Cingrani, Wacha, Cole Tonight; Hochevar, Pelfrey Tomorrow?

[DOUGHBOYS]

I am already starting to regret my purchase of Michael Wacha last week in FAAB. No, Wacha hasn't done anything since that made me feel like he screwed me or anything. And I still have faith/hope that Wacha will work out fine as a rookie pitcher. But, that is just it. No matter how good these kids like Fernandez, Cingrani, Wheeler, Gausman, Cole, Wacha, or whoever else is doing great in the minors, they're still learning.
In the long run, some of these phenoms don't even turn out to be phenoms. They can get hurt like Duffy or Betances. They can under perform until they find themselves like Scherzer. Or, we could find out that they're phenoms on lower levels, not the highest level like Hochevar and Pelfrey.

Scouts, sometimes are wrong all the time. Baseball America, sometimes is wrong all the time. RotoWorld, sometimes is wrong.
I try to look at these pitchers at developing stages on the internet. I've come to the conclusion that I can't make heads or tails whether a guy has two, three, or four good pitches. The camera just doesn't do it for me.
It is easier for me to tell if a hitter my have success. The type of swing is right before our eyes. The flight of a ball going above 90 mph, not so much. I've quit trying to be smart.
So, like I do with big league games, the result of the at bat, or the batter's reaction, is more important to me than the pitch itself.

All of this doesn't really matter. We see the physical side of a pitcher. If anything is half physical and ninety per cent mental, it's pitching.
Before they come up to the Majors, we can judge Gausman and Cingrani by their k/bb ratios or Wacha by how many hitters he fools or Wheeler and Cole by how quickly they dominate a team. But, we don't know what's in their heads.
If I were a good organization, I would trade for Hochevar. To me, some of his stuff still looks nasty. But, at the same time, if a team gets him in the stretch, he looks like Obama throwing out the first pitch.
Maybe it's just me.

By my reckoning, of the Gausman, Cingrani, Wacha, Wheeler, Cole quintet, only one will become a phenom. Two will get hurt. Two will under perform. We all have opinions on who does what, but that is about the odds on these young pitchers.
For fantasy, those odds suck.
Worse, we overpay to buck those odds.
We're paying $30 for a $1 lotto ticket, because we like the numbers better.

Cingrani, Cole, and Wacha pitch tonight. We may get a glimpse into who becomes what, but not the full story. If one of them has a good game we can sing praises or if one collapses, we can curse him, but it's too soon to really tell what we have.
In some ways, I feel sorry for them. Every start by these pitchers is put under a fantasy microscope. Young hitters can go 0-4, and we'll say 'get them tomorrow'. One of these young starters gives up six runs and we're screaming, 'What are you doing to me!?! '
We have less patience with pitchers.
I'll bet that BJ Upton has not been taken out of over 50 per cent of fantasy lineups in the NFBC this year. Ever.
And folks, BJ Upton sucks.
Still, we wait for that game where he does a fantasy baseball double-double of the home run and stolen base.
Or, is it just a double? I don't know.
We don't do that with R.A. Dickey. We'll bench his ass because his ass deserves to be benched.
Patience, my ass, for pitchers.

I really don't have a story line for this post. Only that since I spent a lot of money on Wacha, that I've learned to temper my expectations. And that when Wheeler makes his grand appearance next week, I'll be thinking that Hochevar and Pelfrey did the same thing. They're still making a nice living. Hochevar and Pelfrey are relevant to both teammates and family, but, they've lost something that everybody reading this is yearning for in bids, especially in young pitchers.
Fantasy relevance.

[Bronx Yankees]

Dan - Interesting point about pitchers and hitters. If I'm watching a game where I have multiple hitters and they all go 0 for 4, I'm disappointed, perhaps annoyed if they had the nerve to make out with runners in scoring position, but rarely do I get emotional. However, I have a very tough time watching one of my starting pitchers get roughed up in the second inning and will invariably go channel surfing to find a better (i.e., different) game. I'm even worse when one of my relievers gets trashed - thank you Andrew Bailey! It is akin to being tortured. You have a two-run lead and all you have to do is get three measley outs. It is not even a tough save situation like relievers had in the 70's and 80's, when they actually had to enter the game in the 7th or 8th inning with runners on base. All they have to do now is start and finish an inning without getting shelled. How about not helping the other team out by walking batters? Just writing about this for 60 seconds gets my blood pressure up in a way that hitters never do.

Mike