(Part 2 of a 3 part series). 

 

Part one can be found at http://creativesports.com/Staff/BaseballArticles/tabid/70/ctl/ArticleView/mid/390/articleId/2498/OutsidetheBattersBoxAnatomyofanNFBCChampionOffensiveDraft.aspx.

 

Last week, we discussed the anatomy of a National Fantasy Baseball Championship League Champion, focusing upon the hitters chosen in the draft.  This week, we are looking at those pitchers we choose in the draft, with an indication as to why we made these choices, and whether or not the choices panned out.

 

You can go to any draft and realize that you could have made a better pick in almost every round.  Hindsight, as they say, is 20:20.  It’s unlikely that you will ever make the correct choice in every round.  “Unlikely” is an understatement, “impossible” is more like it.  Who’d have thought that Cliff Lee would have a Cy Young caliber league?  Not too many people, other than perhaps Cliff’s family, and even they wouldn’t have made Clifford a top twenty pick, either.

 

With that backdrop, here are our pitching picks:

 

With the second pick in the second round, we took the first pitcher off the board.  That pitcher was, of course, Johan Santana. Everything looked great for a Santana break out year. He is the most talented pitcher in the game.  He was leaving the American League for the National League (just look at how well both CC Sabathia and Rich Harden performed in the NL), and he was going to a park that favored his game.  We expected big things and a huge season from Johan.  Of course, we didn’t expect a Billy Wagner injury or other variables that cost Johan at least a half dozen victories. 

 

When the season finished, Johan was very good, but certainly not the best pitcher in baseball.  According to stat guru Todd Zola at FantasyBaseball.com, Johan was the fourth best starting pitcher this season, tied with Cliff Lee, but behind, in order, CC Sabathia, Roy Halladay and Tim Lincecum.  So, certainly we would have been more successful drafting Sabathia instead of Santana, but Santana was pretty respectable.

 

Taking a pitcher in the second round is enigmatic.  It gave us a head start on our pitching, but put us in a whole offensively.  The natural tendency would be to then take offensive players for the next five or six rounds, to make up for that offensive deficiency.  That would have been a mistake. 

 

This is similar to drafting a stolen base king.  If you draft one guy who steals bases, and then surround him with Jason Giambi type players, you will have wasted your stolen base guy.  Sixty steals are great from one player, but if you only get twenty from the rest of your team, you are going to finish near the bottom in steals.  Hence, you wasted a pick on the sixty-stolen base player.

 

The same is true for pitching.  What good would it be to draft Santana, only to team him with Tim Wakefield, Dave Bush, Oliver Perez, Joe Blanton and Jon Garland?  The answer is clearly, “no good.”

 

While we addressed offense in the third and fourth rounds, we went back to drafting pitching in rounds five and six.   In round five, we took the best available closer, Joe Nathan.  Francisco Rodriguez and Jonathan Papelbon were already off the board (as was JJ Putz), making Nathan the best remaining.  Nathan did exactly as expected, having yet another all-star season.  Drafting closers is often difficult, as the turnover rate is so high.  Having lived through BJ Ryan’s first week season ending injury last year, we knew we needed a reliable closer to anchor the pen.  Nathan fit the bill perfectly.

 

We weren’t done with closers, as we needed to pick up another full-time closer later in the draft (otherwise, we’d have wasted the Nathan pick). We were also hoping to pick up a closer in waiting or two, at a value, giving us a shot at winning the saves category.  We never expected that K-Rod would set an all-time record, so we (wrongfully) thought that the saves title was reachable.

 

In the sixth round, we decided to pick up a starter to team with Santana.  We narrowed our choice down to three, Roy Oswalt, Josh Beckett and Scott Kazmir.  This was the toughest decision we had during the draft.  Oswalt was solid in the past, but on a slight career decline.  He had been durable, and pitched in the National League, but he wasn’t likely to put up spectacular numbers.  Beckett was pitching for the defending World Champions, but he had injury issues.  Kazmir, likely the most talented of the trio, was also facing injuries, and he pitched for the Rays, a team that lost almost 100 games the prior season.  After much discussion, we opted for the safe choice in Oswalt.

 

By the end of the second month of the season, we were kicking ourselves in the butt.  The durable Oswalt was alternating between getting the living daylights beaten out of him, and being injured.  He was actually cut in another NFBC league.  Beckett and Kazmir had rebounded from their injuries and were pitching for their respective teams.  Kazmir’s Rays, having exorcised the Devil from their name, were competing for a division title.

 

Time, apparently, heals all wounds, as Oswalt and his hip condition rebounded. By the end of the season, using Mr. Zola’s calculations, Oswalt was the fifteenth most valuable starting pitcher.  Beckett was 31^st and Kazmir 32^nd.  We made the right choice of the three, but we also passed on Lincecum, Lee and Ervin Santana, all who were available and who outperformed Oswalt.  Nonetheless, Oswalt became a very good partner for Johan.

 

We went with hitting again until the 11^th round when we found our second closer, BJ Ryan.  Putting away concerns for injury, we felt that Ryan offered the best possible value for a closer, and while other teams were spending top ten picks on their second closer (twenty closers were drafted ahead of BJ), we were able to get similar value at the end of the 11^th round.  According to Guru Zola, Ryan was the 12^th best closer in 2008.  Hence, we did indeed get value here.

 

At the end of the 13^th and beginning of the 14^th round, we went for pitching, focusing on strikeouts.  With Johan and Oswalt, we had a good start, but we needed to get some strikeout potential and value here.  Looking at 2007, Bronson Arroyo had a bad season, but much of it was due to a high batting average for batted balls in play.  A move toward his career norm would put Arroyo as an effective pitcher yet again.  Banking on the law of averages, we went with Arroyo in the 13^th.  Oops.  Arroyo had more problems than the law of averages, and he was pretty much putrid all year.  Zola values Arroyo’s 2008 season somewhere around the 120^th most effective starter.  That’s not too effective.

 

Yet, Arroyo did contribute 163 strikeouts and 15 wins.  As our starting staff had an incredible ERA and WHIP, Arroyo’s horrible ERA and WHIP really didn’t affect us.  We got the 15 wins and 163 Ks, without any real blow to our other numbers.

 

How did we do that?  Well, we built a solid base of Johan and Oswalt, and drafted smartly thereafter.  You can afford one or two bad pitchers, if you can get a solid staff around them.  Had we waited on pitching, Arroyo’s numbers could have devastated us.  Instead, he actually contributed.

 

Rich Harden is among the most talented pitchers in baseball.  If you could extrapolate his numbers for a full season, you have a perennial Cy Young candidate.  Of course, you can’t.  Harden is going to get hurt.  We looked at Harden in the 14^th round, and figured if we could just get half a season, we’d have two and one-half of the best pitchers in baseball.  If his arm fell off after the first start, we were only risking a 14^th round pick.  It seemed worth the risk.  And, it was.

 

Harden did miss his share of starts, but when he pitched, he was nearly unhittable.  Harden started just 25 games, but struck out 182.  His 7.28 strikeouts per start was second high in the majors for pitchers starting 25 games or more (trailing only Tim Lincecum’s 8.03 Ks/start).  Toss in his amazing 2.07 ERA and 1.06 WHIP, and Harden is Zola’s 11^th most valuable starting pitcher in baseball in 2008.  Add Harden to fourth best Johan Santana, and fifteenth best Roy Oswalt, and we had three of the top fifteen starters in baseball.  Not a bad start at pitching, at all.  But, it’s only going to get better.

 

We wasted our 17^th round pick on Tom Gorzelanny.  I’m sure we had a reason to take Gorzelanny, but I’ve done my best to forget Tom, his 6.66 ERA, his 1.80 WHIP, and everything else about him.  In the 18^th round, we took closer-in-waiting Tony Pena, figuring that Brandon Lyon wouldn’t be able to hold onto the job in Arizona.  We were right, but Lyon held on a lot longer than we expected, and Pena never got the job.

 

Our 23^rd round pick was Brian Bannister, and before you start laughing, understand that we used Brian as a spot starters.  How’s this for numbers:  11 starts, 5 wins, 3.48 ERA, 1.306 WHIP.  That is the Brian Bannister we knew.

 

Our 24^th round pick was Andrew Miller.  Miller had all the potential, and even an opportunity, but he couldn’t perform.  Miller, like Gorzelanny, was cut before they could do any real damage.  Miller’s melt down was disconcerting, as we envisioned him as a potential contributor.  Our vision was obviously off.

 

In the 25^th round, we thought we go for some wins from an established veteran pitching on a playoff contender. The Yankees hadn’t missed the playoffs in fifteen years, so they are a lock to win 90 or more games annually.  The Yankees starting staff was weak, so even though he had a bad 2007, Mike Mussina was going to win in the double digits, and might put up a decent WHIP.  I’d like to tell you that we expected a super year out of Moose, but I’d be lying. 

 

Well, Mussina won 20 games, struck out 150, and put up excellent ERA (3.37) and WHIP (1.22) numbers.  Zola has Mussina as the 17^th best starter in 2008, giving us four of the top 17 starters in baseball.  Any wonder why we won the league.

 

When the season ended, this pitching staff (plus notable pick ups Mark Buehrle and Chris Young, led our league in ERA, WHIP and strikeouts, and was second in Wins.  Even though we never found a third closer (draftees Pat Neshak and Joey Devine didn’t contribute), and Luis Ayala contributed only seven saves), this team amassed a total of 68 pitching points out of a possible 75 points.

 

Overall, our team had the fourth highest pitching totals of the 390 teams.  Our ERA was 4^th overall, our WHIP was 9^th, our strikeouts placed us 38^th, and our 108 wins ranked 21^st, out of 390 teams.

 

It is evident that you can win with pitching.  You just have to make a concerted effort to put together a complete staff, not just one or two top starters. 

 

Next week, in the third of this three-part series, we will look at in-season pick ups, and roster moves.

 

Buster