"REALITY"

I know, I know...what about BARB. Every now and then, though, I like to mention 'reality' to provide a little context. For example, there are currently 50 starters in MLB with more than 98 IP and an ERA under 3.72. Among them, there are eight hurlers not drafted in BARB:

Jaime Garcia, St. Louis (9-4, 2.21)
Wade LeBlanc, San Diego (5-8, 3.35)
Shawn Marcum, Toronto (5-4, 3.36)
Colby Lewis, Texas (9-6, 3.52)
Jonathan Niese, New York NL (6-4, 3.54)
Doug Fister, Seattle (3-6, 3.56)
Kris Medlen, Atlanta (6-2, 3.57)
Mike Leake, Cincinnati (7-2, 3.57)

An additional trio of former BARB starters (Livan Hernandez, Brett Myers and Carl Pavano) have languished, as unsigned minor-league free agents.....

Astute observers may recall that your Commish openly wondered on Draft Day why no one drafted Garcia, and the consensus was that his AAA and spring training numbers had been so dreadful, no one thought he would amount to anything. But in fairness, it's a crap shoot and I must confess I only had four of these guys on my radar myself (Garcia, LeBlanc, Marcum and Leake). Nor do I think this is going to continue indefinitely. Some of these guys are lucky, and you can tell this by either by a high WHIP (greater than 1.3) or by the relative low number of innings compared with the population.

What happens, though, if we take out all the pitchers who have a WHIP higher than 1.3, or who are averaging less than 6 IP per start? LeBlanc, Leake, Medlen and Niese fall out...but so do Jonathan Sanchez, Hiroki Kuroda, Ricky Romero, Clayton Richard, Anibal Sanchez and Jon Garland. The remaining 32, statistically, are the starting pitchers (barring injury) who will have the most second-half value. I shall list them by BARB franchise, for all to ponder.

ARIZONA: Yovanni Gallardo, Mat Latos (2)
BLACK MESA: Barry Zito, Ervin Santana (2)
BROOKLYN: Ubaldo Jiminez, Jon Lester (2)
CASSELTON: Johann Santana, John Danks (2)
DARWIN: Josh Johnson, Clayton Kershaw, Zack Greinke (3)
FROSTBITE FALLS: Felix Hernandez, Tim Lincecum, Cole Hamels (3)
LOS ANGELES: Tim Hudson, Trevor Cahill (2)
MADTOWN: Jeff Niemann, C.J. Wilson, Jered Weaver (3)
OAKLAND: Andy Pettite (1)
POTTSYLVANIA: Cliff Lee, Chris Carpenter (2)
ST. FRANCIS: Jason Vargas, Roy Oswalt, Fausto Carmona (3)
WORCESTER: Adam Wainwright, Johnny Cueto, Ryan Dempster (3)
YUMA: Roy Halladay, C.C. Sabathia, Matt Cain, David Price (4)

(Just missing the cut, with a sub-1.3 WHIP but a high ERA....Justin Verlander, Brett Cecil, Philip Hughes, Ted Lilly, Ian Kennedy, Bronson Arroyo....the proverbial one bad outing guys whose ERA can be expected to drop)