Fantasy Baseball: Sell High on Mark Buehrle

By Adam Rickert on Wednesday, June 18th 2014
Fantasy Baseball: Sell High on Mark Buehrle

35-year-old Toronto Blue Jays lefthander Mark Buehrle is having arguably the best season of his entire career. He leads the American League with ten wins but has only suffered three losses, all coming because of a dazzling 2.28 ERA and a decent 1.22 WHIP.

Buehrle, along with New York Yankees rookie Masahiro Tanaka is one of the top candidates to start in the All-Star Game for the American League next month.

He has been a huge fantasy baseball surprise this season, but selling him ASAP would not be a horrible idea by any means.

First of all, Buehrle's 2.28 ERA is lower than it has been at the end of any season by nearly an entire run in his now fifteen-year career. At age 35. A pitcher's arm can only last so long, so why is he having the best season of his career in his mid-thirties? Expect the ERA to take a sharp rise at some point down the line, as his career mark is 3.79.

Also, Buehrle's value may be overrated anyway due to his extremely low strikeout rate. He averages 5.2 strikeouts per nine innings, translating to 3.9 strikeouts per start. Strikeouts are often overlooked in comparison to stats like ERA and WHIP in fantasy baseball, but each statistic is of equal importance.

Basically, even without the inevitable regression to the mean, Buehrle is not quite as valuable as some may think him to be.

If you own Buehrle in your fantasy league, trade him for the right deal. You will certainly come out on top and your opponent will be kicking himself/herself after Buehrle has a few off-games.

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