Crooked Pitch

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Today’s question come from Jon and it’s always a pleasure to answer any kind of baseball questions from you guys. Keep ‘em coming.

Q: I was offered Cliff Lee and Shane Victorino in exchange for Dan Haren and Raul Ibanez. Here are my reasons for being hesitant about Lee. His spring was AWFUL and last season was his best by far(possible fluke season??). I like him beacause his numbers were better than Haren’s , but Haren has steadily been on a climb and he is one Webb injury away from being the ace of the staff. What should I do??? Please help!!!

A: I think that you’re right to be hesitant about this deal, but maybe not for the reasons you mentioned. Yes, Cliff Lee’s ERA is a miserable 12.46 this spring, but pitchers tend to work on using different pitches in spring. Sometimes they spend a few innings just throwing breaking balls. It’s hard to gauge how good a pitcher’s spring is going by his ERA alone. Take a look at Lee’s strikeout to walk ratio. In 21.2 innings he’s struck out 18 while only walking two. That’s pretty dominant. The thing about Lee that worries me is his innings workload from 2008, which grew 80 innings from the previous year. I’m expecting Lee to still produce good numbers in 2009, but he won’t be back at the Cy Young level he achieved in 2008. Haren on the other hand excites me; and remember, he doesn’t need to be Arizona’s ace to be your fantasy ace. Haren has steadily increased his strikeout numbers while lowering his WHIP over the past three years. He pitches in a weak division with a bunch of pitchers parks. I definitely like Haren better than Lee going into 2009.

Victorino would be a slight upgrade from Ibanez, but it’s not enough to off-set how much better Haren could be than Lee. Victorino and Ibanez both have similar batting averages (both hit .293 in ‘08) but Ibanez has better power numbers. Yeah, you’ll get stolen bases from Victorino, a few extra runs scored and some pop, but the difference between the two just isn’t enough for me to advise pulling the trigger on this deal.

My opinion would be to decline this offer. With Haren and Ibanez you have to great, very consistently stable players. And Haren’s upside is the best of the bunch.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 3rd, 2009 at 9:18 am and is filed under Fantasy Baseball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.