Jake Peavy and the Usual Suspects

If you have Jake Peavy, your team's chances probably took a significant blow yesterday when the White Sox put him on the DL with a detached right latissimus muscle. The Sox aren't commenting much on the injury, but it seems that even in a best case scenario that Peavy will miss about two months...meaning that even if everything goes right he won't be back until mid-September. If you own Peavy, the smart thing to do is probably assume he's done for the year.

The dilemma, though, is whom do you replace him with? The obvious inclination - particularly in 5x5 leagues - is to pick up a starter. However, if you're in an A.L.-only league, the starting pitchers out there are probably disasters that are already happening or waiting to do so.

I took a look at the free agent pool in my 4x4 A.L. to see if this was the case. I chose to look at 4x4 since relievers earn more in 4x4 than they do in 5x5 so I figured there would be more starters floating around for the taking. Maybe there are or maybe there aren't, but that doesn't mean that taking a starting pitcher is your best bet.

Top 10 Billy Almon Brown Graduate Free Agents: 7/8/10
(Sorted by 5x5 earnings)

#	Pitcher	5x5 $	4x4 $
1	Jason Berken	$10	$12
2	Casey Janssen	$8	$8
3	Victor Marte	$5	$8
4	Brian Sweeney	$5	$8
5	Vin Mazzaro	$5	$5
6	Sergio Mitre	$5	$6
7	Jose Mijares	$4	$5
8	Jesse Crain	$3	$1
9	Alex Burnett	$3	$2
10	Randy Choate	$3	$2
	Average	$5	$6

The earnings above aren't what these pitchers have earned thus far, it's what they're on pace to earn!

When you pick up a pitcher, chasing the stats he's already put up is a fool's errand; the point of this exercise wasn't to say that Berken and Janssen are even OK bets to put up another $4-5 worth of stats this season. I wouldn't be surprised if both of them earned negative dollars the rest of the way (though I'm not going out on any kind of limb and predicting this either).


You could argue that I'm being disingenuous by only looking at who is left. After all, aren't the best free agents already on someone's roster?

Fair point.

Top 10 BABG FAAB Pick-ups: As of 7/8/10
(Sorted by 5x5 earnings)

#	Pitcher	5x5 $	4x4 $
1	Trevor Cahill	$23	$30
2	Jason Vargas	$19	$23
3	J.J. Putz	$18	$26
4	Doug Fister	$15	$20
5	Brett Cecil	$15	$16
6	Darren Oliver	$14	$17
7	Joaquin Benoit	$14	$18
8	Darren O'Day	$13	$18
9	Freddy Garcia	$12	$13
10	Craig Breslow	$12	$15
	Average	$16	$20

Starters have made their mark this season, but even in the more starter-friendly world of 5x5, five relievers still make their way to this list.

This is all food for thought if you own Peavy and are going to replace him this weekend. You might hit the jackpot with a starting pitcher...but the odds of doing better with a starter than a reliever aren't as good as you might think.