Fantasy Toss Up: John Lackey vs. Dan Haren

This is my personal biggest toss up of the Fantasy Offseason. I have to keep three starters between Sabathia, Haren and Lackey with CC being a lock. Thus, I have a month to figure out whether I like Haren or Lackey better. You can vote on the sidebar if you want.

The Fantasy Rankings

CBS ranks Dan Haren at 46 and John Lackey at 66.
Yahoo Big Board has Haren On the Bubble and Lackey out of the tournament
ESPN has Haren at 40 and Lackey at 46.

Haren wins in every ranking but only by a little margin.

Projections

Dan Haren: 3.59 ERA, 14-10, 210 IP, 174 Ks, 1.20 WHIP
John Lackey: 3.81 ERA, 11-9, 175 IP, 141 Ks, 1.29 WHIP

The Projections are incredibly in the favor of Haren, but still a little bit blah for both. Lackey's numbers are brought down by the projection that he will only 26 starts in comparison to 32 for Haren.

Surrounding Lineup

The Diamondbacks roster is all about youth and potential. Stephen Drew, Justin Upton, Chris Young, and Conor Jackson will all be relied upon heavily and each will need to to increase their historic numbers if the Diamondbacks want to have a potent lineup.

The Angels roster is seemingly consistent, always good but never a powerhouse. The addition of Bobby Abreu should help their offense as he is an upgrade over the aging Garrett Anderson, but does that make up for Vlad's diminishing performances? Probably not.

Question Marks

Haren's #1 questionmark is his endurance throughout the entire season. Just look at his career splits, he's 100 times better before the All Star Break than after it. Can he break the trend?

Lackey made 32+ starts in five seasons and 27 between Triple A and LAA last season so I don't think his questionmark is health. The biggest issue is his diminishing K rate which is on a 4 season decline while Haren's is on a 4 year up swing.

The Verdict

Right now I'm leaning heavily towards keeping Haren. First off Haren's division and league is littered with worse opponents. His ERA will likely be lower than Lackey's as a result. Lackey's offense should be better than Haren's but picking a pitcher based on projected wins is a crap shoot. Meanwhile, Lackey's diminishing K rate is a major concern and Haren seemingly is much more like to post 200 Ks.

For all these reasons it looks like Dan Haren will be staying on my roster come April 1st.

Numbers On Steroids: Mickey Mantle

Numbers on Steroids is a look at baseball players during the 90s to see if anything screams out at you. This week it's throwing a curve ball and looking at All Time Great Yankees. Players that we know did not take steroids to see if this gives a defense to any of the players 'convicted' by Numbers on Steroids. Time to look at my dad's favorite athlete of all time, Mickey Mantle. Averages Say: What's with the mysterious dip at 27 and then the uptick? At Bats Per Home Run Says: That's a mighty jump from 22 to 24 Explaining As If It Was the 90s If you take a look at the numbers there are two time frames which in the 1990s would be questioned. First would be the incredible leap he took from his first year in the big leagues to his first MVP season in 1956. His batting average jumped 50 points. His slugging percentage jumped 90 points and he hit 15 more homers than his previous high. This wouldn't merrit a conviction nowadays though because the young age he...

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Guest Post: Thoughts on Sabathia Signing

I asked Grutt what his thoughts were on the Sabathia signing and I thought his response pretty much nailed it. So here it is. I don’t know. Every year I get a little more disenchanted with baseball. Yea, it’s great we signed the top pitching free agent. But we were supposed to. No team was even in the ballpark of the Yankees offer yet they still needed to jump from the already ridiculous price of $140 million to $160 million to close the deal. Now I hear we are going to sign more pitchers who will also get large contracts and the position player gaps are still glaring. Each new, large contract just adds to the feeling that the Yanks are supposed to win it all. “I think we have a good chance this year.” That is a lost feeling. If they don’t win I’ll wonder why, like there has to be some other reason besides that it’s a sport you can never predict how things will work out and some years just aren’t yours to be won. If they win I will be pleasantly smug. It gets a little more...

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