Valenzuela, Gooden and Hershiser

[jaromero106]

General question

In the 4 seasons that I have played, I have yet to see Valenzuela, Gooden, or Hershiser have a great (or decent for that matter) season. For my current team, I drafted gooden b/c he was terrible for a different team in the previous league I played in. Now for me he's 6-13 era over 4.

Just would like to know if they just happen to be underperforming in the leagues I play in or if they generally underperform. Thanks for your input

[KingLouie]

Here's the results from my previous league. None of them pitched for me:

Hershiser: 24-9 ERA: 2.97 Whip: 1.11
Gooden: 18-14 ERA: 4.32 Whip: 1.30
Fernando 14-19 ERA 4.10 Whip: 1.27

[rookssa1958]

I have seen Hershiser and Fernando do really, really well at times. Don't know if I have ever seen Doc dominate or not....

[Outta Leftfield]

This is an interesting question so I decided to do a quick and dirty study of the eight seasons I've played. This includes two seasons still in progress, but with enough games to give an idea of good and bad seasons.

I decided to simply track the good and bad seasons of each pitcher, figuring a good season as one in which the pitcher pitched the whole season and managed an ERA under 4.00.

My results were:
Hershiser: 5 good, 3 bad (2 exceptionally good)
Gooden: 3 good, 5 bad (1 exceptionally good)
Valenzuela: 3 good, 5 bad (1 exceptionally good)

A typical example of a good season would be one of Gooden's that went 19-12, 3.87 ERA, 1.21 WHIP. I stretched a point with one of Valenzuela's seasons that was 16-8, 4.35, 1.40, classing it as good. Otherwise, all the ERA's in "good seasons" were under 4.00, sometimes well under 4.00.

In several "bad" seasons the pitcher was dumped after 6 or 7 games with a high ERA and WHIP. In a few, they got to pitch the whole season, as in Valenzuela's 15-17, 4.93, 1.66. One season where HAL seemed to be managing the lineups and Gooden was backed by horrible defense with everyone out of position produced this result: 6-28, 6.45, 1.71. Yikes! Not surprisingly, all the pitchers on that team had awful records.

I'm not sure what to conclude from this, except that it's a tough league for pitchers with all the allstar lineups they face, but Hershiser does seem to have the edge in this small study.

BTW, the way I did it was to open a current season to the free agent pitcher's window, sort by price and select all, then open a new window to my other teams. With each new team one selects, the cards will change to the performance of that year. So when you click on the player on the first window (free agent pitchers; still open), you get the performance for the team/year in the background.

[cplake]

I have yet to see Doc Gooden perform well. It's kind of hit or miss with Fernando, and Bulldog Hershiser almost always does well in th leagues I've been in.

[YountFan]

Valenzula is mostly good for me. His strength is [b:efdce2faca]lots of IP[/b:efdce2faca] and an easy identifialbly bad card. Pitching lots of innings can affect the old w/l record but he's won 27 for me one year and 20+ a time or two

Gooden he is like Carlton in that he can seem to pich his cards and Bulldog is good, but you have to pay for it

[bjs73]

[quote:c5295d62d7]I have yet to see Doc Gooden perform well. It's kind of hit or miss with Fernando, and Bulldog Hershiser almost always does well in th leagues I've been in.[/quote:c5295d62d7]

[url]http://fantasygames.sportingnews.com/baseball/stratomatic/80s/team/team_other.html?user_id=31281[/url]

I don't go out of my way to draft the guy but the one time when I failed to get Hershisher and ended up with Doc as the default, it paid dividends. The ERA he had with this team is still 3rd overall in the 80's record books. Gotta love it.

Problem with Doc is that if you don't get the lights out season, you're overpaying for his services big time. But that 20% chance can really pay dividends because he is awesome in 85. His 86 card is good too but the extra walks can come back to haunt. Still not too bad but you can get similar cards for 1-2 million less with someone else.

[Outta Leftfield]

Nice team, BJ! Great pitching all around.

I've never had Doc or Orel, but have had a good and a bad year from Valenzuela. The good year (in Yankee) was 19-13, 275 IP, 3.56 ERA, 1.25 WHIP. An injury showed that this was 1986, actually his third-best season in terms of ERA (3.14/ 1.15). In the bad year, he lasted 6 games for me, 1-5, 33 IP, 5.94 ERA, 1.86 WHIP.

What I find interesting is that according to my little chart, three premier pitchers had 24 seasons in which 11 were good and 13 were bad. Now Valenzuela has three very good years out of five on his card. Even the third-best can produce a good season. Orel has four. Doc has at least two, maybe three. So, the odds favor a majority of good seasons from them. But in practice we get the reverse--more bad years than good.

I wonder how many times, when we dump a guy like Valenzuela or Doc after 6 games, we're really throwing away a good season that's just had bad dice rolls? Still, it's hard to hang in there in face of a 5.94 ERA and 1.86 WHIP after six starts. I think I'm more patient than most, and I find myself replacing my original SPs at least half the time. The hitters in this league don't give you much margin of error. Without a top drawer season your pitchers won't survive, and even a good season will get hammered sometimes over 6-7 games. In effect, we only keep pitchers who are in their best seasons AND who have pretty good outings over their first 6-7 starts. Later in the season their stats can absorb a bad run of games, but not early.

[Jablowmi]

I have Gooden on an "Oakland" team that starts tomorrow. First time with him. For the first time, I went for a pitching team and lost out on all my top picks. Top pitchers are now Gooden and Fat Sid. I almost dumped him several times this past week, but decided to hang on. When reading through this thread, I almost dumped him again, but have dreams of BJ #s.

I've had and dumped a struggling Hershiser twice. For the top guys ($6.97M+), a middling season just doesn't cut it b/c there are so many other guys that can more or less match it at (sometimes) half the cost. Clemens is different, I think, and probably stands alone. Hershiser is then a big notch over the others (Blyleven, Soto, Higuera Gooden and Fernando), possibly in that order.

[jaromero106]

Hey thats an interesting analysis Outta leftfield

Its funny b/c at the time that I posted this question I wasn't sure exactly how well these 3 players were doing in my current league so I took a look:

Fernando 4-13 4.00 ERA
Hershiser 10-12 3.84
Gooden 8-12 4.14

They are the top 3 leaders of losses in my league. I also could have included langston on this list but I think that the consensus (with a few exceptions) on him is that he's not worth the price tag.