I had both players at one point, and traded one for Brad Wilkerson. Here is a look at these two surprising pitchers.

Talk about trading lemons and cherries. Earlier this year due to two free agent acquisitions I found myself with both Jeremy Guthrie and Shaun Marcum. Certainly this was a happy problem.

I felt that my AL offense still needed beefing up, but didn’t have any real desire for a big move at the time. I still had a decent lead, the cheat trade I discussed below and its aftermath hadn’t yet occurred, and I wanted to save some bullets in case something big happened. So I decided that both pitchers were roughly equivalent in trade value, and decided to trade Marcum. As it turns out the owner of Brad Wilkerson approached me for a deal.

This owner is a shrewd knowledgeable owner, and was looking for Marcum. A perfect circumstance for me. Or so I thought. My first thought should have been that this owner was trying to trade a lemon for a cherry, and I should have been more wary. But the combination of my internal strategy and his coincidental (unless he is reading my mind) approach blinded me. So I traded Marcum for Wilkerson.

As with any league with relatively tough competitors, everyone thinks they know more than the rest. This is especially true for high stakes since no one really starts out playing for high stakes. They don’t have the same criteria I do for what I consider to be a tough owner. So this trade was naturally met with typical derision, as most owners thought I got the better of the deal.

Although Wilkerson has done OK in the power department with 17 HR and 50 RBI, he is having a terrible season. He is batting .226 with a .302 OBP. He has a miserable 68% contact rate. He is hitting the ball in the air to the tune of 47% of his batted balls, but simply isn’t hitting them hard enough. Clearly I acquired a lemon.

Did I trade a cherry? Sadly, yes. Though Marcum is defying the odds, he is having an excellent year. He is 10-5 with a 3.65 ERA and 1.12 WHIP. He is getting 7.2 K/9 IP and 2.4 BB/9 IP. Damn. Marcum looks like a fixture in the rotation, his peripheral numbers and skills show that his improvement is definitely for real. He is a bit lucky though, with only a 25% hit rate and a 75% strand rate. Even with this luck his xERA is only 3.81, still a very solid performance.

Guthrie is mentioned as one of the big surprises. He has also been excellent, 7-4 3.44 ERA and 1.10 WHIP. Guthrie has a 6.3 K/9 IP rate and 2.2 BB/9 IP. respect, so at least I was right about them being roughly equal. He is virtually a dead ringer for Marcum. Even in the luck department they are similar. Guthrie has a 26% hit rate and a 74 % strand rate. His xERA is 3.82, almost a perfect match for Marcum.

No matter who I traded it would have been a disastrous trade. Wilkerson’s alleged power could have been obtained from any other sources. The lesson here is that luck doesn’t always even out. I felt that Marcum and Guthrie were both lucky pitchers with unproven track records, so I could estimate they would get worse. Wilkerson, on the other hand, was unlucky, with a 26% hit rate. At least there are a few weeks left for Marcum to implode and Wilkerson to turn it on. I won’t be holding my breath.

Right now the owner of Marcum is making a serious run at second place. Unfazed by the cheat deal of Team B below, he has made a few moves in his own version of a Fait Accompli Strategy, and has positioned himself for a good shot at second and a possible run at me.

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