The Market Report is a weekly analysis of player valuations in the fantasy marketplace in an effort to find undervalued commodities.

By Andrew Gephardt

Like the outfield, starting pitching provides another opportunity for great value. As advanced metrics have increased in popularity, it’s become a tad more challenging to acquire pitchers whose surface statistics haven’t lived up to their true skills. Even so, the fantasy community still misvalues starting pitching more so than any other position. In effect, there are always some quality arms that fall through the cracks. Just as we did with the outfield, let’s see in which rounds the top starting pitchers are being selected in 12-team leagues:

• Round 1: Tim Lincecum
• Round 2: —
• Round 3: Zack Greinke, Felix Hernandez, CC Sabathia, and Roy Halladay
• Round 4: Dan Haren, Johan Santana, and Justin Verlander
• Round 5: Cliff Lee, Adam Wainwright, and Jon Lester
• Round 6: Javier Vazquez and Chris Carpenter
• Round 7: Josh Johnson, Tommy Hanson, and Jake Peavy
• Round 8: Josh Beckett, Matt Cain, and Yovani Gallardo
• Round 9: Cole Hamels, Clayton Kershaw, Ubaldo Jimenez, and Ricky Nolasco
• Round 10: John Lackey and Chad Billingsley

I’ll say right now that few of these pitchers will end up on my teams this year. I’d much prefer to build a loaded offense and then manage my pitching staff during the season rather than have to make up offense after Draft Day. In November we took a look at a few starting pitching sleepers who still don’t get their due respect. I’m still fully on board with the selections of Scott Baker, Wandy Rodriguez, and Brett Anderson as underappreciated arms, but who else looks misvalued going into the 2010 season?

Undervalued

Kevin Slowey (ADP 222)

• Bill James 3.84 ERA and 1.23 WHIP with 152 strikeouts in 190 IP
• CHONE 4.33 ERA and 1.24 WHIP with 103 strikeouts in 135 IP
• Marcel 4.46 ERA and 1.29 WHIP with 97 strikeouts in 121 IP

Slowey’s season was cut short in 2009 due to a strained right wrist that he suffered in early July. On the one hand, he did provide a contribution to fantasy teams, as he won 10 games in just 16 starts. On the other hand, the surface stats were rather poor with a 4.86 ERA and a 1.41 WHIP. Upon closer examination, though, he was subjected to a fair amount of bad luck with a .352 BABIP. The gap between his ERA and his 4.23 xFIP confirms this bad fortune. Coming off the wrist injury, there’s some risk here.

Anytime we’re talking about pitchers, though, we should place a greater emphasis on the skills than the health record; even supposedly reliable starters like Johan Santana and Brandon Webb got hurt last year. Besides, his current ADP in the 19th round more than offsets that risk. You know what you’re getting with Slowey: impeccable control and a decent strikeout rate, resulting in an excellent K/BB ratio. In effect, he projects as a stud in the WHIP category, which is typically overlooked in the fantasy community. Overall then, while many fantasy analysts thought Slowey would take his game to ace status in 2009, they may have just been a year early.

Hiroki Kuroda (ADP 280)

• Bill James 3.80 ERA and 1.27 WHIP with 85 strikeouts in 128 IP
• CHONE 4.27 ERA and 1.34 WHIP with 108 strikeouts in 154 IP
• Marcel 3.84 ERA and 1.25 WHIP with 96 strikeouts in 136 IP

Like Slowey, Kuroda also missed a significant amount of time in 2009, in his case due to a strained left oblique and also a concussion resulting from a line drive comebacker. He also missed time in 2008 as a result of tendinitis in his right shoulder, so we probably shouldn’t expect him to make it through a full season healthy at 35. At the same time, when he does take the mound, the skills have been solid for consecutive seasons now. In fact, Kuroda is on a short list of just 12 starting pitchers who posted an xFIP below 4.00 in 2008 and 2009 with at least 100 innings, and he’s by far the cheapest of the group. You’re not going to get a ton of strikeouts from Kuroda, so he might be a better fit on a staff led by Tim Lincecum or Justin Verlander.

Nevertheless, this is a skilled back-of-the-rotation starter who won’t hurt your ERA or WHIP. Accordingly, while Kuroda might be better served on an NL-only staff than a Mixed League one due to lack of upside, he remains a positive contributor in the ratio categories yet is currently just being drafted as a bench player.

Aaron Harang (ADP 315)

• Bill James 4.18 ERA and 1.32 WHIP with 179 strikeouts in 211 IP
• CHONE 4.10 ERA and 1.25 WHIP with 150 strikeouts in 182 IP
• Marcel 4.42 ERA and 1.35 WHIP with 137 strikeouts in 159 IP

In 2006 and 2007 Harang was one of the best fantasy starting pitchers, posting consecutive seasons of a sub-4.00 ERA to go along with over 200 strikeouts. In May 2008 he was on his way toward another solid fantasy campaign when Dusty Baker made a careless decision that has been well-documented by now, inserting Harang into a game in relief to pitch four innings just three days after making a start. It’s not surprising then that Harang suffered a strained forearm later on that season and struggled in the second half. In 2009 the misfortune manifest itself in a couple of other ways. On the surface level, his record was 6-14 despite a 4.21 ERA.

A closer look also reveals that his ERA failed to live up to his 3.95 xFIP due to a relatively high .339 BABIP. While Harang has had some tough luck lately, the fact remains that this is a skilled pitcher who has posted an xFIP below 4.00 in four of the past five seasons. With Dusty Baker still in charge, Harang is still at risk for injury. Even so, you’d be hard-pressed to find another pitcher with this kind of upside currently going in the 27th round. Take a chance on Harang; there’s a ton of profit potential here.

Overvalued

Johan Santana (ADP 43)

• Bill James 3.08 ERA and 1.09 WHIP with 224 strikeouts in 225 IP
• CHONE 3.89 ERA and 1.23 WHIP with 165 strikeouts in 183 IP
• Marcel 3.40 ERA and 1.20 WHIP with 150 strikeouts in 167 IP

OK, here’s one ADP that makes no sense to me. If you’re going to select a pitcher in the top five rounds, he better possess elite skills and a spotless injury history. Even as a pitcher, Santana most certainly used to be worthy of an early-round selection. In fact, from 2004 to 2008 he was simply one of the best players in all of fantasy baseball.

The problem is we can no longer trust him for good skills nor good health. First of all, this is a pitcher coming off surgery due to bone spurs in his left elbow. To me, that alone should be enough to knock him down to at least the middle rounds. When you couple this with skills decline, you have a clearly overvalued player going into the 2010 season. After all, his K/BB ratio has steadily decreased four consecutive years now. In addition, his 3.13 ERA from last season masks a 4.13 xFIP. The counter-argument to all of this would Chris Carpenter from last year, but Carpenter was dirt cheap with an ADP of 247. Overall, I really don’t see much difference between Santana and Brandon Webb: both former elite starters coming off significant injuries. Webb, however, is being taken in the 11th round on average while Santana is gone by the end of the 4th round.

This is a good example in which the projection systems don’t tell the whole story because they give too much weight to a player’s track record; that Bill James projection just makes me laugh. In short, there are so many better alternatives this early in a draft, and it just doesn’t make sense to embrace so much risk. Instead of selecting Santana, grab a safer hitter like Carlos Lee or Andre Ethier; if you really want to go the pitching route, I much prefer Justin Verlander or Jon Lester.