So What About the Pitchers?

Yesterday I talked about how hitting inflation wasn't linear. My league calculated inflation for the top hitters at the 17% inflation rate for the league, not the 8% "hitting" inflation based on a $175/$85 split across 12 teams. The bargains came at the end, when hitters worth $6-10 went for $1-4 in a few cases.

But what about the pitchers?

I calculated that the actual "pitching" inflaton rate was 33.2%. This rate turned out to be well below the 49% pitching inflation rate I estimated but also well above the overall 17% inflation rate.

So what happened?

It is once again worth looking at the prices for the top pitchers and examining where these prices fell based on: a) the overall inflation rate and b) the "pitching" inflation rate.

Here is a list of pitchers who went for $20 or more in my A.L. auction this Saturday. Next to these pitchers is the inflation on that pitcher based on my bid prices:

Joe Nathan $45 (36.4%), D-Mat $40 (60%), Francisco Rodriguez $40 (25%), Mariano Rivera $37 (15.6%), Rich Harden $25 (66.7%), Kelvim Escobar $22 (37.8%), Joe Borowski $21 (23.5%).

Your web page did not accidentally delete some text. That's it. Seven pitchers went for $20+. However, this must be placed in context. Only five pitchers were worth $20+, when judged against the league's 17% inflation curve.

The inflation rate on these seven pitchers is 35.3%. Slightly above the league's actual 33.2% rate but well below the 49% rate that would have been necessary to bring the league's pitching budget to $1,020.

Generally speaking, the pitching market follows the same pattern all the way down to the guys who go for $1. There's more variability in the market's opinions of how much a pitcher will be worth; therefore, there's more variability in inflation. Someone in my league probably thinks that the bargain on that list is D-Mat and the worst price is for Rivera.

Another thought about pitchers is that, unlike hitters, there seldom are any players going $5-7 below inflation value. In fact, I cannot find a single pitcher who went $5 below my inflation price. However, unlike hitters, there are often $2 or $3 pitchers who go undrafted, and I even saw a $4 picher go undrafted this year.

So even more than with the hitters, you really want to push the pitchers you want as close to par as possible. You don't want to wind up with a cute staff where you have a number of $1, $2 or $3 pitchers who are worth $5-7. Pitching value is extremely variable, and it's in this range of bid limits where you'll easily see this year's Joel Pineiro or Bruce Chen sticking his ugly head out from under the weeds.