STREAMING STARTING PITCHING: CHOOSING SPOT-STARTERS

[babl]

a few questions for this read...
1. how many categories do you use? im guessing 8. (L3 era, L3 whip, L3 k/9, L3 bb/9, home/away, hit/pit/neu park, sp opposition & team opposition flavored to your liking with either runs scored, obp or ops)
2. what should you expect to be a decent start or worthy of a pickup in an unlimited amount of transactions? +2? +3?

with the above mentioned and flavoring it with team opposition ops, ive found 3 for mondays starts...
+3 oak anderson hm to sea jaku
+3 phi moyer hm to fla volstad
+3 tex harrison hm to nyy hughes

and 2 poss 3 for tuesdays starts...
+2 oak braden hm to sea washburn
+3 nym hernandez hm to wash stammen
+5! min blackburn hm to bos lester

now, something in common with all of these pitchers is that they were all home & in a pitchers park (with the exception of moyer and harrison who are in hitters parks). is this something that should be a "quick key/guide" when streaming?

i found my resources thru espn pitching probables (to see the 2 starting pitchers and determine if they are FA's or not). then to usa today mlb matchups starters indepth (to figure the last 3 outings categories, but you have to figure out the k/9 & bb/9 on your own, kinda time consuming with 10-15ish pitchers to critique). is there a 1 stop shop anywhere to get all my groceries?

[Todd Zola]

I've been kicking myself since I filed that piece for SI.com, as I inadvertently left out a necessary point, I am hoping they will let me include it at the beginning of this week's entry.

The point revolves around not only having an "automatic" filter, but also having a "no way" filter, or at least assigning a fairly large negative number at the beginning for poor overall skills.

For instance, do not even consider someone whose BB/9>4.5 or whose K/BB<1.5. Like the others, the filter can be seasoned to taste.

I ignore ERA and WHIP totally, only focusing on the skills K/9 and BB/9 and only as a way to see if the pitcher is doing well recently. Again, I should have opened the whole thing by saying there are some pitchers that are just plain lousy, does it really matter if lately, they are "only" walking 4.0/9 and not 4.6/9 while fanning 4.8/9 instead of 4.4/9? No -- they still stink.

As for resources, the team and player tracker we provide with Platinum gives the info, but you do have to download it and have access to Excel. On the web, the best tool I have found is Rototimes Player Comparison tool.

http://www.rototimes.com/mlb/player_comparison.php

You can enter all the pitchers and see their numbers against each other and if you click on any specific pitcher, you see his numbers including K/9 and BB/9, though not for the past 3 starts. Our tracker does it automatically for the last 3, 7, 14 and 21 days.

Let's go over the 6 hurlers you pinpoint...

+3 oak anderson hm to sea jaku
K/9 of 4.8 with BB/9 of 2.7 passes sniff test as BB-rate is excellent.

I'll give a +1 for BB/9 but -1 for K/9 -- it is down from an already low number, even though he did fan 5 last game
+3 for home and park
+1 for opposing Seattle

so that's a +4

+3 phi moyer hm to fla volstad
he's borderline fuggetaboutit off the bat, but we'll go through the numbers...

His last 3 his BB/9 is down but so is his K/9 so it's a wash.

+2 for home, -1 for hitter's park.

Florida is middle of the pack so that's 0

Total = +1 -- Moyer's primary issue is HR/9, Florida is mid to lower third in HR so an argument can be made to start him, I am not warm and fuzzy about it.

+3 tex harrison hm to nyy hughes

+2 as walk and K rate are better lately
+1 for home and hitter's park
-1 facing strong Yankee lineup

+2 overall. The whole point of this is to identify guys you would normally not start. This forces us to take note that Harrison is doing very well lately. Why have the process if I am still going to say no? So I start Harrison.

But keep in mind none of this is 'set in stone'. It is defensible if you feel Yankee lineup is so good it is a +1.5 and Texas is such a good hitter's park it is -1.5.

+2 oak braden hm to sea washburn

+2 for K and BB rates lately
+3 for park and home
+1 for weak offense

+6, he's a go

+3 nym hernandez hm to wash stammen

0 for K/9 and BB/9, basically as they have been all year

+3 home and good pitcher's park
+1 weak lineup

+4, I start him

+5! min blackburn hm to bos lester

K rate up a little BB rate down a little, call it a wash

+3 for home, pitcher's park

-1 facing Boston

+2 -- I probably start him.

_____________

I honestly don't have a cutoff for an automatic start of automatic benching.

I also have not tested "success rate" to tweak the filters. That is more a project for Mastersball Platinum than what SI.com wants.

[babl]

mondays outcomes
Name IP H R ER BB SO
+4 oak anderson W 6 6 1 1 2 4 id say a success
+2 tex harrison L 5 11 7 7 1 2 not so much

on tap today
+4 nym hernandez
+3 cle pavano
+3 sea washburn
+2 min blackburn

wednesdays looks
+3 atl kawakami
+2 cin arroyo
+2 kc davies
+1 was zimm

[Todd Zola]

Keep in mind the idea is overall to have more hits than misses.

Perhaps set a cumulative target ERA and WHIP you want to attain and check after 10 or 15 starts. If the ERA and WHIP worse than desired, you can tweak the filters.

Truth be told, this is a project I was intending for the site (part of the pitcher streaming threads in the general forum had this in mind). It is a WIP and hopefully it will be an interactive process with interested forum members.

Moyer's start was interesting. All that separated it from being another "success" was Dobbs' 3-run homer. The objective analysis says if he had given up that same HR with no one on, we had a success. The subjective analysis says but there were 2 men on.

[brooklyn49]

is this article still available to read on the site? I looked for it but couldn't find it. I wanted to print out a copy for future reference

[Todd Zola]

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/f ... index.html#

I am working on a more involved method which I will be posting soon in the strategy forum for discussion.

[babl]

awesome todd i cant wait...as you stated before i havent been able to spend alot of my time to monitoring this process, but when i have livan has saved my butt more than once and for that i thank you.