If this were “Top 50 Players For A Fantasy Keeper League” then Sandoval would get serious consideration.

I’m not really going to touch the whole Porcello vs. Hanson and Price debate, but the only thing Porcello has going for him in the discussion is age. His stuff just isn’t at the same level, he doesn’t have the same sort of track record, and unless he suddenly starts missing bats it seems unlikely that he’s ever going to be more than a #2/#3 pitcher. And even if he does manage to take that step, its likely going to take a few years, at which point its not unreasonable to think that Price and Hanson will already be at the level Porcello is just hoping to reach.

There is a saber-oriented quality pitching metric called PQS by Ron Shandler’s Baseball Forecaster, which I have been keeping tracking of on my blog. Cain, after two seasons of good pitching at roughly 50% DOM, is at 67% DOM this season; he is in the upper right corner of the table of DOM vs DIS, which only great pitchers can do, as you can see in the link below. And Cain has had late season surges in August.

Here is their description of this metric: http://www.baseballhq.com/free/free03.shtml?src=hqf

So it is not conclusive thus far, but he’s been doing it consistently throughout his career, even in the minors.

OK, I’ll admit to some hyperbole on Cain for this season, but he has been very good for his MLB career.

And again, the point is where he fits on this list, given how well he is expected to perform, as well as his contract. His situation is better than Billingsley solely because he is signed to a cheap contract, whereas Billingsley will cost an arm and a leg in arbitration.

Matt Cain had the 20th best ERA last season in the NL. Assuming you took all the top pitcher and distributed them across all teams, he would the the 4th best #2 starter in the NL and only 0.05 away from being a #1 starter on a team.

Solid #3 pitcher: you should check your stats before you open up your mouth.

In any case, you brought up Gallardo, not me.

If you are saying that Billingsley and Gallardo are better pitchers than Cain, I would agree with you. Billingsley, in particular, has been much better on the road than in his extreme pitcher’s home, which is totally usually because that park has made 10′s of millions of dollars for Chan Ho Park and Jeff Weaver, each. However, this list is not concerned with who is better, but who is better for the money you will lay out for the player.

I think Billingsley will easily earn more than $10.5M over the next two arbitration years plus more in his third year.

For example, Chad Cordero got $4.15M his first year of arbitration, then signed for $6.2M. If Chad Cordero can pull nearly $10.5M in his first two arbitration hearings, before 2007 and 2008 seasons, Billingsley should easily be able to get over that in the next two years. Oliver Perez got $6.5M after the 2007 season, his final arbitration year, and he struggled for a couple of years just before that one glorious year, so Billingsley should clean up in his third arbitration year. Ryan Howard also won $10M that off-season too, in his first year in arbitration, just before Perez, so Perez was not a fluke, the salary of players are getting up there. And Billingsley has been better and more consistently good than Perez.

So I don’t see how Cain’s guaranteed only $10.5M over the next two years is worse than three years of Billingsley at arbitration prices. Cain will get basically what Perez got in his last arbitration year, even though it is 4 years later (time value of money) and Cain has way over produced what Perez had done up that point of his career. Billingsley should get top money over the next three off-seasons, and even if the Dodgers sign him to a long term deal, I don’t see how they can get away with paying him less than $10.5M over the next two seasons.