Welcome back for another ride on the Drew Proof train. This week we’ll continue our player comparison series, and if you’ll indulge me for a moment, I want to tell you how a bout with writer’s block, a leaky pool and a box score on ESPN led me to the idea behind this week’s article.

Last year on Memorial Day weekend, my wife and I spent time putting up the family pool. When our kids were little, the setup took about five minutes-it doesn’t take long to fill a baby pool. As the kids got older, we graduated to the inflatable models. These took a little longer to blow up and fill. But before long the kids were too big and had grown tired of the inflatable pools. So we went out and purchased what I affectionately referred to as a “big bag of water.” It was actually a vinyl pool with an inflatable top ring. Setup was straight forward-inflate the top ring, smooth out the bottom, put the hose in and turn on the water and presto-the pool grew like magic. Sounds cheesy I know, but the family really enjoyed it. That year’s Memorial Day weekend started out the same as always, get out the pool, start filling it up, etc. Only one problem, unbeknownst to us, the pool had developed a slow leak. And as luck would have it, we didn’t discover this until the pool was about a quarter full. I should mention that a quarter full equaled approximately 800 gallons of water. My wife went to the store to get a new pool and I got to work on draining out the water.

Once the water was draining I had some free time on my hands. I thought I’d be industrious and start working on my next article. I sat down at the computer, opened Word and found myself a victim of writer’s block. I had nothing, nada, zilch. Since I couldn’t think of anything to write, I hopped over to ESPN and took a look around the baseball box scores. One thing led to another and I found myself checking out Francisco Liriano’s latest implosion-which got me thinking at the time-was Liriano really that bad or was this just a blip on the radar for the phenom known as “The Franchise” to his teammates?

While I was pondering that notion I took a look at the stats behind one of last year’s aces Zack Greinke. At that point in the season he was a monster; and my mindset changed—I knew Liriano was a better pitcher than Greinke—how could I prove it to the masses? Flash forward to 2010: while 2009 didn’t end as well as I’d hoped for my theory, this year is off to a great start. In fact, when you dig into the underlying numbers you’ll see my theory is alive and well.

Ok, I’ve wasted enough of your time with the obligatory setup, let me provide you with the…

Drew Proof: At the onset of draft season, Liriano was nowhere near the Top 50 pitchers on most people’s radar. On the opposite side of the coin Greinke was rated in the Top 5; a true blue fantasy ace. These pre-season rankings played true as Greinke’s average draft position was 25 and “The Franchise” was mired at 210.

As I’ve said before, I often have a contrarian view when it comes to player ratings. This time is no different; to help prove my point I looked at the following stats for each pitcher:

K/9, K/BB, BAA, SLG and Groundball-to-Flyball ratio (G/B)

When you compare the two’s career numbers side-by-side, you can clearly see how Liriano’ past sets him up for a better future as compared to Greinke. Here are their historical lines using the aforementioned statistics:

Greinke:
K/9: 7.6
K/BB: 3.35
BAA: .262
SLG: .414
G/B: .65

Liriano:
K/9: 9.16
K/BB: 2.69
BAA: .241
SLG: .384
G/B: .92

Liriano beats Greinke in all categories outside of K/BB; and that was due to his slower than expected recovery from elbow surgery last year. A few weeks ago I made the argument a player’s performance is usually the same year-over-year using past history as a guide. Using that assumption (a.k.a. the Crossman Conjecture) one can easily see Liriano will induce more groundballs and strikeout nearly 2 more batters per 9 innings pitched than Greinke.

Hitters will also accumulate fewer bases and hit 30 points lower against “The Franchise”. Liriano has a longer future ahead of him (barring injury) when you factor in that Greinke has already pitched nearly 2.5 times as many innings. And lastly, as impressive as the 2010 Royals have been, they are after all, the Royals. Put more simply, the Twins are a better team and will give Liriano a lot more opportunities to get your team wins as well. My advice? Target the Liriano owner in your league, offer him a reasonable version of the classic “two average guys for one good guy” trade offer and you might find yourself with the trade of the year.

As always, I write these articles to provoke thought—please feel free to post your comments. See you next week!

Tags: Fantasy Baseball, Fantasy Baseball Analysis, Francisco Liriano, Major League Baseball, zack greinke