Fantasy Baseball Cafe Forums

by **poorlilrich123** » Tue May 08, 2007 2:49 am

So far this season, where do you rank each pitcher on the tiers? Will they keep it up or improve as the season goes on?

Here are the pitchers I'm most interested in:
Bush, Meche, Wakefield, Maine, Webb, Zambrano, Kazmir,

by **Snakes Gould** » Tue May 08, 2007 4:08 am

poorlilrich123 wrote:So far this season, where do you rank each pitcher on the tiers? Will they keep it up or improve as the season goes on?

Here are the pitchers I'm most interested in:
Bush, Meche, Wakefield, Maine, Webb, Zambrano, Kazmir,

Webb is probably a tier 1 pitcher who you can count on time in and time out.

kazmir is a 2nd tier type guy. can be dominating at times, mostly consistent.

zambrano is a guy i never really labeled a top flight guy, simply because i hated his walks. he's really struggling this year but he does a track record. id put him slightly below kazmir right now.

i didnt think maine was for real, but im starting to buy into it. hes certainly not going to have a sub 2 era the whole season but something in the low 3's is plausible.

im not sold on meche at all. he'll have so many tough lineups to face and i dont think he's going to succeed much. id put him with an era above 4 after the season with solid k's numbers.

wakefield and bush are free agent/spot start type starters at this point.

by **Lordrevolution** » Tue May 08, 2007 5:17 am

The problem with just "tiering" guys is that everyone has diffrent tiers. So if it's gona make sense to have Kaz in tier 2 (as the guy above me does) then I need to know who else he's got around that area. Personally Kaz is a low 3 guy for me, but my tiers may be tighter then his.

by **trumpeter** » Tue May 08, 2007 6:50 am

Here's my rankings with some other players in there:

Tier 1: Santana (stands alone)

Tier 2: Webb, Peavy, Oswalt

Tier 3: Zambrano, Smoltz, Sheets, Hill

Tier 4: Kazmir, Maine, Sabathia

Tier 5: Cain, Capuano (there is pretty big tier between Main and Bush)

Tier 6: Bush, Snell

Tier 7: Meche, Lilly

These are all in my opinion, but I wanted to group them with other similar pitchers. This should give you a rough guide.

by **Doughhead** » Tue May 08, 2007 8:21 am

trumpeter wrote:Here's my rankings with some other players in there:

Tier 1: Santana (stands alone)

Tier 2: Webb, Peavy, Oswalt

Tier 3: Zambrano, Smoltz, Sheets, Hill

Tier 4: Kazmir, Maine, Sabathia

Tier 5: Cain, Capuano (there is pretty big tier between Main and Bush)

Tier 6: Bush, Snell

Tier 7: Meche, Lilly

These are all in my opinion, but I wanted to group them with other similar pitchers. This should give you a rough guide.

I don't believe that Santana deserves his own tier. He's the best pitcher in the league for sure, but there are other SPs who should be considered "elite" (Oswalt and Peavy at least) and to me, that means Tier 1.

I'm not ready to put John Maine in the same class as Sabathia. If Maine strings together three rough starts, everybody will begin to question him. You can't say that about guys like Sabathia, Smoltz, Kazmir, Bonderman, etc.

If Sabathis is Tier 4, then you must have a lot of tiers. Sabathia (IMO) is a Tier 2 pitcher--not quite elite, but very good (definitely the kind of guy you start regardless of the matchup). I think there should be no more than maybe 6 tiers. Maybe something like this:

Tier 1: The Elite (Santana, Oswalt, Peavy, etc.)
Tier 2: The Not Quite Elite (Sabathia, Smoltz, Haren, etc.)
Tier 3: Solid (Verlander, Bedard, RHill)
Tier 4: Borderline starters (Buehrle, Lilly, Escobar)
Tier 5: Spot starters (Suppan, Meche, Wainwright)
Tier 6: Trash (Silva, Maholm, Ohka)

Of course, it's always up to the individual owner to determine where a given SP fits in.