2010 Colby Lewis

This past Monday, Fangraphs had an interesting back-and-forth on Colby Lewis. Marc Hulet took the con position. While he backed off from his initial negativity, he seems to see Lewis as more of a useful rotation cog as opposed to a front-line starter.

Carson Cistulli, who had taken the pro stance on Lewis, seemed to back off a little after Lewis' first start. He still seems to like him, but worried that if this start was the sign of things to come that Lewis will struggle going forward.

I'm not sure how Fangraphs sees Lewis after last night's generally positive start (the 10 strikeouts certainly do stand out), but the biggest challenge I have with any kind of analysis is that we don't have any solid data points on Lewis' time in Japan.

I can think of more hitters who went to Japan and then came back to the U.S. than I can pitchers. Bill Gullickson immediately leaps to mind. I don't have the patience to go through the list with a fine-toothed comb, but examples seem to be more of the Lewis than Gullickson variety: pitchers who were utility pitchers or Quad-A guys here in the States and went over to Japan to try and jump start their careers in Asia.

Fangraphs probably has metrics that measure how much a pitcher snores, but they have nothing when it comes to Japanese performance. I can go find the raw numbers on Lewis, but since there are no more advanced metrics to look at, I feel like I'm groping around in the dark on this one.

For what it's worth, he was throwing faster last night against the Indians than he was in his first start against the Mariners. Does that tell us anything? Again, I don't know.

If you took a cheap, endgame stab on Lewis in your A.L.-only auction, good for you. If he's somehow still a free agent in your A.L.-only league, by all means grab him. But based on the numbers alone, we're probably not going to have a good feel for Lewis and what he's capable of doing (or not doing) for at least a few more starts.