Of Mice and Middling Starters

This year, more than any other in recent memory, starting pitching has been a crapshoot. For every Santana, Peavy, Oswalt, or Webb there's been a Halladay (could that guy have worse luck?), Carpenter, or Felix Hernandez.

I've managed to fashion a staff out of the likes of Oliver Perez, Dave Bush (ugh), Randy Wolf, and A.J. Burnett. The results have not been pretty. Still, I'm hoping to be competitive going forward, and I only spent one draft pick above round ten to get any of my SPs. Two of them came off the waiver wire. I pity the poor soul in my league who drafted Carpenter and BJ Ryan. He also was saddled with Bonderman and Beckett, leaving him with approximately half the pitchers he selected on the waiver wire or DL.

What's the moral of all this? The days of sure-fire pitching selections is over, if there ever was one to begin with. It's become a crapshoot out there, and unless the pitcher's name is Johan Santana (and he's never sniffed the stats put up by the likes of Pedro Martinez or Randy Johnson) I see no reason to risk a top draft pick on a pitcher.