Bargains and Busts: 2012 N.L. Pitchers

After a couple of years of National League pitchers holding onto most of their value from season to season, the most expensive pitchers slipped last year. But only a little bit.

Top 10 Salaries, 2012 N.L. Pitchers

#	Player	$	Sal	+/-	CBS	LABR	TW	PK	2011
1	Clayton Kershaw	$31	31	1	34	26	32	34	$38
2	Roy Halladay	$10	30	-20	33	28	29	34	$34
3	Cliff Lee	$20	28	-8	31	26	27	32	$33
4	Zack Greinke	$12	26	-14	24	26	27	28	$18
5	Tim Lincecum	$2	26	-24	28	24	25	27	$23
6	Cole Hamels	$26	23	3	25	22	23	27	$28
7	Stephen Strasburg	$21	22	-1	23	22	22	26	$5
8	Matt Cain	$28	22	6	23	21	22	26	$24
9	Yovani Gallardo	$17	22	-5	21	23	22	25	$20
10	Craig Kimbrel	$29	22	7	23	21	21	21	$26
	Average	$20	25	-6	27	24	25	28	$25

2012 was the weakest year for this crop of pitchers since 2009. Those pitchers earned $18 and cost $27. One reason that last year's pitchers weren't nearly as disappointing is that the market has stopped paying over $30 for more than one or two arms.

Except for Rotoman. His advice is to go bananas for the top arms. His $28 salary blows away the expert market (in particular the conservative LABR/Tout Wars), and in a four-way battle with the market he outbids them on every pitcher except for Kershaw (tie with CBS), Lincecum, and Strasburg (CBS outright).

Yet the only one of these pitchers Rotoman bought in Tout Wars was Strasburg. By his lights, this was a good price. But - if that was the case - wouldn't he have been better off buying Halladay at $30 or Lee at $28? Or why not buy Strasburg and Halladay or Lee?

Mike Gianella's Tout Wars Bid Limits 2012

Clayton Kershaw $32

Roy Halladay $31

Cliff Lee $29

Cole Hamels $26

Zack Greinke $24

Matt Cain $23

Madison Bumgarner $22

Craig Kimbrel $22

Tim Lincecum $22

Jon Papelbon $21

Stephen Strasburg $20

I'm always giving Rotoman grief for his prices and what he did wrong but that's easy to do when you're just sitting on the sidelines. These were the bid limits I walked into Tout Wars with last March for the 11 pitchers on which I put a $20 or higher bid limit.

When I started putting these bids together, LABR had already convened earlier in the month. And my initial reaction was: what the fuck? Halladay was the only pitcher LABR spent over $26 on? Kershaw for $26? Tout Wars has some of the same owners but also has a similar bidding culture as LABR. I had to push my pitching prices down.

But I couldn't push them so far down that they weren't relevant. So I did what I always do with my prices: express preferences. Was I worried about getting Kershaw and Halladay at a combined $60 and blowing my pitching budget? Yes...but I figured I'd adapt if that happened.

Scott Pianowski (Yahoo!) bailed me out by buying Kershaw. And Tout Wars as it turned out was slightly more aggressive on the perceived top pitchers. But I still wound up spending a combined $71 on Halladay ($29), Hamels ($23), and Papelbon ($19).

Getting back to Rotoman, his prices reflect what he believes (and what I generally believe) typical leagues spend on pitching. LABR and Tout Wars spend less. I don't know if he walked into the conference room at Sirius XM last March with bid limits, but if he didn't he probably still intuited that walking in with those bid limits above would have pushed him into a strategy similar to mine early in the auction. So in terms of adapting to the realities on the ground, Rotoman 1, Gianella 0.

I usually say that the experts are too penurious, the top pitchers are a good buy, etc., etc. But last year, I think the experts’ conservatism may have been dead on the nose.

Top 10 Earnings, 2012 N.L. Pitchers

#	Player	$	Sal	+/-	CBS	LABR	TW	PK	2011
1	R.A. Dickey	$33	4	29	3	4	5	5	$13
2	Clayton Kershaw	$31	31	1	34	26	32	34	$38
3	Craig Kimbrel	$29	22	7	23	21	21	21	$26
4	Matt Cain	$28	22	6	23	21	22	26	$24
5	Gio Gonzalez	$28	15	13	18	13	15	14	$21
6	Aroldis Chapman	$28	5	23	4	5	5	2	$5
7	Cole Hamels	$26	23	3	25	22	23	27	$28
8	Kris Medlen	$25	2	23		3	4		$1
9	Johnny Cueto	$25	12	13	12	11	12	13	$18
10	Kyle Lohse	$24	2	22	2	1	3	4	$16
	Average	$28	14	14	14	13	14	15	$19

If you've been reading both the A.L. and N.L. pieces in this series, you'll notice that while in the A.L. there were six pitchers that cracked $30 in earnings, in the National League only Dickey and Kershaw cracked that mark. This is a source of confusion for non-only league players. Was Justin Verlander ($39) really six dollars better than Dickey last year?

Verlander 17 wins, 238 1/3 IP, 239 K, 2.64 ERA, 1.057 WHIP

Dickey 20 wins, 233 2/3 IP, 230 K, 2.73 ERA, 1.053 WHIP

Their numbers are pretty similar, except for the wins. What's happening here?

League context.

Average A.L. Auctioned Pitcher 2012: 6.2 wins, 3.4 saves, 85.5 K, 4.10 ERA, 1.297 WHIP

Average N.L. Auctioned Pitcher 2012: 6.8 wins, 4.7 saves, 98.3 K, 3.74 ERA. 1.248 WHIP

The average National League pitcher purchased at auction was much better than the average American League pitcher. These numbers are different from what the entirely of Major League Baseball actually did. All American League pitchers put up a 4.09 ERA and a 1.31 WHIP, while all National League pitchers put up a 3.95 ERA and a 1.31 WHIP. 

Why does this matter? Why not just use the overall league numbers and be done with it?

We're not buying all of the pitchers on Auction Day. We're buying the ones we think will be the best. So I'm not measuring all of the pitchers using the draft dollars allocated for them. The players that are auctioned are graded against each other.

In the A.L.'s 2012 context, R.A. Dickey earns $40. I can shake my head at the A.L. expert market for not spending over $30 on a starting pitcher when the league average pitcher isn't that good. I can't do that same in the N.L. Maybe Rotoman and I were overreaching last year.

The draft pool in the National League was richer. You weren't going to score big with profit and value in the N.L. like you were in the A.L. As a result, the spending in the N.L. was probably "correct".

And the bargains were plentiful as a result.

Top 10 Profits, 2012 N.L. Pitchers

#	Player	$	Sal	+/-	CBS	LABR	TW	PK	2011
1	R.A. Dickey	$33	4	29	3	4	5	5	$13
2	Aroldis Chapman	$28	5	23	4	5	5	2	$5
3	Kris Medlen	$25	2	23		3	4		$1
4	Kyle Lohse	$24	2	22	2	1	3	4	$16
5	Wade Miley	$19	0	18		1			$0
6	Lance Lynn	$16	2	14		1	4	8	$4
7	Santiago Casilla	$15	1	14			2	1	$8
8	A.J. Burnett	$18	4	14	5	3	4	3	$5
9	Johnny Cueto	$25	12	13	12	11	12	13	$18
10	Paul Maholm	$14	1	13	1	2		1	$7
	Average	$22	3	18	3	3	4	4	$8

The lower N.L. ceiling means that you're not going to see a pitcher pull the salary/value/profit trifecta. Cueto is the only pitcher here that drew a double-digit salary. The gap from Cueto to Chapman is perhaps eye opening as well.

There was a lot of profit to be had at the bottom. It's a guessing game with most of these pitchers, but we shouldn't have completely been surprised. Dickey, Lohse, and Cueto in particular are the kind of guys we shouldn't let slip through the cracks. There's no reason to pay Dickey $13, but $7-8 probably would have been more reasonable based on what he did in 2011.

Injuries really impacted this next group.

Top 10 Losses, 2012 N.L. Pitchers

#	Player	$	Sal	+/-	CBS	LABR	TW	PK	2011
1	Tim Lincecum	$2	26	-24	28	24	25	27	$23
2	Daniel Hudson	-$4	18	-22	19	17	18	19	$18
3	Roy Halladay	$10	30	-20	33	28	29	34	$34
4	Brian Wilson	$0	14	-14	13	16	14	15	$14
5	Jair Jurrjens	-$6	8	-14	8	7	8	9	$14
6	Zack Greinke	$12	26	-14	24	26	27	28	$18
7	Cory Luebke	$4	17	-13	18	15	18	19	$15
8	Ryan Madson		12	-12	19	16			$17
9	Heath Bell	$5	17	-12	18	17	15	19	$19
10	Chris Volstad	-$9	2	-11		4	3	3	-$1
	Average	$1	17	-16	18	17	16	17	$17

Hudson, Halladay, Wilson, Luebke, and Madson all missed time due to injury. Only Halladay didn't miss significant time, but his performance seemed impacted after he came back.

You probably want to be careful to craft too many definitive conclusions after one season. But if you're play in only leagues, you should treat pitching in the A.L. and the N.L. differently. The National League has plenty of quality second tier arms, and some arms at the bottom that can definitely surprise. The American League has a much more defined hierarchy. In a start over league, I would be comfortable going over $30 for a handful of the A.L.'s elite arms. In the National League, I won't be doing that this year. This isn't because I got burned in Tout Wars, but rather because the data simply don't support that strategy in 2013.