Previously, the Pittsburgh firstbaseman was sitting at about -$1 in a standard league — a useful reserve but not a worthwhile regular.

Now, Jeff Clement is valued at $17.

What changed?

Remember that the Price Guide automatically determines positional eligibility by looking at the number of games at each position that someone played in the previous year. That works great for established major leaguers, but it means that there’s no positional adjustment for minor league players.

So for minor league players who didn’t have any games played in the previous year (or who just had a few September AB), I assign a default position. For example, Ian Desmond played 17 games at SS in 2009, which was just shy of the 20 game cutoff set by default and resulted in him only qualifying at “Util.” I set his default position as “SS,” and the problem is solved.

Jeff Clement had no major league appearances in 2009. So for him, I set the default position as “1B.” After all, he’s currently looking like the front-runner for the Pirates’ starting 1B job this year.

However, in the not too distant past Clement was a catcher. In fact, he played 38 games behind the plate for the Mariners in 2008. That’s good enough to qualify him as a catcher in many leagues, and so I switched his default position to “C.”

The result is an $18 bump in value! Compared to other 1B, his projection isn’t that impressive. But up against the much lower quality of hitters at catcher, he’s in the middle of the pack.

I’ll caution you to double-check your league’s eligibility rules before you get too excited about Jeff Clement this year. I think Yahoo, CBS, and ESPN all count him as a catcher, though.

Secondly, his value (like all catchers) plummets in leagues that only start one catcher. The deeper your draft, the better an option Clement looks.

Disclaimer #3 is that he’s not a lock for regular playing time in Pittsburgh this year. He’ll face competition from Garrett Jones and Steven Pearce (who will both play some OF, too), and a slow start could force Clement to wallow in AAA a little longer.

With those cautions, Clements could be a sneaky pick late in a draft. I’d probably favor him over low-upside guys like A.J. Pierzynski.

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.

C – Mike Napoli
C – Geovany Soto
1B – Lance Berkman
2B – Kelly Johnson
3B – Chris Davis
SS – Erick Aybar
OF – Matt Diaz
OF – Ryan Ludwick
OF – Magglio Ordonez
OF – Jayson Werth
OF – Brad Hawpe
MI – Howie Kendrick
CI – Billy Butler
Util – Vladimir Guerrero

Notice that there are several guys on that list that are looking to bounceback from a poor 2009: Geovany Soto, Kelly Johnson, Chris Davis. Don’t forget that these are players with a track record (including the minors) that can outweigh one bad year, and there’s a good chance they wind up in between their 2008 and 2009 values this year.

I’ve found that fantasy owners tend to shy away from serviceable veterans in favor of the latest hyped rookies. Magglio Ordonez, Vladimir Guerrero, and Lance Berkman aren’t the players they once were, but they are still solid buys at the right price.

P – Roy Halladay
P – Chris Carpenter
P – Dan Haren
P – Ted Lilly
P – Erik Bedard
P – Hiroki Kuroda
P – Heath Bell
P – Trevor Hoffman
P – Rafael Soriano

I tried to pick some value pitchers from across all tiers. The projections really like Roy Halladay switching from a rough AL East to the more-manageable NL East. Ted Lilly isn’t exciting, but he’s been a reliably above average pitcher for several years now. And Hiroki Kuroda is a LIMA pitcher and could put everything together in 2010.

Chris Carpenter and Rafael Soriano fit in the category of “back from injury,” which means their price tag is a little lower in most leagues. Erik Bedard is a little different: He’ll miss the first part of the year, but 100-120 IP at his previous levels would be valuable. Ideally, you can stash him on the DL and combine his contribution with a replacement-level pitcher for the first few months.

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.

1. Eric Young
2. Russell Martin
3. David Ortiz
4. Julio Borbon
5. Jeff Francouer
6. Melky Cabrera
7. Delmon Young
8. BJ Upton
9. Magglio Ordonez
10. Jose Reyes

A couple of names (Eric Young Jr., Julio Borbon) also popped up on my SB sleeper list earlier this year. Many of the rest are guys who had a down year in 2009. Even though fantasy owners tend to focus solely on last year’s results, projections remind us that players tend to return to their established level of performance.

That could be good news for those willing to take a risk on Russell Martin, David Ortiz, B.J. Upton, or Jose Reyes.

After only one year in the minors, Porcello managed this MLB line in 2009:

14 W, 3.96 ERA, 1.37 WHIP, 89 K, 170.2 IP

That’s pretty good for a 20 year-old rookie, good enough for a $5-6 value last year. But the predictions for 2010 are…pretty divided. Let’s take a look at the negatives first:

Rick Porcello takes a step back in 2010.
(CHONE: 5 W, 5.08 ERA, 1.52 WHIP, 69 K, 124 IP)

Someone recently pointed out to me that Porcello’s projection wasn’t showing up on the Price Guide. After a little digging, I found that that wasn’t quite true: Porcello is on the Price Guide for 2010, but he doesn’t rank in the top 250 pitchers that are shown by default. The reason why is nicely illustrated by CHONE’s projection above.

With a 5.00 ERA, Porcello winds up in the -$16 range for standard league. Why the pessimism for a pitcher who finished 2009 with an ERA below 4.00? Most likely it comes from Porcello’s very low strikeout rates over his two professional seasons. With so few strikeouts, there will be lots of balls put in play. More balls in play means more hits and more runs, and that’s going to show up in his WHIP and ERA.

Even without the impact on ERA/WHIP, it’s hard for a pitcher with so few strikeouts to be valuable in 5×5 fantasy. That projected line above presents no redeemable qualities for fantasy.

Rick Porcello takes a step forward in 2010.
(Fans: 12 W, 4.10 ERA, 1.43 WHIP, 110 K, 180 IP)

What the projections don’t know, however, is that Porcello is a somewhat unique pitcher. He’s a first round pick who has shot straight to the majors, which means he’s at least impressed some people — bad pitchers don’t jump from A-ball to the majors.

Mike at THT Fantasy makes a comparison with Ben Sheets. Like Porcello, Sheets was a 1st round pick who wasted little time in the minors. Although he started off his major league career with middling K/9 numbers, Sheets’s strikeout-rates improved and he turned into a very good MLB pitcher. It’s not an exact comparison, but it shows that it’s possible for Porcello to improve.

That’s the sort of thinking that is influencing the fan projections above. There’s a little bit of decline in rate stats, but that’s compensated by an improved K/9.

So what can we expect from Rick Porcello in 2010? I’m not making any bold predictions, but I will say that the potential downside makes him a risky pitcher to draft this year.

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.

The projections so far (CAIRO and ZiPS) have him as a late-round 4.00+ ERA pitcher for about half of a season. That would probably be worth a mid-single digit bid in most leagues.

But there are enough questions around Strasburg to make bidding much more complicated. I see at the following factors weighing in on Strasburg’s value:

How many innings will Strasburg pitch in 2010?

I don’t follow the Nationals too closely, but right now it looks like there’s at least a chance Strasburg could start the season in the majors. There aren’t a ton of great options available for Washington, so a good spring gives Strasburg a shot at spending April in D.C.

However, it has become common practice to cap a young player’s innings to prevent injuries, and so I’d say the most optimistic prediction for Strasburg would be 160 IP. The Nationals won’t have anything to play for in September, so I’d think they would shut him down.

Of course, the Nationals may also decide to start Strasburg off in the minors. In that case, we’re talking about something closer to 100 IP.

I’d say the risk of only getting 100-150 IP out of a SP is a factor that keeps Strasburg’s value low for 2010.

How high is the upside?

I mentioned yesterday that projecting Strasburg in 2010 is more complex than just picking a single number, like a 4.38 ERA. I’m making up some numbers here, but let’s throw out some quick probabilities for what Strasburg’s ERA might look like:

5% – 3.00
10% – 3.50
25% – 4.00
40% – 4.50
20% – 5.00

That gives, on average, a 4.30 ERA. It also gives Strasburg a 5% chance of becoming a top-tier pitcher immediately. There’s a 10% chance he winds up in the middle-tier for fantasy, and a 25% chance he’s worth a late-round grab. Most (60%) of the time, however, he’s waiver wire fodder.

I admittedly have no idea how realistic those probabilities are. However, I think the chance of him being either good or very good gives him a much higher ceiling than your typical 4.38 ERA pitcher. And I think that upside must slant his value a little bit higher.

How much risk can your fantasy team assume?

When drafting, I try to balance out upside picks with more conservative choices. If I already have, say, Roy Oswalt and Roy Halladay, then I have quite a bit of freedom to take some chances with the rest of my pitching staff.

The answer to this question will be mostly dependent on how your draft is progressing when Strasburg comes up. But I think it also matters regardless of context specifics. In general, I think pitching depth looks pretty good this year. It seems like it will be possible to put together a solid, reliable staff without spending too much money. The availability of quality SP might make me somewhat more inclined to take on a riskier proposition.

Put all of those factors together, and I’m guessing that I’d be willing to bid about $8 on Strasburg in a typical league. That’s not enough to ruin my season if things go wrong, but I think there’s a decent chance he’s worth it.

4 W, 4.38 ERA, 1.47 WHIP, 70 K, 76 IP

SG is going from college stats here, so this is still wildly speculative. The Price Guide indicates that a pitcher with those stats isn’t worth starting in most fantasy leagues, including NL-only leagues. It would be the kind of pitcher you draft for your bench, only to drop in April so you can pick up some guy who starts the season on an unexpected hot streak.

Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS gives a somewhat more optimistic look for Strasburg:

10 W, 4.18 ERA, 1.32 WHIP, 113 K, 114 IP

That’s a draftable pitcher for late in a fantasy baseball draft. The IP make it hard to find a comparable, but that’s roughly what you might expect from Rich Harden or Chris Young. (They have injury risk, but Strasburg has risk as well.) It’s also not too far off from what you might expect from A.J. Burnett (with significantly fewer IP).

With Strasburg, of course, you’re not simply drafting a projected statline. There’s an enormous amount of upside, much more so than your typical 4.38 or 4.18 ERA pitcher. That upside is obvious for those in keeper leagues, but is it worth anything in 2010?

What do you think? Let’s say you’re in a 12 team, standard redraft league and have $260 to spend. If your draft were held today, what would you pay for Stephen Strasburg?

And you can’t say, “I wouldn’t draft him because someone else would pay more.” How cheap would he have to come for you to bid on him?

I’ll give my answer tomorrow.