Rotoman–
I have somehow ended up with 4 Phillies starters on my team: Person,
Duckworth, Padilla, and Wolf…. Who do you think will have the best
season, in order?
ESPN.com – Philadelphia Phillies – Clubhouse
It has long been a goal to try to get all the pitchers from one major league team for my fantasy team. It isn’t as easy as it looks, because if there is any expectation that they’ll be any good, they tend to go for a lot more money than you’d like to spend.
The ideal situation would involve scrappy LIMA-type pitchers collected together for a habitually bad team that plays in a pitchers park. I liked the Phillies starters going into the season, especially Person and Adams. As a group the Phillies rotation would have cost a LABR player $34, which isn’t looking like a bad investment. Especially if you managed not to get Adams.
The key with Robert Person is his control. He has been progressively reining it in, to ever better results. He’s not at the top of his game now. There are contract issues and he’s a bit of a head case. The night after he signed his big contract in 2001 he was arrested in Tampa for being disorderly, and he managed to kick out windows in two cop cars, if I recall correctly. Still, if you saw him turn it up in the second half last year, you know how good he can be. He should be the Phillies’ ace this year.
Randy Wolf meets the LIMA criteria: He struck out three for every one he walked, he struck out nearly one per inning and he allowed fewer than one homer per nine innings. He also came out of spring training with a case of tendinitis in his pitching elbow. That last is most distressing because it had already been noted by most everyone who looked that Wolf was an injury risk this year because of all his youthful innings. I’m not completely confident that one always leads to the other, but in this case the cracks are already showing. If he can hold it together, with cortisone and ibuprofen, he could conceivably be better than Person, but he’s precarious.
Vicente Padilla may not be precarious. In fact, he may be the best of this bunch. He converted to starting last season, in Triple-A, and took to it like a hound to stink. I saw much of his first start this year, against the Braves, and his stuff is simply great. He throws hard with a lot of movement, and he’s had excellent control. He’s just 24 and clearly hasn’t established the bona fides of a star, but he sure looks like he has the potential.
Brandon Duckworth doesn’t throw as hard as Padilla, but he’s got a major league curve and change. The real issue is whether he’ll be able to dominate with a fastball that’s average at best. So far this year he’s struck out 30 in 19+ innings, so the evidence is in his favor. Still, I would take his every triumph as a gift and fear the day big league hitters start figuring out his modus.