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I'm good with Farquhar and Sucre. More BP depth would be nice though. Lets hope they can snag Tenaka.
1) I think Jack Z is going to try to sneak in one more starting pitcher. He will do it by scrimping on bullpen (Danny Farquhar) and backup catcher (Jesus Sucre). Zduriencik loves to bring up Sucre unprompted in his interviews.
2) My own personal idiosyncratic rating system had Farquhar as the 8th-most-effective pitcher in all of baseball: Greg Holland, Koji Uehara, Kenley Jansen, Craig Kimbrel, Aroldis Chapman, Mark Melancon, Jason Grilli, Farquhar.
If you look only at Farquhar's second half (when he was pitching in the 9th), his .044 ISO-against was better than any of those guys except Melancon, and his 35.2% K rate would be 6th (behind Chapman, Holland, Uehara, Jansen and Kimbrel -- from among that qualifying group).
In other words, if you take the second half only (admittedly, only 30 games and 32.1 IP and 125 batters faced), Farquhar would be second overall (compared to everyone else's full season), just barely ahead of Uehara.
[FYI, the top starters were Matt Harvey and then Clayton Kershaw.]
3) More Fun Farquhar Facts:
- 2 outs, runners in scoring position: 19 batters faced: 2 hits (one double, one single), 1 walk, 10 K
- 9th inning (23.0 IP): .152/.236/.203
- Outside 9th inning (32.2 IP): .259/.317/.390
4) Grant Balfour: 54th on my list. Don't like the combo of BB% and HR% if you're going to pay big bucks for a late-inning guy. Not saying he's bad, just not seeing the premium value worth the extra cost.
5) David Price: yes, his BB% went down, but his HR% and XBH% went up.
- 2012 XBH + BB = 11.8% (7.1 + 4.7)
- 2013 XBH + BB = 11.4% (3.7 + 7.7)
He's very good, but he doesn't register as super-special in my analyses.
6) Matt Garza/Ervin Santana: look like No. 3 starters who will expect No. 2 money.
7) Ubaldo Jimenez: Of the non-Japanese trio (with the two above), the only one with a good shot to have upside from my analysis, but he's not a sure thing and he costs a draft pick (as does Santana, for that matter), so I don't think he's likely to end up in Seattle.
8) All of which has me rooting for Kenta Maeda, I suppose. Make it so.
9) Except that ... pitching against China and the Netherlands is maybe like pitching against a mediocre ACC team. 95% of the guys wouldn't make the Clinton LumberKings. So let's not read too much into that (it's great, just not all that meaningful). But love Doc's slo-mo breakdown.