Josh Beckett 2010

Josh Beckett is one of the more consistent starting pitchers in baseball. In 2009, he had his usual excellent strikeout rate (K/9: 8.43), walk rate (BB/9: 2.33), and solid groundball rate (47.2%). I would expect more of the same in 2010, as those numbers were actually slightly inferior to Beckett's 2007 and 2008. Beckett is going 74th on average at CouchManagers.com. I think that's pretty fair, but do feel that he's a substantially better pick than many of the pitchers going in the 20-30 picks after him. Guys like Tommy Hanson, Matt Cain, Cliff Lee, and Jered Weaver all have drawbacks - worse control, less track record, unfavorable leagues change, lower strikeout rate, worse groundball rate, etc. I'll discuss some of these guys in future posts. Most years, picks 80-120 are where I start looking to pick up undervalued starting pitchers, but as I've mentioned before this year looks a little bit different. It seems like picking up one stud starter (Lincecum or Halladay) in the 2nd round and then loading up on undervalued hitters in the middle rounds may be the way to go.