I got an email shortly after posting the Second Half hitter pieces asking if I had plans for anything on pitchers. I compiled the data to do a study on pitchers after the break, but the results were very light. I took the same three year data set of 2005-2007 and looked at the pitchers with 80+ innings and an ERA of 3.50 and below. The results were very underwhelming as only 63 results came back for all three seasons combined.
I could’ve loosened the ERA threshold, but even 80 innings of a 3.50 from a starter isn’t going to move the needle of a fantasy team’s ERA very much at all. I also could’ve lowered the innings threshold to 60+ or 40+, but 60 only brought in few more samples and 40 started to bring in relievers (and again, a 40-inning sample won’t dent an ERA).
There were 14 pitchers that showed up twice (well, John Smoltz qualified all three seasons, but he’s done for 2008 anyway), but these names aren’t going to surprise and Smoltz is one of three that isn’t even available via trade or waiver wire rendering this entire process just about useless. Thankfully it didn’t take terribly long, so I’ll share the results with you all and move on to the next project:
Pitchers w/80+ IP of <3.50 ERA for the 2nd-half twice from 2005-07:
1. Andy Pettitte
2. Brandon Webb
3. CC Sabathia
4. Chris Carpenter
5. Derek Lowe
6. Jake Peavy
7. Jeff Suppan
8. Johan Santana
9. John Lackey
10. John Smoltz
11. Josh Beckett
12. Roger Clemens
13. Scott Kazmir
14. Tim Hudson
Don’t get me wrong, you should probably still target these guys as your hired gun for the duration of the season, but the point of the exercise was to highlight a group of players to target that might turn up some unknown jewels given the narrowed data set. This list would be targeted regardless of the split analyzed.
Baseball By Paul 
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