John Patterson

One guy I'll definitely be targeting in all my drafts is John Patterson. While he seems to be somewhat injury prone, its worth the risk for a good who is this good. And he's like to fall further than he should in most drafts, because his ERAs haven't been too sexy. If you've been reading this blog, you know that I think to a large extent that's luck, and that the numbers to look at are the K/9 and K/BB rates. The only thing keeping Patterson from being an elite pitcher is that his high flyball rate does mean that he'll generally allow a lot of HRs. However, his home park helps limit the damage from that. In one mock draft I saw he fell to the 13th round...and that was in a league with 16 teams. You can't beat that for value! He was getting picked after pitchers like Verlander, Burnett, and Pettitte, all of whom should be substantially lower as long as they're in the AL and Patterson is in the NL.

YEAR TEAM IP BB K
2004 MON 98.1 46 99
2005 WAS 198.1 65 185
2006 WAS 40.2 9 42