Draft This, Not That: Mark Buehrle VS Gavin Floyd

In DTNT, we offer up comparable players (or stats or strategies or whatever), reveal our preference, and provide an analysis to support it.

Alright, it’s time for DTNT to dive into starting pitching. There’s no doubt that starters can be grabbed later in the draft, and teams who don’t have any big aces can often win a fantasy league. That’s what DTNT is here for: to help you pick up the cheaper options and save your earlier picks for better players. The first match-up is two pitchers from the same team. One’s a veteran going late in drafts, and the other’s a youngster with one good season under his belt. In this particular case, I’ll go for the veteran. I choose Mark Buehrle over Gavin Floyd.


The Reasons
There’s certainly temptation in grabbing Floyd before Buehrle. After all, Floyd had more wins and a better WHIP than Buehrle in 2008. Floyd even had the better K/9 rate, which is something we here at RotoSavants like. However, there is one big flag on Floyd’s season: he had a low hit percentage for the season (27%) when compared to the league average (30%). He had a ridiculously low percentage in the first half (23%), which directly contributed to his low WHIP and, in turn, his low ERA. Notice that when his hit percentage returned to league average in the second half (31%), his WHIP was higher by 0.24, and his ERA was higher by 0.77. What’s more, Floyd had a hit percentage of 25% at home, and that’s entirely unsustainable. The White Sox have a known hitters park, and over the last three years the average hit percentage of home pitchers (30%) and visiting pitchers (29%) show that Floyd’s likely in for a rude awakening in 2009.

On the other hand, Buehrle was on the other end of the h% spectrum. He had an unlucky second half (33%), resulting in an inflated WHIP. However, his ERA was exactly the same in the first and second halves, at 3.79, showing the veteran was able to compensate for the unlucky factor: he walked less in the second half and struck out more batters. In fact, Buehrle’s BB/9 (2.1) was much better than Floyd’s (3.1). His first half h% (30%) is in line with the league average and with his own track record over the last five years, so a drop in WHIP, and maybe ERA, can be expected in 2009.

Perhaps the biggest difference between the two is consistency, which can likely be traced to experience. Gavin Floyd ended up with better numbers in 2008, but he wasn’t as consistently good. According to Ron Shandler’s consistency chart, Buehrle had a dominating game percentage (DOM%) of 53%, and a disastrous outing percentage (DIS%) of 15%. Floyd had a DOM% of 42 and a DIS% of 12%. As you can see, although Floyd had slightly fewer bad outings, he wasn’t as consistently good as Buehrle. An fascinating note is that Buehrle has had a DIS% below league average (25%) in five of the last six years: 11% in 2003, 9% in 2004, 3% in 2005, 25% in 2006, 10% in 2007, and 15% in 2008.

Summary
Though on the surface Gavin Floyd seemed to have a better year than Mark Buehrle, I’ll still be putting my faith in the Chicago veteran come 2009. Bill James projects more strikeouts for Floyd, and they should have about the same ERA, but Buehrle has Floyd beat in every other category. Ron Shandler doesn’t think so highly of Floyd, and he projects Buehrle to be quite a bit better, with only 10 K less than Floyd. The final straw is the difference in ADP right now. Buehrle is going 212th overall, and the 60th SP. Floyd is going 164th overall, the 43rd SP. By waiting four rounds, I truly believe you'll end up with the better, more consistent starter, and you can use that earlier pick something else.

Which White Sox pitcher(s) will you be relying on this year? Will you take a gamble with a young arm, or will you trust the veteran?