re: 2012 TDBL Offseason Thread: Draft Scheduled for March 21st

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Starting Pitching
Tier 1: Roy Halladay, Justin Verlander, Clayton Kershaw.

Tier 2: Cliff Lee, Felix Hernandez, Jered Weaver, Zack Greinke, Cole Hamels, Dan Haren, Tim Lincecum, CC Sabathia, David Price, Jon Lester.

Tier 3: Ian Kennedy, Matt Cain, James Shields, C.J. Wilson, Yovani Gallardo, Stephen Strasburg, Ricky Romero, Matt Moore, Madison Bumgarner, Chris Carpenter, Daniel Hudson.

Tier 4: Michael Pineda, Adam Wainwright, Mat Latos, Matt Garza, Josh Beckett, Neftali Feliz, Jeremy Hellickson, Jordan Zimmermann, Tommy Hanson, Shaun Marcum, Brandon Beachy, Ubaldo Jimenez.
Tier 5 (the high risk, high reward tier): Josh Johnson, Max Scherzer, Yu Darvish, Gio Gonzalez, Cory Luebke, Anibal Sanchez, Tim Hudson, Doug Fister, Johnny Cueto, Jaime Garcia, Hiroki Kuroda, Wandy Rodriguez, Brandon Morrow, Scott Baker, Ervin Santana, Ted Lilly, Jhoulys Chacin, Alexi Ogando.

Tier 6: Brandon McCarthy, Colby Lewis, Roy Oswalt, Tim Stauffer, Gavin Floyd, John Danks, Jonathan Sanchez, Francisco Liriano, Johan Santana, Clay Buchholz, Mike Minor, Ryan Dempster, Chad Billingsley, Edwin Jackson, Ricky Nolasco, Bartolo Colon, Jake Peavy, Ryan Vogelsong, R.A. Dickey.

Tier 7: Everyone else.

Overall thoughts: In a league as shallow as a 10-team mixed league, you can make an argument for tons of guys to be in tier six, but I had to cut the line somewhere. You'll be able to play the matchups and stream quite a bit as you make your way through the season. Starting pitching is obviously deep, but that also means you need better pitching to win.

Again, we head back to our handy chart and look at what the average winning team did in pitching categories last year compared to an average of what it took to win the previous two seasons ('09-10).

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