Projected Top 25 Starting Pitchers for 2012

Turtle:
I had Hernandez just outside the list. He's in the best pitchers' park in all of baseball according to the 2012 data--in addition to having an above-average defense behind him, which means he's penalized significantly when his results are adjusted to 'normal' surroundings. With that said, strikeout pitchers like he and Strasburg will both be higher with the result-specific computations that Strat does. He's hurt because I give general park and defense adjustments in this quickly calculated list that doesn't take into account result types. His results will translate better to normal park settings than does an average K-rate pitcher.

Rburgh:
You'll see in the subject, "Top 25 Starting Pitchers", that I was focused on starters for this list. Yes, Chapman, Kimbrel, Rodney, Street will have unbelievable cards that should all be in the Top 25 of pitchers in general.

Shouldn't Nick Blackburn be on that list?

I tihnk your methodology is double-counting ballpark effects. For example, Seattle is both a tough HR park and one with a lot of foul ground. So there are a lot of balls in play there (deep fly balls as well as foul balls) than there are in an average ballpark. Some of these are accounted for in the game by park effects, and the rest by the defensive ratings. But if you are using an uncorrected DER to evaluate team defenses, you are crediting the team's defense for ballpark effects.

The easiest fix for this is to use only road DER for teams (or, if you want to be picky, add in 1/14 or so of the home stats).

Neftali Feliz TEX S6 5.36
I don't see how he will be this high. His stats were worse than in 2011. WHIP 1.20

I tihnk your methodology is double-counting ballpark effects. For example, Seattle is both a tough HR park and one with a lot of foul ground. So there are a lot of balls in play there (deep fly balls as well as foul balls) than there are in an average ballpark. Some of these are accounted for in the game by park effects, and the rest by the defensive ratings. But if you are using an uncorrected DER to evaluate team defenses, you are crediting the team's defense for ballpark effects.

The easiest fix for this is to use only road DER for teams (or, if you want to be picky, add in 1/14 or so of the home stats).

I'm using 1) park-adjusted defensive efficiency (adjusted to eliminate park bias) and 2) raw park effects (expected home score rates vs. expected away score rates...free of defense bias). Again, this system has worked very well in the past as a quick estimator. It won't be 100% correct, but the general method works.

Neftali Feliz TEX S6 5.36
I don't see how he will be this high. His stats were worse than in 2011. WHIP 1.20

The pricing models for starters vs. relievers is completely different since starters can pitch way more innings and have a much larger cumulative effect. It's the reason that even a reliever with a 1.00 ERA can never have a card worth more than about 7M.

Basic premise is this:
Assume pitching replacement value is 4.60 expected runs per 9 innings (.50M pitchers).

A starter with a 3.00 expected run rate is expected to have value at 35.6 runs over replacement for 200 innings.
A reliever with a 1.00 expected run rate has a value of only 28 runs over replacement for a lower innings total of 70.

Feliz actually has very similar raw data compared to last year--but he will be priced as an R6 starter, compared to being priced as an R1 reliever last year.

excellent topic - thanks for posting - the original list can be debated but looks pretty damn good to me.

Shouldn't Nick Blackburn be on that list?

You know, actually, if pricing was allowed to be negative and we were considering the absolute value | | of each guy's price, he would be in second place--a distant second behind the truly remarkable Jonathan Sanchez.

Could have been better, but this method still named 9 of the top 10 and made only 5 errors in naming the top 25 (if I exclude Anderson, who wasn't included in the main set).

Not even joking here.

Clayton Kershaw will be the biggest bust of the year. You will be lucky to get a .500 record from this guy. Pitching Lefthanded will be a downfall for all that do. Pumping $9.4MIL into this guy in a $80MIL league will put you at the bottom faster than the BoneCracker can toss Frank under a bus. He just won't be worth the money and with the salary cost you won't get enough offense to justify this guy.

Mike