Sure, for every Felix Hernandez there's a Dan Meyer, for every Cole Hamels a Chad Billingsley and for every Tim Lincecum a Homer Bailey, but Scherzer's unflinching composure and otherworldly stuff will take fantasy owners "Beyond Thunderdome" sometime this year.
--Brad Evans, 4/28/08
Cole Hamels - 7.72 K/9, 3.13 K/BB, 1.10 HR/9, 136 ERA+, 3.64 FIP
Chad Billingsley - 9.75 K/9, 2.22 K/BB, .75 HR/9, 123 ERA+, 3.47 FIP
This would have more impact if Bills were dominating Hamels statistically, but that's almost impossible, Hamels is an elite pitcher, there's no arguing that. However, there's certainly a case for Billingsley, who is performing better than Hamels in all the peripheral stats except control, and that shows in his superior FIP. Granted, the case isn't that clear cut since Hamels plays in one of the most hitter friendly parks in baseball. At the very least Billingsley is in the same class as Hamels, a class that includes all of the elite pitchers under 25 including Felix Hernandez, Scott Kazmir, and Tim Lincecum.
Billingsley is off to one of the best starts to a career ever for a Dodger pitcher, and seemingly no one has noticed. Bills career 128 ERA+ beats out what Fernando did in his first two full seasons (127), and he's striking out batters at a higher rate. Even so, Los Angeles hasn't exactly caught Billingsley fever, reacting with at best indifference and at worst wanting to send him to the pen. I don't get it. Considering the history we have with overhyped prospects coming up here and doing nothing, we'd should making Billingsley one of the faces of this franchise, but he gets less hype than Andre Ethier does. Chad Billingsley is, at worst, the second best player we have right now but he gets zero recognition for this, even from the Dodgers own PR machine.
No matter what you think of Bills, we can agree he deserved a bobble head before Joe Beimel.
0 recs | 6 comments
Bills
The cited quotation at the top is nothing more than an uninformed opinion. Bills is quickly becoming my favorite player on the team. A hard-throwing strikeout righthander, to me, is the most exciting archetypical player you can have on a team. (Moreso than the pithy gap-hitting second baseman, or the scrappy, hardworking speedster.)
Call me crazy, but I’ll take Billingsley’s next 10 years ahead of any of the pitchers mentioned by Mr. Evans above. Watching him pitch now, he can go through such dominant stretches, but you get the sense that he still has miles to go.
jumanjifan01 - June 18, 2008
Oh it totally was uninformed, but it was just so offbase comparing Bills to Dan Meyer that it needed further mockery.
Right now, I would probably rank Bills below all the guys I mentioned (all of whom I called top 35 players before the year started), but that’s not exactly a bad thing.
Andrew - June 18, 2008
This might be my Mariner fan bias
but I don’t think I’d take Bills over King Felix for the next 10 years.That being said he’s still developing quite nicely and I think its only a matter of time before Dodger fans and the baseball public realize how awesome he is.
bluemax - June 18, 2008
Even
among the Roto crowd they don’t quite understand how elite he has become. Nice stuff Andrew, we have focused so much on how Kemp is the whipping boy that we haven’t noticed how unmarketed Billingsley has been by the Dodgers.
When it comes to the all-star selection I would think he’d have to be our guy. Russ has some stiff competition this year at his position. I wonder what Carrol has to say about our boy right now. His big butt seems to be holding up just fine.
Phil Gurnee - June 18, 2008
RE:
Sporky’s co-worker is not on the all-star committee:)
Phil Gurnee - June 18, 2008
Not that we'll get two...
But Kuofax and Billingsdale are both deserving
jumanjifan01 - June 18, 2008
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