About the Author
I am well past obsessed with sports, especially Baseball. My girlfriend often thinks I would choose one conversation with Josh Beckett about his curveball grip over our relationship. It is tough call to be honest.. : )More By Mike Ketchen
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Johan... The Perfect storm
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In any snake draft your first 3 picks are crucial. They usually provide the solid infrastructure in which you will (hopefully) build a championship team upon. So your first pick is usually key. With that first pick, most consider it cliché to take a pitcher. Unless that pitcher provides you with a substantial edge.
Well, this was supposed to be the first season in which there was no first round pitcher. However, Johan Santana being traded to the Met’s has changed all of this. You see Johan in the AL is still the best pitcher on the planet. But the margin was closing due to a very strong second tier (Beckett, Webb, and Peavy). Then Mister Santana went ahead and sprinted ahead again. You see every pitcher in the second tier is elite, yet they have all had their hiccups over the last three years. Johan, his hiccup was last year, a year that still saw him finish in the top three in strike out’s and second in overall whip. Add in the fact that he was still pitching in AL and all the sudden his “hiccup” year look’s that much more disgusting.
So what should we as fantasy owners expect for a realistic line, a stat line that mind you has to justify taking him in the first round? I am see him with something along the lines of (w/era/whip/K’s) 21/2.55/1.00/260. How did come up with this line? I took his three year trend and simply adjusted it by 15%. And then I projected cautiously based on that. Which is truly scary considering those numbers actually crushed this projected line. Yes folks this is what we are talking about. We are talking about the potential for one of the greatest pitching seasons in history. All the pieces for the puzzle are there. He is moving to an inferior division, he will be facing the pitcher instead of the DH, and he will be playing with a far better defense behind him. Add it all up and you have the perfect storm coming in the form of Johan. All other owners, beware.
