Quote:
Originally Posted by chiefsfan4life1978
Starting pitching is gonna be our biggest question going into the season. Vargas as your #2 is scary. Odds would say that Guthrie should take a slight decline from last year. 4 and 5 Starters are still big ?'s.
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Vargas is better if he's your No. 3, but he's been a pretty consistently solid pitcher over the past 4 years (his time as a full-time starter).
63rd in ERA amongst starters in that stretch.
33rd in IP
52nd in WHIP
47th in BB/9
75th in H/9 (impressive, considering he's a soft-tosser)
61st best Opponents OPS (tied with Ervin Santana, actually)
I wouldn't call it 'scary' in light of all of that. It's not ideal, but he's a good No. 3/borderline No. 2 starter.
As for Guthrie, I wouldn't really expect him to decline. He's pretty likely to give KC an ERA somewhere between 4.00-4.25 with 200 IP and a whip between 1.25-1.35. It's just kind of who he is. He'll give them a pretty similar performance, and it wouldn't surprise me if he's even a little bit better.
they will have questions at teh back end, but many teams do. And the potential answers include some big upside/big potential at those spots (Duffy, Ventura, even Davis could be big upgrades over what the Royals got from Mendoza and Davis last year).