Prior to being shipped to the Cardinals, Jake Westbrook's year looked suspiciously like 2007, when he went 6-9 with a 4.32 ERA. His xFIP this year is right in the same range. Considering that his lifetime xFIP of 4.02 was accrued in the American League, he must be thrilled to: (a) come to the National League; (b) come to St. Louis; and (c) come to Dave Duncan.
Westbrook's control is still coming back, but with the high ground-ball rate, he appears to be the perfect Dave Duncan candidate. I can see him putting up a 4.00 the rest of the way out and winning a few games on a good ball club. Assuming that he gets about 9-10 starts the rest of the way out, you could be looking at decent help here. While I would not break the bank on Westbrook (and if you are this late in the season and have a salary cap, it is difficult to do so), if you need a starter, you should go into the $40 range for Westbrook. You are not going to see much better the rest of the year.
P.S. In his first Cardinals start, Westbrook struck out 7, walked only 1, threw 61% strikes and induced 13 ground balls to 1 fly ball and 1 line drive. Dave Duncan, meet Jake Westbrook.
3 comments:
Unrelated - any thoughts on FAAB for Bourjos? Odd, Trout is on a reserve list but Bourjos was dropped earlier in the year from a reserve and now is up.
I am sure Mike has some thoughts on Bourjos, but just off the top of my head, while his power/speed combination looks sexy in the PCL, his MLE is a .695 OPS. On the flip side, if you need cheap steals, well, you were just handed them by the Angles.
These analyses are always difficult without knowing your FAAB, your opponents' FAAB and your standing overall and in the category. So let me answer this way. If you can catch/pass a competitor in steals, by all means, you should bid strongly on Bourjos...you will not see a much better speed guy come up this year. If you need steals to stave off your competitors and hold on to points you already have, I again encourage you to bid strongly.
If, however, you have an inkling that someone may bid on Bourjos who is not a threat to you in steals or overall, but is perhaps a threat to one of your competitors in the category, you might want to think about letting him slide or putting in a more conservative bid. This is a topic for a longer strategy post than I can give attention to in this short comment, but we sometimes forget that our team need not do all the damage to our competitors...sometimes, it is the middle of the pack teams that can hurt our opponents more.
Toz, thanks. I opted to believe my own eyes and the MLE and not bid (our league has a stupid no alternative bid rule) and spread my FAAB around and took E. Jackson, Kalish and J. Gomez. (I have a SP hole, and was not assured of making a SP deal later today). And you never know, maybe J. Borbon will start running if he gets on base.
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