Scott White

Monday, I talked about Pat Burrell posting a 1-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio last year for the first time in his career, which happened to coincide with the best half of baseball -- .295 average, 19 home runs after the All-Star break -- he had ever played. I couldn't help but wonder if, given his hot start this year, it meant something.

Baseball Jones had this response:

After looking at his career stats (687 walks, 1141 strikeouts), I'm ready to conclude that Pat Burrell's 1-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio last year was just an aberration. I would also suggest that his low batting average came about not because of a poor first half, but because he's a career .259 hitter. Burrell brings consistent production, but if he's on my Fantasy team right now, I'm selling high and bringing in a player who will average more than just 129 hits and 500 at-bats per season.

My response:

"Makes sense. I pretty much came to the same conclusion, which is why I didn't end up with Burrell in any of my leagues. Until we get through a good portion of this season, though, there's room to wonder.

But you can't say his first half last year didn't drain his overall batting average. The Pat Burrell of last year's second half was not the same .259-hitting Pat Burrell of old. Now, if you want to argue that his great second half was simply a normalization to the mean, I can accept that argument and even agree that it's the more likely possibility. But I like to keep an open mind. Even veterans find ways to break out."

His response:

With Burrell, you know what you are going to get: 30 home runs, 95 RBI and a .260 average. It's hard to be angry with that stat line, but whether you own the Phillies or you only own a Fantasy team, carrying a guy who bats .215 in the first half and then .295 in the second half is very frustrating. I appreciate your efforts to come up with new ways to evaluate a player, but if I'm looking for a player to pick up, I prefer someone with a more reliable performance throughout the season.

If Burrell can stay healthy and get over 500 at-bats again, then we could see his numbers reach 35-40 HR and 110-120 RBI (aka, 2002 and 2005), which would put him back among the top outfielders in the game. At 31, Burrell may perform well for another five-plus years, but I'm guessing his best years are behind him. Unfortunately, I don't think last year's 1-to-1 ratio and a new approach can save him from that.

I figured I'd further this dialogue right in my blog:

First of all, you talk like Burrell always has such ridiculous first-and-second-half splits, but that's simply not the case. Normally, he's pretty consistent throughout the season, and you have to go all the way back to 2004 (when he hit .276 in the first half and .222 in the second) to find a split that's even close.

Secondly, let me throw out a list of names to you: Luis E. Gonzalez, Steve Finley, Jermaine Dye, Jim Edmonds. All became appreciably better at or beyond their 30th birthdays. Is such an achievement rare? Yes. But does it happen? Quite obviously.

I think you misinterpreted my tone. Or maybe I misrepresented it. Either way, I'll set the record straight here and now. I'm not saying you should rip apart your Fantasy roster trying to trade for Burrell. I haven't even seriously thought about trading for him myself. I'm simply saying it'll be interesting, from a Fantasy perspective, to see what his stats look like at the end of the season.

I try not to construct my Fantasy teams based on a series of guesses, meaning I don't look at a player, decide whether I like him or not, and consider the matter a closed case. If I did, I'd go into the season either overvaluing or undervaluing everyone in the league, which obviously wouldn't give me a realistic foundation for making transactions. Really, you could make an argument for or against every single player, and rather than dismiss either side entirely, you want to try to gauge the likelihood of each.

I like to think in terms of percentages. To use a more straightforward example than Burrell, let's try Pirates SS Jack Wilson. The argument for Wilson going into the season was obvious: He hit .409 with eight home runs over the final two months of last season. True? Yes. Meaningful? I'm sure someone could make the argument, but I imagine you, like me, see Wilson as nothing more than a miscast utility player and someone not worth owning outside of NL-only leagues. Let's set the likelihood of our argument at, say, 98 percent and the alternative at two percent.

I think you would also agree that the possibility of Burrell having an improved approach at the plate is significantly higher than the possibility of Wilson becoming a major Fantasy asset. Let's set the likelihood of my argument for Burrell at 20 percent -- still a low number, sure, but much higher than Wilson's two.

And then you have to consider a third factor. If the best-case-scenario -- a 20 percent chance for Burrell -- doesn't come to pass -- an 80 percent chance -- what exactly is the alternative? Just how low could a guy go? If you examine each player from that perspective, you can understand why I don't often draft rookies. Even if they have a 50 percent chance of meeting their potential right away -- which they usually don't -- they have a 50 percent chance of ending up another Alex Gordon, who was totally useless in mixed leagues as a rookie. The negative is too negative for me to invest a middle-round pick.

So then you have Burrell, whose 80 percent means he'll hit his usual .260 with 30 home runs. When you have a player who has an 80 percent chance of being useful and a 20 percent chance of being more, you'd agree he sounds like a nice guy to grab as your No. 4 outfielder, wouldn't you?

Look, I know I'm kind of going off on a tangent, so let me spell out my point as clearly as possible at the end here. I'm just saying you have to consider all of the possibilities. I'm not saying you have to accept this one on Burrell as likely -- heck, at 20 percent, I don't even accept it as likely -- but you can't just ignore a second half like he had last year, particularly when his good run just so happened to coincide with him evening out his walks and strikeouts for the first time in his career.

That's all for now.

Sometimes I need to take my own advice.

A quick look at Pat Burrell's stats last year makes you think he had a typical Pat Burrell year. He hit .256 with 30 home runs -- nothing special there, right?

Wrong.

His low batting average came about because of a particularly poor first half, but he hit .295 in the second half, and his peripheral stats during that time -- during the whole season, really -- indicate that he changed something in his approach at the plate.

He finished with 114 walks and 120 strikeouts -- a 1-to-1 ratio.

Only a few players in baseball put up a 1-to-1 ratio on a yearly basis. I'll list some of them off the top of my head:

Manny Ramirez
Lance Berkman
Carlos N. Lee
Chipper Jones
Gary Sheffield
J.D. Drew
Hideki Matsui
Travis Hafner
David Ortiz
Frank Thomas
Nick Johnson
Conor Jackson
Brian Roberts
Jose B. Reyes
Vladimir Guerrero
Nick Swisher

OK, so there's a few less-than-elite types mixed in there, but for the most part, Burrell is in some pretty good company. But here's the thing: He joined that list for the first time last year. Before then, he had always whiffed at an Adam Dunn-like rate.

I originally made this observation in the offseason, but then, seeing no one else buying into it, quickly dismissed it as nothing more than a statistical anomaly. I didn't end up drafting Burrell in any of my leagues.

So far this season, after going deep twice Monday, Burrell is hitting .435 with three home runs.

And you guessed it: four walks and four strikeouts.

Maybe I'm making too much of the ratio. Maybe he's just beginning the season on a hot streak. But maybe that second half was legit. The ratio sure says something to support it.

I'll never claim I can predict the future for any player, but right now, I wish I had nabbed Burrell in at least one of my Fantasy leagues so I could see first hand if I was right in the first place.

That's all for now.

Back on Friday, I introduced my approach to starting pitchers in Fantasy, saying I prefer to draft them later than hitters because of their potential to boom -- to emerge out of nowhere and become Fantasy mainstays -- or to bust -- to suffer an early-season injury that renders them totally useless.

But in order for that approach to work, I then have to take the next step. I have to play the waiver wire aggressively, hoping to corral all of the booms before the rest of the league sees them coming. I can't just sit on my late-round sleepers and hope for the best because, more likely than not, some of them won't pan out. And by the time I finally decide to cut ties with them, hey, no more booms.

So with that in mind, I've compiled a list of starting pitchers -- ones likely on the waiver wire in your league -- whose first starts have officially put them "on my radar." I'm not saying all of these guys will emerge as useful Fantasy starters or that I even have much confidence in any of them. (In fact, I have pretty low expectations for most of them. But I don't want to ignore them. If I had taken that approach, I would have missed out on Chris Carpenter in 2004.) I'm just saying their first starts make their second starts worth monitoring.

I'm also not saying this list begins and ends here. If one of these guys stinks up the place his next time out, scratch him off the list. If someone not on the list throws a quality start his next time out, striking out a batter per inning or close to it, add him to it. Andy Sonnanstine and Jason Bergmann, for instance, I expect to work their way onto this list at some point in the near future. But their ERAs of 6.00 and 8.44 won't exactly catch your leaguemates' attention, and if a pitcher isn't yet on anyone else's radar, what's the point of putting him on yours?

So here they are, categorized by my own level of enthusiasm for them. I've listed their stats from their first start (or first two, in Kevin Millwood's case) and their ownership percentage in CBSSports.com leagues. Will I refresh this list at some point? Maybe, maybe not, but keep in mind that a list of names isn't as valuable as the approach used to come up with it. I'm aiming to teach you to fish, not catch you a fish.

Probably should be owned already
Micah Owings, Diamondbacks (65 percent)
6 2/3 innings, two hits, two walks, one earned run, nine strikeouts

Time to at least think about adding them
Kevin Millwood, Rangers (58 percent)
six innings, four hits, three walks, zero earned runs, four strikeouts
eight innings, 12 hits, one walks, two earned runs, five strikeouts
Manny Parra, Brewers (42 percent)
5 1/3 innings, three hits, two walks, two earned runs, seven strikeouts
Dana Eveland, Athletics (25 percent)
seven innings, six hits, one walk, one earned run, seven strikeouts

Give them another start or two first
Carlos Villanueva, Brewers (39 percent)
5 1/3 innings, eight hits, two walks, two earned runs, six strikeouts
Ryan Dempster, Cubs (38 percent)
six innings, three hits, two walks, one earned run, five strikeouts
Randy Wolf, Padres (29 percent)
six innings, four hits, two walks, one earned run, five strikeouts
Justin Duchscherer, Athletics (19 percent)
five innings, four hits, two walks, one earned run, six strikeouts
Edwin Jackson, Rays (10 percent)
six innings, five hits, two walks, one earned run, four strikeouts

I'm highly skeptical
Joe Saunders, Angels (57 percent)
eight innings, four hits, one walk, zero earned runs, four strikeouts
Brad Thompson, Cardinals (18 percent)
6 2/3 innings, seven hits, two walks, zero earned runs, six strikeouts
Adam Eaton, Phillies (four percent)
7 2/3 innings, six hits, four walks, three earned runs, two strikeouts

As always, I'm capable of missing someone, so feel free to add any omissions in the comments section below.

That's all for now.