Over at FanGraphs, Dave Cameron did his annual piece evaluating which 
players in baseball have the most trade value. It really is normally worth reading. I'd like to believe that immediately after Cameron finishes it, he thinks, \"There! Fantastic! No a single could possibly argue with this list, \" and that he's completely flabbergasted when people today nonetheless complain.
Alas, he's very likely expecting the dissent. It takes place each year. The trade-value list is always going to trigger some discussion and debate, and there is always going to be one player who becomes the bring about clebre of egregious omissions. This year, that player is San Francisco Giants left-hander Madison Bumgarner. Giants fans are the new Red Sox fans. There's a chemical teams use when cleaning World Series trophies, and it messes with brain chemistry -- side effects consist of improved road attendance, and heightened world-wide-web irritability.
The argument for Bumgarner being one of the most valuable commodities in baseball: he's only 21, with two much more years of pre-arbitration salaries and five alot more years of team control he has plus command and a 92-mph fastball, the 10th-highest typical fastball velocity amongst left-handed starting pitchers his combination of plus-manage and strikeout stuff at such a young age is exceptionally rare. I bumped down the strikeout rate specifications for that Play Index list to adjust for additional players striking out in Bumgarner's era, and it really is still an exclusive list, even far more so when you give some thought to that Ismael Valdez was actually 30 as a rookie. He did that report-card trick on his passport exactly Wholesale Fred Plain glasses where you change a 3 to a two. So crafty, that one particular.
the advanced stats appreciate Bumgarner this year, as his FIP is third in baseball, his xFIP is 14th, and his SIERA is 17th
But the actual surprise is not that Bumgarner was left off the trade-value list -- it is not like Cameron place Pete Orr ahead of him -- it is that he's obtaining a season superior sufficient to make him a candidate. Ahead of the season, perhaps the expectations were so high that he would have stirred a related debate, but after the season began, he was a bit of a dirigible accident:
Date Opp Rslt Dec IP H R BB SO HR ERA Pit Apr5SDPL,1-3L(-1) 3.0533209.0073Apr11LADL,1-6L(-two) five.0854319.0086Apr17ARIL,5-66.2841217.36101Apr22ATLL,1-4L(-3) 2.2442207.7967 110.212051279643.74Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 7/19/2011.
That's how Bumgarner began the season, and it was as poor as it looks. It was bad enough to lead to a sincere panic in Bay Place sports-speak radio circles. It let to articles with titles like Madison Bumgarner's Struggles: Should certainly The Giants Be Worried?
Immediately Wholesale Prada Plain glasses after the early struggles, even though, Bumgarner has been a single of the much better beginning pitchers on the Giants, which by extension makes him one of the better beginning pitchers in baseball. His W/L record is abysmal considering that he plays for the Giants, who ordinarily score a run every other game just to prove they can, and he had 
a fairly well known hiccup that inflated his ERA, but all the other metrics recommend he's a pitcher with a great now, not to mention a amazing future.
Is he one particular of the 50 most useful commodities in baseball correct now? Heck, I don't know. That is a question that would take hours of study, so I will defer to FanGraphs. But he's pretty danged beneficial, and when the performance is matched with his age, he's pretty danged uncommon. Bumgarner starts for the Giants against the Dodgers on Tuesday night -- put a pot of coffee on and keep up for this one particular, Other Time Zones. Kid's really good.