Blanton, Joe

Don't get us wrong, we're not building our staff around Joe Blanton, but he is just 29, pitches his 200 innings and players for a terrific offense. The usual things people point to as possible danger of regression (home run rates and in-play rates) are average or even slightly on the side where you would expect them to improve.

You wouldn't guess he would keep the 7.5 strikeouts per nine, but he is in the NL and facing the pitcher so 6.5 wouldn't be at all a surprise or even a little higher. He had 20 decisions and 12 wins in 31 starts, it would make sense to guess that he gets a few more decisions since he works deeply into games with good frequency, so with that offense maybe he even improves his win total.

He's unlikely to be much better than the 4.05 ERA or the 1.32 WHIP he did last season, but that's not going to kill any staff. He is on the wrong year of his every other year pattern, but that's metaphysics and not analysis. We like him to fill a rotation, particularly if you are concerned about W's. 15-0-3.85-1.25-150. 190IP