In the past three years, the league as a whole has averaged spending $600 of their $2,700 draft day salary on starting pitchers – $600 exactly in 2011.  There are of course keeper prices factored into that $600 that change from year to year, but the philosophy of most of the owners seems to say pretty similar.  Out of the $600 spent last season $294 was spent on the “top ten” guys.  With the surplus of quality pitching this season I can see the auction swing one of two ways:  Top guys like Halladay, Lee, Lincecum and Hamels salaries will be depressed because owners will wait for “cheaper” options like Latos, Greinke, Gallardo and Cain later in the draft, which in turn will drive second-tier salaries closer to the elite top tier pitcher salaries, or the elite guys fetch salaries in the upper $30 range actually making the next tier of pitchers cheaper.

The first few starting pitching options that are bid on are really going to dictate my approach to buying starting pitching at the auction.  Entering the year already owning a $12 Madison Bumgarner and a $1 Brandon Beachy as keepers, I feel that one more elite or two more second-tier guys are really going to secure my rotation until the end game.  If I can pick up a Cliff Lee or Cole Hamels for a price close to $30, sign me up.  If they are pushing $35-plus then that means there will be value still in the next level of pitchers.

The reason I don’t buy into the argument of waiting on starting pitching in an NL-Only this year is not because there isn’t the depth, it is because there is such a drop off in production and/or reliability between the tiers.  Once you get past the first five there is an obvious drop in production and reliability.  I dare you to find one owner that would rather have Yovani Gallardo instead of Cole Hamels outside of the Milwaukee metro area.  Same is true when you get into the late teen picks.  Matt Garza currently has an ADP of the 16th starting pitcher taken in NL-only leagues, following him is Gio Gonzalez, Josh Johnson and Adam Wainwright.  All three of those guys are very capable of putting up the same, if not better numbers than Garza, but there is a clear line between a “basement value” in Garza and those three considering health and history.

Someone who waits and picks up a whole staff of pitchers from the Bud Norris, Ted Lilly, Ryan Dempster, Jonathan Niese tier of pitchers (all guys I really like this year by the way), could catch lightning in a bottle with all of them and have very good numbers, but they won’t compare to someone that makes a slightly higher, yet reasonable, investment like myself at the auction.