Top Ten Pitchers!?!? Is it so?

I would like to address a topic that I have a bit of a disagreement with the general fantasy community. Generally, all the experts will tell you that to win your fantasy leagues, you have to load up on bats in the early rounds of the draft, and avoid players like Tim Lincecum and Johan Santana, or even the second tier starters like Sabathia, Halladay, and Webb.
This is where the fantasy community and I really differ. When I am drafting, I like to have that ace. That one guy who will come out there and you can rely on for practically every start. This is why Tim Lincecum and Johan Santana reside at number 10 and 11 overall on my board. I think they will make a much more positive impact on your team than the offensive players you can get at the back half of the first round of the draft, and you can usually snag one of these guys with picks 12-18.
Having a player like this (or if you are picking at 12, possibly even both) will, throughout the course of the season, pay serious dividends (I should note that I am a primarily head to head manager and my comments will be made to reflect that). The arguments against choosing starting pitching that early are plentiful. They usually only play once a week, they can have an off day that will torpedo you; you can get value later in the draft. Those are all true, but, when we are talking about the greats of the game, this is not quite as cut and dry as the experts would lead you to believe.
Look at the numbers Johan Santana has put up over his career. From 2004 on, he has averaged nearly 230 innings, 238 strike outs, 17 wins, an ERA of 2.82 and a WHIP of 1.02. With the addition of J.J. Putz and Francisco Rodriguez, his win totals only look to improve, and his K’s, ERA and WHIP should remain consistent. In his four starts this season, the man shows no signs of slowing down. He has racked up 3 wins, 37 Ks, a staggering 0.70 ERA and a WHIP of 0.896. This coming from a guy who is a notoriously slow starter. One can only speculate on how his post All-Star break numbers will look.
On the Tim Lincecum front, he is a little bit riskier, sure, but I like him even more than Santana just for the sheer upside. In what was his first full season in the big leagues, facing seasoned Major League hitters, he was able to put up these numbers: an ERA of 2.62 (third only to Santana and Cliff Lee, who had a very fluky dominant season), a WHIP of 1.17, and 265 Ks, a category he practically dominated over all other pitchers. He even managed to pick up 18 wins for a San Francisco team that had very little offense all season. This was his first full season folks! He has been the most highly touted pitching prospect for some time and last year he proved why.
Many experts have questioned his durability, with his tiny frame and the workload from last season. I am not buying it. If you have the chance to get a player this dominant, you do it. He was rocky in his first two starts, but I believe he was shaking off the rust and a small injury. He is back to full strength. He is a guy that I have on each of my teams where I was picking 10th or worse.
I like having a player I can count on, every week. You can not find anywhere close to that type of consistency out of pitchers at the end of the draft. If you do not believe in streaming pitchers, having a top tier guy to solidify ERA and WHIP week in and week out will be terrifically helpful. They also provide twice as many strikeouts and sometimes as many as 3 times in certain cases, usually at least doubling those of average pitchers you will get later on. In a head to head league, this can be crucial.
For where these players are taken, let’s look at some of the offensive options. In a recent draft I had the 9th pick and was sitting there thinking of who to take. Neither of these players were highest on my board, as that belonged to Evan Longoria, but I knew I could get him with my next pick, so I wasn’t drafting him. I decided to use that number 9 pick on Tim Lincecum. Each pick between my pick of Lincecum and Longoria was an offensive player. Here are the bats that went off the board: Ryan Howard, Ian Kinsler, Jimmy Rollins, Carlos Lee, Mark Texeira, Chase Utley and then back to me at Longoria. I see each of those players as having question marks. Howard is an average killer. Kinsler is only taken this high due to position scarcity and I think it is over-paying. Rollins is another position scarcity player coming off of a down season. Carlos Lee was drafted too high in my opinion, as he is not a top tier outfielder. Texeira just got a big contract, could he repeat his numbers with the pressure of New York and no contract year? And Chase Utley was coming off of surgery.
Any one of those players will provide very useable numbers for my offense. However, they are also likely going to go through slumps where you can not rely on them, killing certain categories throughout the week. I took Lincecum as an opportunity to start dominating on the side of the ball that no one else was looking to. Lincecum or Santana (who went 17th) didn’t matter at that point, it was all about getting my ace. Down the stretch, I want a guy who I know is going to give me dominant starts, keeping my ERA, WHIP and strikeouts competitive. I don’t expect a slump out of these types of pitchers. In Roto, it would be different, but this is a head to head play, and I believe that having that deadly ace will have more of an immediate impact on the scoring in any given week than one big offensive player will.
And that is why you will find one of these two guys on all of my teams, unless I had a very high draft pick. I even took both of them in one league where I picked 12th. I know I am in the minority on this, and I would not suggest taking either over Hanley, Pujols, Wright, Cabrera or any of those top offensive players. I just feel that when the shelf for offense starts to drop off, it does so sharply, and I would rather take the best pitcher in the league at that point. But hey, that’s just one guy’s opinion.

This article was written by Mark Lengieza