good post all around. very much agree with everything youve said here. baseball does indeed lend itself more to statistical analysis more than other sports, primarily because you can draw from same-season samples.
that said, how do you approach handicapping a team like kansas city as far as their top-end pitching goes. meche/greinke/bannister are totally under the radar but can match up against most anyone in baseball. meche, though, never really tapped his potential in seattle. greinke had off the field stuff going on but hes developing into a solid pitcher, and bannister is steady as well. there is really nothing to 'draw' from with this trio, yet they are often undervalued because of the team they play on. how do you handicap these guys?
First, KC guys, and for the most part, small market mid-western teams will be undervalued on a consistent basis.
Second, KC plays the same game of baseball anyone else does.
Grienke is very tough, but I have to assume that when he is pitching, whatever mental health issues he had are gone. In life, and in baseball, if you treat mental illness with the same care, compassion, and attention you give to regular illness, your understanding will be greater. That's a terrible sentence grammatically, but I don't feel like fixing it. We have always known that Grienke has talent, and if he is pitching well, and his component numbers back it up, you have to ride him. The key for grienke is to reduce his line drive percentage. His line drive %'s have been atrocious. That, to me, is a combination of immaturity, over reliance on one out pitch, and probably bad managment by his catcher. He had an excellent comeback year and looks to improve on it. The key, with all pitchers, is to determine if their public numbers (era, and wins), are supported by their true performance numbers (DIPS, k/bb, k/9, bb/9, ld%, gb%, hr/fb%, hr/9). The two best opportunities for gamblers are to fade pitchers who have unsupported, unsustainable numbers, and to back pitchers who's performance clearly out paces their public stats.
I don't see a lot of value in Gil Meche. He's somewhere between above average and good. Innings eaters' ability to eat innings and stay healthy offers no value to the gambler. I don't value long-term certainty for the team when I evaluate a single game wager, and neither should anyone else. He could improve on his numbers, but his improvement from Seattle to KC wasn't as huge as some media members would lead you to believe.
Bannister is 27 years old, not exactly a kid. He is pitching great so far, but pitchers don't have an ability to limit what % of their fly-balls leave the yard, and part of Bannister's banner early-year stems from him allowing 0% of his flyballs to leave the park.
In summary, if they are undervalued because of the team they play on, then the team is probably undervalued as a whole and there is money to be made on an undervalued team, assuming they are undervalued by books and joe gambler.
ADD: betting on no-name pitchers against named pitchers who really aren't good (like in my opinion a washburn or silva), is VERY profitable, since the unknown guy won't do much worse, if at all, than the known garbage.
