josh Johnson, Jair Jurrjens, Wandy Rodriguez, Clayton Kershaw, Tommy Hanson. They won’t come cheap, but they could still be a bargain if they take another step forward in 2010. If you are following the LIMA Plan, you could consider grabbing one of these guys as your staff “ace.”

Bounceback Candidates
2009 was an unimpressive year on the surface for several pitchers whose track record points to a bounceback: Jake Peavy, John Lackey, Chad Billingsley, Roy Oswalt. Along with reasons for expecting a return to relevancy, there are also risk factors for each of them, and their name recognition might raise their price on draft day.

Today, let’s look at the final group, the pitchers who look like this year’s true LIMA pitchers. They are guys with solid peripheral stats (K/9 > 6; K/BB > 2; HR/9 < 1) and who could be acquired cheaply this year.

Ubaldo Jimenez
Ubaldo was recently the subject of a prominent Yahoo article and has attracted plenty of attention from fantasy drafters this year, who are treating him as a top 15 pitcher.

The projections are…less optimistic. The composite projections here peg him for a 4.01 ERA and a 1.41 WHIP with strikeouts as the only redeeming factor holding him in positive territory.

Although I’m torn between following the fantasy crowd and the projections, I think I have to side with the drafters in this case. I’m mainly suspicious that the projections aren’t valuing his strong groundball tendencies enough when applying the Coor’s Field penalty to his stats. Colorado is the best hitters’ park in the majors, but that effect can be kept in check if you keep the ball on the ground as well as Jimenez does.

A 3.60 ERA and 1.30 WHIP would bump Jimenez from $6 to $15, and that’s probably close to my limit on him. I’m still not sure if that’s enough to win him in most leagues.

Ryan Dempster
In placing Dempster with this group of pitchers, I think I had forgotten his impressive 2.96 ERA from 2008. Maybe I was still mentally penalizing him for his undistinguished time as a Marlins starter earlier in the decade.

This still might be the best place for him, though. I don’t think he’s a bounceback player, since I (and the projections) think he’s more likely to be closer to his 2009 (3.65 ERA) than his apparently flukish 2008.

He appears to be a fairly unremarkable, close-to-average pitcher for fantasy this year. His boring nature makes him ideal for LIMA — a cheaply decent pitcher who lets you focus your attention on purchasing hitters.

Kevin Correia
After a couple decent years as a reliever for the Giants, Correira responded to the switch to starter in 2008 with an ugly 6.05 ERA. Given a second chance by the Padres, however, he turned things around last year with a sub-4.00 ERA in 198 IP.

While that improvement is partly a Petco-fueled illusion, his park doesn’t let us explain away his rise in strikeouts from 2008 to 2009. He looks to be a solid back-end fantasy option with an ERA around 4.00, but he could be even better if you are able to leverage his home starts.

Gavin Floyd
On the surface, it looked like Floyd’s 2009 was a step back from his 2008, as his ERA rose from 3.84 in 2008 to 4.06 in 2009.

But there are reasons to see 2009 as a dramatic improvement for the 27-year-old righty: His WHIP held steady while he cut the number of homeruns he allowed (1.31 to 0.98 HR/9) and stepped up his strikeouts (6.3 to 7.6 K/9).

The projections are still cautious on Floyd, however. As with Jimenez above, they dock Floyd for pitching in Chicago, which is a bit of a hitters’ park.

We also can’t completely disregard his less-valuable performances in 2007 and 2008 after a good 2009. Unsurprisingly, the projections see his true ability lying in between 2008 and 2009. (It’s telling, however, that FanGraphs’ Fan projections are more optimistic than the ones here…)

Hiroki Kuroda
Kuroda missed some time with injury last year, and that could make him a sneaky pick for 2010.

He’s got several extra factors going for him: He’s pitching for the reigning first place team in a division with a couple of teams expected to be poor offensively (the Padres and Giants especially). While he’ll probably get starts in tough parks in COL and ARI, his home park and SD are favorable to pitchers.

Jorge de la Rosa
Another Rockies pitcher means I’ll continue the apparent theme of this post — home parks will largely determine the fantasy fortunes for many of these pitchers.

If you take everything I said about Jimenez above and applied it to a somewhat inferior pitcher, I think you would have a good summary for de la Rosa.

Jeff Niemann and Jason Hammel
As RotoGraphs did, we’ll tackle these two Rays prospects together (even though Hammel is now with the Rockies). The two of them have the lowest projections on this list, and — while drafters are somewhat more optimistic — I think fantasy expectations are fairly low for both of them.

But consider the positives in favor of these monstrously-sized pitchers: Each of them had a decent ERA last year, and that was backed up by the peripheral stats. They’ve both got a solid prospect pedigree and a good minor league track record. Hammel and Niemann might be the best test to see if LIMA can do a better job at predicting improvements than projections alone.

The next group of 2010’s LIMA candidates are pitchers who are primed to bounce back from a down year in 2009: Roy Oswalt, Chad Billingsley, Jake Peavy, and John Lackey.

Here are their ERAs in 2009:

Roy Oswalt 4.12
Chad Billingsley 4.03
Jake Peavy 3.45 (102 IP)
John Lackey 3.83

Fantasy owners tend to have short memories, focusing mostly on a question of “What have you done for me lately?” If people in your league focus only on 2009, these four pitchers may be available for cheap.

In contrast to your typical fantasy owner, projections recognize that players who have an abnormally good or bad year tend to regress back to their established level of performance. That gives some reason for optimism for these pitchers. There’s still risk:

Roy Oswalt is getting old, and his strikeout rate has never been dominant. The 2010 Astros are shaping up as a terrible offensive team that could struggle to get him wins.

Chad Billingsley walks a lot of guys. With a consistent 1.30+ WHIP, the 4.03 ERA of 2009 seems more appropriate than the 3.14 ERA from 2008.

Jake Peavy is leaving the favorable PETCO Park in San Diego where he had put up ERAs in the 2.00’s for several years. He will spend 2010 in a much less-favorable park for the White Sox. Plus, he managed a 4.09 ERA stinker even with the Padres.

John Lackey is now two years removed from the excellent 3.01 ERA year he had in 2007, posting a 3.75 and 3.83 in the past two years. He also moves to a very tough AL East.

No doubt, there’s risk involved with all four of these pitchers. With strong peripheral stats, however, there’s also the possibility of a big payoff in 2010.

The pitchers in this group for 2010 are:

Josh Johnson
Jair Jurrjens
Wandy Rodriguez
Clayton Kershaw
Tommy Hanson

With the LIMA strategy, you’re obviously going to be passing on the big names (Halladay, Sabathia, Greinke, etc.) so that you can use that money for hitting. But maybe you can still target one of these guys as your staff ace. You can get similar production as you would from the household names in the top-tier, but at a bit better price.

With this tier of LIMA pitchers, there’s both good news and bad news. The good news: All of them were very good in 2009, although Hanson’s limited innings pitched capped his value a bit. The bad news: They are all projected for significant decline in 2010.

While I know the math behind the projections is — on the whole — solid, I can’t help but feel that these pitchers are being underestimated a little. Take a look at the projected ERA’s compared to last year:

2009 Actual ERA
Josh Johnson 3.23
Jair Jurrjens 2.60
Wandy Rodriguez 3.02
Clayton Kershaw 2.79
Tommy Hanson 2.89
Average 2.91

2010 Projected ERA
Josh Johnson 3.47
Jair Jurrjens 3.71
Wandy Rodriguez 3.74
Clayton Kershaw 3.65
Tommy Hanson 4.17
Average 3.74

Does that seem a little pessimistic to anyone else? They are projected to give up the same number of earned runs in 2010 as in 2009 (300) while pitching 200 fewer innings, and the result is an average ERA jump from 2.91 to 3.74!

One good sign for their future is that adding ZiPS would make these projections all a little brighter — across the board increases in IP and a significant improvement in ERA for Hanson, Kershaw, and Jurrjens. Based on last year’s results where the projections tended to miss the improvements made by LIMA pitchers, I’m going to err on the optimistic side this year.

So, no, I’m not going to stop bidding on Tommy Hanson at $5.

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.

On the whole, the LIMA pitchers did extremely well. Players like Felix Hernandez, Jon Lester, and Matt Cain took a huge step forward to become elite pitchers. Guys like Jonathan Sanchez and and Randy Wolf went from marginal to good. And, of course, a couple of guys (like Joba Chamberlain and Gil Meche) flopped completely.

So what did we learn from the whole thing? Here are a few lessons that I took from these results:

LIMA isn’t dead, yet.
As I’m re-reading my thoughts from last year, it’s clear that I was skeptical of the value of LIMA in the 21st century. LIMA originated in a world of 4×4 fantasy leagues, and today’s 5×5 dominated fantasy scene already appreciates high-strikeout pitchers. LIMA doesn’t know about BABIP or GB/FB rates that can also be indicators of future success. Projections are designed to consider strikeout, walk, and homerun rates and so the elements of LIMA should already be present in the dollar values.

But how do you explain two-thirds of LIMA pitchers outperforming their projections? Now, 12 out of 17 isn’t a great sample size, but that does seem to be a tangible effect. These pitchers went from a $4 average value in 2008 to an $11 value in 2009 (higher even than the $7 average projection).

A strategy that can identify a class of pitchers that will beat their projections by an average of $4 is a winning strategy. The overperformance of these starters certainly makes me inclined to continue bidding even past the projected dollar amount on similar pitchers in 2010.

Watch out for players on the border.
After a couple of years of striking out around 5 batters per nine, Paul Maholm edged into the LIMA qualifications for 2009 with a K/9 of just over 6 in the previous year. Of the players I looked at, he had the lowest strikeout rate and was in the bottom half for K/BB and HR/9.

In 2009, he promptly returned to his 5 K/9 ways. Hindsight tells us that Maholm was really the mediocre pitcher we saw in 2006-2008 and not the one who snuck into the LIMA qualifications in 2009. Apparently borderline LIMA players are not the best bets for success.

Of course, removing the bottom tier of LIMA qualifiers might have also dumped Wainwright (6.20 K/9) and Garza (6.23 K/9), both of whom improved in 2009, so this rule doesn’t work every time.

Watch out for players switching roles.
In 2008, Joba Chamberlain topped all of the LIMA categories, leading LIMA-inventor Ron Shandler to peg Joba as the #1 pitcher for 2009. The projections loved him as well, expecting him to double his value from the year before.

However, far from being the best fantasy pitcher of 2009, Chamberlain ended up in negative territory. What happened?

Most of the decline may have just been injuries or simple bad luck. But Joba’s failure also serves as a reminder that pitching relief is easier than starting and facing the same lineup multiple times a night. A RP who has LIMA skills may not be a LIMA starter.

We’ll keep those lessons in mind as we look at who fits the LIMA strategy for 2010.

After throwing out the obviously good pitchers (Lincecum, Halladay, Sabathia, Santana, etc.) who wouldn’t come cheap, I found 17 LIMA pitchers for 2009, and I broke them down into categories based on the 2009 projections. Here they are again, with their 2008 actual values, 2009 projected values, and 2009 actual values:

Already Good, Could Be Great

True LIMA Pitchers Projected to Improve

LIMA Pitchers with No Projected Improvement

LIMA Pitchers Projected to do Worse

With hindsight, we might split them up like this, instead:

Better than Expected

Met Expectations

Worse than Expected

On the whole, that seems like a very good performance. Almost half of the pitchers did significantly better than projected. Another five met their projections, which was still an improvement over what they had done in 2008. Only 5 out of 17 players did worse than projected, and really only 3 (Meche, Burnett, and Chamberlain) would count as disappointments.

Those results are both surprising and pleasing. I really expected the projections to recognize that pitchers with solid peripherals would improve, but they still undersold most of these guys. And it’s exciting to think of what can be applied for fantasy drafts in 2010.

Tommorrow: What lessons can we learn from 2009?

We identified exactly one player — Jonathan Sanchez — who should come cheap in 2009 and whose peripheral stats project a dramatic fantasy improvement over 2008.

We identified several reasons why pitchers with solid peripherals might not be projected to improve in ERA/WHIP this year:

- Their ERA/WHIP have been high for several years. (Meche, Pettitte, Wolf)
- Their ERA/WHIP were much lower in 2008 than in previous years, and could regress. (Lester, Danks, W. Rodriguez, Maholm)
- Their 2008 ERA/WHIP was influenced by a low BABIP, which could regress. (Garza, Wainwright, Maholm)

As I mentioned in the introduction to LIMA, the rise in popularity of 5×5 and the increased awareness of advanced stats have essentially killed off the LIMA plan as a viable strategy. It’s too hard to get pitchers who are both good and cheap.

I think that’s why when people discuss LIMA nowadays, they often make it sound like a “punt SP / spend on hitting” strategy. Not finding any pitchers who are both good and cheap, they settle on guys who are just cheap.

But what if we took the opposite approach? What if we focused on good pitchers, even if they weren’t $1 players? Building a rotation with Joba Chamberlain, Matt Cain, Gil Meche, Jonathan Sanchez, and Wandy Rodriguez won’t be cheap, but it might be possible get each of those players below value. And if I can’t have both, I’m going to pick good over cheap.

I drafted Doug Davis in most of my leagues that year. I was rewarded with an amazing 4.91 ERA and 1.51 WHIP over 203 IP — not exactly the breakout season I was expecting.

The moral of the story: A pitcher who meets the LIMA qualifications is not guaranteed to succeed.

Matt Garza (2008: $7; 2009: $8)
Adam Wainwright (2008: $10; 2009: $9)
I’ll cover Garza and Wainwright together, since their situations seem similar: The projections temper the expected gains for these two young pitchers with a bit of regression in BABIP, which was pretty low for both of them in 2008. The net result is a projected dollar value pretty close to what they put up last year.

The strikeout rate for either pitcher isn’t really as high as you would like in 5×5, and that’s the main thing holding them back from the middle-tier of pitching.

Randy Wolf (2008: $0; 2009: -$2)
The last time Randy Wolf managed an ERA below 4.00? 2002. Not surprisingly, the projections don’t expect an improvement in 2009.

Gil Meche (2008: $6; 2009: $5)
Gil Meche is similar to Wolf, in that there is plenty of data for the projections to use when predicting performance, and so their 2009 values aren’t too far off from last year’s. Meche is a solid pitcher who could be even better, but it’s hard to forecast a breakout after eight seasons in MLB.

Paul Maholm (2008: $4; 2009: $1)
The strikes against Maholm are the same as Garza and Wainwright: Expect the BABIP to regress in 2009. The strikeout rate is not good enough for 5×5. Then throw in a new factor: Maholm stunk in his other two full seasons in the majors (2006 and 2007).

Jorge de la Rosa (2008: -$4; 2009: -$7)
In 2005-2006, Byung-Hyun Kim put up peripheral stats that were pretty close to LIMA-esque, and yet still managed to give up an extraordinary amount of hits (WHIPs over 1.50). Jorge de la Rosa — another Colorado pitcher — looks to fit that same profile.

Wandy Rodriguez (2008: $6; 2009: $2)
Like Lester and Danks, the projections are harsh on Wandy for pitching poorly before 2008. However, his surprisingly good campaign last year was not a result of getting lucky, but came as a result of solid pitching (increasing strikeouts, decreasing walks). Were those improvements for real?

If you think so, you could push the bidding for Wandy into double-digits. The projections are more skeptical of a pitcher who before 2008 had a career 5.17 ERA in 447 IP.

Jonathan Sanchez (2008: -$6; 2009: $3)
Sanchez’s 5.01 ERA in 2008 masked some pretty solid peripheral stats. He struck out 157 in 158 IP for a K/9 of 8.94. That was good for 7th among SP and behind only Harden, Lincecum, Kazmir, Volquez, Burnett, and Billingsley.

The projections indicate that Sanchez could realistically cut the ERA down to a 4.24. That isn’t amazingly useful in a mixed league, but, combined with the strikeouts, it would be worth drafting. Sanchez’s projection is similar to what is projected for Clayton Kershaw, minus all of the hype.

Kevin Millwood (2008: -$14; 2009: -$4)
Like Jonathan Sanchez, Millwood managed an era over 5.00 last year, despite doing a lot of things well. The biggest difference in the two for 2009 is the 20 year gap in age between them.

Even if Millwood sees the same improvements as Sanchez, he’s still below replacement level. I can see taking a flyer in an AL-only league, but it seems like there’s limited upside, here.

Andy Pettitte (2008: -$3; 2009: $2)
Pettitte has put up three straight years of ERAs above 4.00 and WHIPs above 1.40. At his age, there’s no reason to expect any improvement from those marks in 2009. (Although the same thing might have been said about fellow-Yankee Mike Mussina last year, and Mussina managed to end his career on a high note.)

So what does that tell us? Those three are the only pitchers who:

1) Meet the LIMA qualifications
2) Come cheap
3) Are projected to improve by more than a $1.

I’d be willing to take a chance on Jonathan Sanchez, but my enthusiasm for Millwood and Pettitte is limited, despite their projected improvements.

Later this week I’ll examine the last group of LIMA pitchers: Those who are cheap but who are still not projected to do better in 2009 than in 2008.

Matt Cain (2008: $2; 2009: $18)
Despite garnering only 8 wins last year, Cain was still a very good pitcher. Assuming his luck turns around in 2009, he could find himself back in the upper-middle class of pitchers with John Lackey, Derek Lowe, and Scott Kazmir.

For all of the people marking down 20 wins for Tim Lincecum: If Lincecum can get wins on the Giants, why can’t Cain? The Giants look to have improved in 2009, especially in the bullpen. The composite projections put Matt Cain down for 12 wins next year and a $16 gain in value from 2008.

Josh Beckett (2008: $10; 2009: $22)
Beckett’s ERAs in even years: 4.10, 3.79, 5.01, 4.03
Beckett’s ERAs in odd years: 1.50, 3.04, 3.38, 3.27

Do I think it means anything for 2009? Not really. However, it does indicate that he hasn’t been the most consistent pitcher the last few years.

It does look like he pitched better last year than his 4.00 ERA would indicate. Of course, enough people will remember his good years that I don’t really expect Beckett to be that big of a bargain. The Price Guide thinks he can improve on his 2008 by $12.

Felix Hernandez (2008: $4; 2009: $16)
Like Cain, Felix Hernandez’s low value last year came from poor run support (9 wins) and a high WHIP (1.39). The WHIP has always been a problem for him, but there’s no reason to expect him to only manage single-digit wins in 2009.

People forget it because Felix has already pitched three full seasons, but he only turns 23 years old this year. Even if this isn’t the year he puts everything together, it looks like he could be close to a $20 player.

A.J. Burnett (2008: $9; 2009: $19)

One of my favorite LIMA-related quotes, courtesy of Trace Wood in 2002:

LIMA misses emerging stars like AJ Burnett, Matt Clement, Ramon Ortiz – hardthrowers who could dominate the game for much of the next decade – because it focuses on walk rates.

In hindsight, I find that to be pretty funny. Burnett ended up increasing his K/BB to become a consistent LIMA target and a quality major league pitcher. Clement and Ortiz didn’t quite manage the dominant careers that Trace predicted, although admittedly the issue wasn’t their walk rates: Clement couldn’t stay healthy, and Ortiz couldn’t strike enough people out while allowing way too many homeruns. But I digress.

Like fellow former-Marlin Josh Beckett, A.J. Burnett managed an ERA north of 4.00 in 2008, despite both of them striking out around one batter per inning. Although Burnett has never managed a spectacular ERA, his value goes up quite a bit even if he can only get the 3.82 that is projected.

People like to bring up the Pitching for the Yankees = More Wins theory, but Burnett managed 18 wins last year for a decent Toronto team. I wouldn’t bump up his value any by expecting that number to increase in 2009.

Joba Chamberlain (2008: $8; 2009: $17)
Joba is a little different from the rest of the pitchers in this group. Everyone else experienced a down 2008 after putting up better numbers in previous years. Chamberlain’s only weakness in 2008 was his limited IP, as he only accumulating 100 IP between starting and relieving.

Expectations of an increased workload as a fulltime starter send Chamberlain’s value climbing. Just don’t expect the market to discount him: Shandler’s projections make Joba the #1 fantasy pitcher for 2009, and there are plenty of others hyping him as well.