Brad Penny - is it time to move him?

Well, it has been a while since I posted. My personal life has been a bit busy which has left me with less time on the fantasy circuit this year. I am still in a couple leagues so I have been keeping tabs on things. I just haven't been able to help other out along the way.

I am going to take a look at pitcher performance for now as it what interests me at the moment. This post will be a look at Brad Penny, who I own in my NL only league. He has piqued my interest because of his great start to the season despite his lack of strikeouts.

Name	Season	IP	ERA	xERA	H%	S%	Ctl	Dom	Cmd	hr/f	hr/9
Brad Penny	2007	56.7	2.54	2.62	29%	77%	3.18	5.56	1.75	0%	0

Penny's 2007 performance is good and most of the numbers here are fine. However, he is lacking a bit in dominance (K/9), command (K/BB) and control (BB/9). These numbers are all just slighty worse than what you want out of a starter on your squad according to the baselines outlined by Ron Shandler at Baseball HQ. I use these metrics to measure the performance of my players in a file I created that can easily calculate these rates for me.

Right now I would label Penny as a pitcher you should be trying to sell but I also wouldn't worry if you can't move him immediately. Penny says he is reinventing himself this year as his approach will rely more on pitching to contact and less on striking batters out (outside of that 14 K performance against the Marlins). Penny has posted a 2.68 GB/FB rate thus far this season and if he can keep his ratio around there with his current K/9, K/BB, BB/9 he should remain effective this season. The question is, can he keep up the favorable ground ball rate?

Note: I didn't mention the HR rate but obviously that isn't sustainable. Expect his ERA to rise a bit even if he maintains his performance accross the board everywhere else.