REPEAT AFTER ME: DEPTH

You have to have it in order to contend. Most BARB clubs sport a pretty solid lineup, at least a couple of top starters and a couple of good relievers. A few can even field lineups or rotations that arguably have 'All-Star' written all over them.

But that's not enough to remain a contender. Facts are facts. Some pitchers with great glamor stats will have awful first halves. Pitchers are simply more prone to injury and inconsistency than players. Even Greg Maddux has had some blips in his career, and he's arguably the most consistent pitcher in baseball history based on mechanical soundness, durability and regularity of outcome. Between 1994 and 2004, his numbers are eerily similar:

16, 19, 15, 19, 18, 19, 19, 17, 16, 16, 16

Consider Randy Johnson, in his heyday (1993-2003), when he was a lock for 200+ K's and at least a couple of shutouts a year....when healthy. Here's the win totals:

19, 13, 18, 5, 20, 19, 17, 21, 24, 6

That's an average of 16.2 wins per season despite two season-ending surgeries over the time frame. And that is actually WAY more consistent than many other pitchers with outstanding careers. Consider Johnson's old mound mate, Curt Schilling, over the same stretch:

16, 2, 7, 9, 17, 15, 15, 11, 22, 23, 8

By the way, the one constant you find with pitchers with long careers and consistent win totals is the ability to strike people out. Greg Maddux is not thought of as a flamethrower, obviously, but he fans his fair share of batters. In fact, he'll be 10th on the ALL-TIME list sometime around the All-Star Break.

ERA's fluctuate along similar lines. Even without injury, even if the pitcher is mechanically consistent, there is often quite a bit of variance, much more so than hitters. Consider: if a hitter has a 15 percent variation in their batting average between .300 and .255, we'll talk about them having an 'off year.' But if a pitcher goes from 3.60 to 3.06, we accept that as normal. If they have a sub-3.00 ERA one season, we're not devastated if they are in the mid-3.00's the next. We understand and accept a higher level of variance with pitchers than with hitters.

For this reason, and this reason alone, you must have depth. You can virtually count on having some injuries or some down years or slow starts before the All-Star Break, and you will need to be able to plug arms into the equation, or have the farm system depth to trade for arms if you don't have them. Teams that have neither will NOT contend unless they are extraordinarily fortunate where the injury bug is concerned.

Further prediction: teams that fall out of contention, but which have quality left-handed pitching to deal, will be able to make the best deals for themselves precisely because their short supply and the inevitable injuries that level staffs will create high need.

Now the next question is: how do you get depth? You get it by accumulating draft picks instead of trading them away, and by picking up extra bodies by any means necessary. The new 40-man roster will limit club's abilities to stockpile talent, of course, but in the end some clubs will be sitting on extra pitching and others will be left scratching their head. I've known this like forever, but on Draft Day one of our fellow owners remarked to me that they had discovered (gasp!) a link between farm system size and being consistently in the hunt.