Starters To Buy

Here are a few starters with ERAs over 4.00 that caught my eye:

• Kevin Millwood, Rangers.  You'll have to first wait and see if that groin heals up.  But Millwood has not pitched like a guy with a 5.23 ERA and ghastly 1.72 WHIP.  He has solid strikeout, walk, and home run rates in 106 innings.  It's the 12.3 hits per nine innings and .376 BABIP that's killing him.  That should clear up a bit so consider him as a spot starter once he returns.
• Cha Seung Baek, Padres.  He's an interesting spot start in PETCO.  Baek has a sparkling 3.5 K/BB, showing fine control in 48 innings.  He's keeping the ball in the yard too.  Like Millwood, he has only hits/BABIP to blame for a 4.66 ERA.
• Gil Meche, Royals.  He gets overlooked because his overall numbers are plain.  However since the beginning of May Meche has a tidy 3.58 ERA, 1.22 WHIP, and 2.5 K/BB.
• Sean Gallagher, Athletics.  He's got a 4.20 ERA and 1.36 WHIP, but fine peripherals and good stuff to support it.

Comments

[V]

I've got a question in the "8 Ways Avoid Teams Quitting Your Fantasy League" vein; I'm in a competitive (but free) 20 team keeper league amongst a group of acquaintances. 3-4 teams will quit (and be replaced) every year, and they're keepers just go back into the free agent pool.

It's a draft league (positions in next year's draft depend on this year's standings), 5x5 H2H. Keepers can be kept in half the round they were drafted/kept the previous year (rounded up). A player can only be kept in two consecutive years. Waiver pickups that were undrafted count as '20th round picks' for keeper purposes.

For examples, I kept Josh Hamilton in the 8th round last year, and can keep him in the 4th next year. Alex Rodriguez was drafted in the 1st round last year, kept in the 1st round this year, traded, and can be kept in 2009 in the 1st round, then will revert to being a free agent.

The top 6 make the playoffs, and duke it out for the championship. They get picks 20, 19, etc. (winner gets 20th pick in each round) the next year. 7th-12th have a loser's bracket, and get picks 1-6 (winner of loser's bracket gets 1st overall the next year). 13th-20th get picks 7-14.

Now, we're running into a problem this year (this happened to a lesser degree last year). Teams in the bottom 3rd of the league, with no hopes for the championship, and little chance for the loser's bracket, are selling out for next year.

We allow trades of draft picks (which none of us mind in theory), but it can lead to trades like stud 1st round player + 19th round pick for crappy player + 3rd round pick, etc., and the crappy teams fire sale to the top teams, which can lead to abuses. Some players have expressed dissatisfaction with the status quo.

Anybody see any way we can fix this up?

[finite24]

Simple. Have owners who spend their time bitching start to put more thought into the transactions prior to the trade deadline. Teams that will be willing to unload should certainly be allowed to do so to plan for the future. If the contenders are on their toes, they will engage in a bidding war for said player, driving up his price. At some point, when the price gets steep, the process evens things out, where it becomes a potential downfall for higher ranked teams who risk mortgaging their future for a 1 in 6 chance at the playoffs. Works fine in my league, where owners have to pay a hefty price to acquire players from bottomdwellers. Last year, a contender and a bottomdweller engaged in a trade in which the bottomdweller acquired the best keeper in our league format (Hanley Ramirez) for a price of Morneau/Adrian Gonzalez/Bip Roberts/Adam Dunn/J.J. Putz. The contending team lost in the first round of the playoffs.