Fantasy Baseball: Top 20 NL Starting Pitchers

by Ray Guilfoyle on Jan 27, 2009 3:00 PM EST in Baseball

There are many different ways to evaluate a starting pitcher such as number of quality starts, % of quality starts, K's/9, Wins, ERA, WHIP, but the one stat that appears to predict success is a pitchers Command. Here I am using a slight variation to Ron Shandler's Command ratio of K/BB. Instead I used (K-BB)/9. Below I give a list of the top 20 NL-only starting pitchers based on their 2008 Command ratio.

Pitcher	W	K	BBI	ERA	WHIP	K/9	BB/9	CMD
Harden, Rich	10	181	61	2.07	1.06	11.01	3.71	7.30
Lincecum, Tim	18	265	84	2.62	1.17	10.51	3.33	7.18
Haren, Dan	16	206	40	3.33	1.13	8.58	1.67	6.92
Johnson, Randy	11	173	44	3.91	1.24	8.46	2.15	6.31
Nolasco, Ricky	15	186	42	3.52	1.1	7.89	1.78	6.10
Rodriguez, Wandy	9	131	44	3.54	1.31	8.59	2.88	5.70
Hamels, Cole	14	196	53	3.09	1.08	7.76	2.10	5.66
Peavy, Jake	10	166	59	2.85	1.18	8.60	3.06	5.54
Santana, Johan	16	206	63	2.53	1.15	7.91	2.42	5.49
Billingsley, Chad	16	201	80	3.14	1.34	9.01	3.59	5.43
Lilly, Ted	17	184	64	4.09	1.23	8.09	2.81	5.28
Volquez, Edinson	17	206	93	3.21	1.33	9.46	4.27	5.19
Johnson, Josh	7	77	27	3.61	1.35	7.94	2.78	5.15
Oswalt, Roy	17	165	47	3.54	1.18	7.12	2.03	5.09
Sheets, Ben	13	158	47	3.09	1.15	7.17	2.13	5.04
Harang, Aaron	6	153	50	4.78	1.38	7.47	2.44	5.03
Dempster, Ryan	17	187	76	2.96	1.21	8.14	3.31	4.83
Webb, Brandon	22	183	65	3.3	1.2	7.27	2.58	4.68
Sanchez, Jonathan	9	157	75	5.01	1.45	8.94	4.27	4.67
Cueto, Johnny	9	158	68	4.81	1.41	8.17	3.52	4.66

You can see for the most part that all of these pitchers put up solid ERA and WHIP ratios, with the exception of Aaron Harang, Jonathan Sanchez and Johnny Cueto.

Some of the names on this list won''t be drafted in the first 10 rounds of most drafts, but there could lie some value if taken in later rounds. In roto leagues, Wandy Rodriguez, Johnny Cueto and Jonathan Sanchez probably can be bought for less than $7-10, but could produce double that in value.

On Wednesday, I will post the Bill James projections for each of these pitchers.

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Comments

Argument against taking pitchers early

This is the type of skills analysis that supports the fantasy expert advice to shy away from usign early picks on starting pitchers. Why pass up Curtis Granderson for Roy Halladay in the 5th when you can have Nolasco in the 10th?

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by faketeams on Jan 28, 2009 8:24 AM EST reply actions