The Evolution of Pitching...

I listen to the ESPN Fantasy Focus Baseball Podcast everyday. On Friday's podcast, Nate Ravitz and Tristin Cockcroft had a very interesting conversation about pitching that got me thinking.

Ravitz was talking about how the superiority of pitching in the last two seasons has forced us to redefine how we evaluate a pitchers' success. There are so many strong options toeing the bump these days that in a 10-team mixed league, a guy with a 3.50 ERA might not be helping you as much anymore. Amazing that a 3.50 ERA might be harming your team, but there are so many of those guys these days that you really have to take a stronger look at a pitchers' peripherals and K numbers to determine if he's worth rostering.

For example, Astro's starter Bud Norris, who they discussed on the podcast yesterday, holds an ERA just under 4 after a rough outing. Now if you compare his ERA now with many of the 67 starters in the majors with a lower ERA, he's still got tremendous value because of his K rate which is 2nd best in the bigs at 10.5 K's per 9. There are so many replacement level pitchers with empty sub-3.5 ERA's who don't help you at all.

I'm trying to get at several things here. There are so many pitchers with great ERA's that can trap you up. Josh Tomlin may be sexy now because of his ERA, but the fact that he doesn't strike anybody out (nor will) forces him to be merely supplemental to a guy like Norris who will combine with Tomlin to give a good ERA and a good amount of K's. As you search to improve pitching, I implore you to keep these things in mind. Aside from Norris, guys like Brandon Morrow, Edinson Volquez, Scott Baker, Bartolo Colon and Erik Bedard are the guys you should target. Don't get scared by a sub-par ERA because, whether you'd like to admit it or not, these guys are your inexpensive horses. Make sure you use them wisely. It's easy for the average fantasy player to get caught up in having a low ERA and WHIP, but given the nature of the game, you need to look for that little bit extra and take advantage of these low-ERA guys as supplemental to strikeout horses.

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