Key Stats:  He's nothing if he isn't consistant. In 2010 he made 32 starts and pitched 195 innings. 2011? 32 starts and 196.1 innings. Not only that, there was only a difference of 10 pitches thrown between 2010 and 2011. The rest of his numbers are close enough too that lead you to believe this isn't coincidence. 

2010: 3.55 ERA, .305 BABIP, 3.32 FIP
2011: 3.67 ERA, .315 BABIP, 3.35 FIP

He was prone to the longball last year, giving up twice as many in '11 as he did in '10, but he improved his strikeouts by more than two per nine innings and lowered his walks from 3.23/9 to 2.93/9. There was no significant increase or decrease in pitch velocity to explain this and his heat maps are virtually identical from the last two years. His Win/Loss record is pedestrian, but so is the lineup giving him run support.
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Key Stats: 48.8% - Ryan Madson's ground ball percentage. The Phillies play in a band box, but no one gets HR's if they hit the ball on the ground. Madson has a great ability to strike guys out (9.08, 10.87 and 9.20 K/9 since 2009) and not allow well hit balls. Despite a BABIP of .315 (.300 is considered about average) the numbers on hit balls are favorable. His line drive rate was 17.5% (2nd best in his career) and his HR to Flyball ratio was a paltry 3.7%. I think this is due to the way he attacked hitters last year, giving them a healthy amount of fastballs on or just off the plate, and then keeping his change up low and in to righties or low and away to lefties. He got batters to chase pitches outside the zone more last year than he ever had before. 
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Key Stats: Chris Sale had an 0.84 WHIP in the second half of last season and struck out 41 hitters in 34.2 innings. That’s domination. Of course Sale accomplished all of this as a reliever and skeptics will argue that it’s easier to pitch when he is being brought into favorable situations. That certainly is the case to some extent, but as far as his lefty/righty splits, Sale held both lefties and righties to an OPS of .660 or under. no comments

Key Stats: 153.1; 170; 181…These are the number of innings Worley has pitched the last three seasons. Being 24 now, and seeing that progression of innings pitched means we shouldn’t have to worry about a Verducci effect claiming a promising young pitcher in 2012. While Vance’s K/9 stayed right around where he was in his cup of big league coffee in 2010, his BABIP spiked 77 points.  His 2011 FIP and xFIP were off by about half a run of where his ERA actually was, indicating there wasn’t a big luck factor (good, bad or otherwise) in how his ERA looked. I’ll account the BABIP spike to a small sample size (only 13 innings in 2010) so that shouldn't scare us.

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Key Stats: In his last 150 games, Justin Morneau has 22 home runs, 86 RBI, and an .852 OPS. So yes, last year was awful, but at pick number 161 in the draft Morneau can obviously be a steal too. Those numbers alone would make him a value at this point in the draft. Last year, Gaby Sanchez hit 19 home runs, had 78 RBI, and a .779 OPS as the 162^nd player in the Yahoo player rater. Regardless of how inflated his BABIP was or the fact that he isn’t playing in a park that will produce a ton of home runs, this guy is a former MVP and is only going to be 31.

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Key Stats: 570 feet. According to Tom Verducci’s Sports Illustrated article, that is how far Bryce Harper hit a ball as a fifteen-year-old. His talent before arrival in the big leagues is in the same once-in-a-generation category as his teammate Stephen Strasburg. The SI article calls to mind the attention that was given to Lebron James before he arrived on the scene in the NBA. Mike Rizzo has gone out of his way to say that Harper would not play at all three minor league levels before the team promotes him. Seeing that Harper hasn’t played at Triple-A yet, he won’t be playing in the majors to start the season. That said, we saw the impact of Brett Lawrie and Desmond Jennings among others last year, who did not start the year in the Majors. Harper is the number one prospect in the game for a reason and his potential would be too great to ignore in the draft at this point – even with zero at-bats against MLB pitching.

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