Fantasy Baseball Starting Pitchers Part 2 – Risky Chris Carpenter

Fantasy Baseball: After the first group of 24 starters, here is the next group of 12, including risky veteran aces and promising but unfinished youngsters.

BIG NAMES, BIG QUESTIONS

Chris Carpenter was runner-up for NL Cy Young with a sensational 2.24 ERA and 1.01 WHIP, along with 17 wins. Only his 144 K in 192.2 IP did not keep pace with the top pitchers in 2009. In Carpenter’s previous three full seasons, his highest ERA was 3.46 and highest WHIP was 1.14. Carpenter won at least 15 games all three years and had high K rates as well.

Closers
Starting Pitchers Part 1
Starting Pitchers Part 3
Catchers
Outfielders Part 1
Outfielders Part 2
Third Basemen
Shortstops
Second Basemen
First Basemen

But here is Carpenter’s injury history over the last eight years:

• 2002 – Only pitched 73.1 innings due to shoulder problems.
• 2003 – Missed entire season after shoulder surgery.
• 2004 – Missed postseason after nerve problem in biceps.
• 2005 – Healthy.
• 2006 – 15-day DL with back injury.
• 2007 – Pitched only one game before injuring elbow and eventually undergoing Tommy John surgery, as well as another surgery on his elbow to trim bone spurs.
• 2008 – Pitched only 15.1 innings after returning from elbow surgeries.
• 2009 – Missed 30 games with oblique injury.

Carpenter has missed most or all of four of the last eight seasons. He has had major surgery on both his pitching shoulder and his pitching elbow, and he turns 35 in April.

Still, Carpenter recovered from last year’s injury to have a great year.

So drafting Carpenter can be seen as an all-or-nothing proposition. Cy Young or sayonara, to paraphrase something Graig Nettles once said about Sparky Lyle.

Depending on your willingness to accept risk, move Carpenter up in your rankings, especially now that we are well into spring training and Carpenter appears healthy (his six-run first inning on March 19 notwithstanding).

Jake Peavy had a 2.74 ERA and 1.08 in 90 career starts at Petco, with 662 K in 592 IP. Peavy’s career road numbers are 3.79 ERA and 1.29 WHIP, with a lower K rate than at Petco. Now Peavy is in the AL, playing his home games at U.S. Cellular in Chicago. Peavy made only 13 starts in 2009 due to an ankle injury and also missed time in 2008 with a sore throwing elbow.

John Lackey won 19 games and led the AL in ERA with 3.01 in 2007, but since then has spent time on the DL each of the last two seasons, when he had ERAs of 3.75 and 3.83. Now Lackey, 31, moves to Fenway Park and the AL East. Over the last four seasons, Lackey’s WHIP has been between 1.21 and 1.27 with unspectacular K/9 rates.  He is a solid pitcher, but might be more valuable in real life than in fantasy.

WILL THEY EVER BECOME ACES?

These former first round picks, all 26 or 27, have great potential but mixed results:

Jered Weaver had a great first half – 10-3, 3.22 ERA,1.12 WHIP and 104 K in 120.1 IP – but struggled after that, finishing with a 3.75 ERA and 1.24 WHIP. At 27, the former first -round pick still has time to realize the promise of his great 2006 debut (2.56 ERA and 1.03 WHIP in 19 starts).

Gavin Floyd went 17-8 in 2008 and 11-11 in 2009, but dropped his WHIP form 1.26 to 1.23 and raised his K/9 from 6.3 to 7.6. Floyd did much better after the break, with a 3.49 ERA and 1.11 WHIP, giving hope that he can carry over his success to 2010.

Scott Kazmir has made more than 27 starts only once in five season. In 2009, Kazmir had a 5.92 ERA and 1.54 WHIP in 20 starts with Tampa Bay before coming to the Angels, where he had a 1.73 ERA and 1.05 WHIP in six starts. But Kazmir’s overall K/9 fell from 9.8 in 2008 to only 7.1 last season.

THE NEXT WAVE

Brett Anderson‘s second half of his rookie 2009: 3.48 ERA, 1.19 WHIP and 86 K in 88 IP. One of the prospects acquired by Oakland from Arizona in the Dan Haren trade. Anderson looks headed for great things, but maybe not immediately – he just turned 22 in February.

Max Scherzer struck out 174 in 170 IP for Arizona in 2009 before the D-Backs sent him to Detroit in the Edwin Jackson trade. Scherzer was the eleventh pick in the 2006 draft, one pick behind Tim Lincecum. Scherzer has had some shoulder issues and his increased 2009 workload landed him on the Verducci Effect list. But if he stays healthy, the 25-year-old pitcher could have a breakout year.

Big things have been predicted for Clay Buchholz since he pitched a no-hitter in his second career start in 2007. But Buchholz endured a miserable 2008 and began 2009 back in the minors before coming back up to the Red Sox after the break. In September, Buchholz had a 2.87 ERA and 1.09 WHIP, earning him a start in the ALDS against the Angels, in which Buchholz went five innings, allowing two runs on six hits and one walk while striking out three. Buchholz was a supplemental first-round pick in 2005. The Red Sox were awarded the pick as compensation for losing free agent Pedro Martinez.

A STEP BACK

After two solid seasons with ERAs under 4 and WHIPs of 1.11 and 1.15, James Shields slumped to 4.14 ERA and 1.32 WHIP. After the break, Shields’ marks were 5.16 and 1.42. So far this spring, Shields, 28, looks like he has regained the form of his four postseason starts in 2008, when Shields had a 2.88 ERA in 25 IP.

Scott Baker‘s ERA jumped from 3.45 in 2008 to 4.36 in 2009, though his WHIP was largely the same, going from 1.18 to 1.19. But Baker had a strong second half, going 8-2 with a 3.28 ERA to finish with 15 wins and solidify his spot as the ace of the playoff-contending Twins.

In his second full season, Jair Jurrjens won 14 games and had a great 2.60 ERA and 1.21 WHIP, though only 152 K in 215 IP. But Jurrjens went down on draft boards when had shoulder inflammation at the start of spring training. Jurrjens eventually got into a game on March 12 and appears to be healthy now. Jurrjens turned 24 in January.

Photo by shgmom56.