Top 5 Pitchers to Stay Away From

Each year as the season begins, certain players, who are usually under the radar, have great starts, and it gets fantasy managers to wonder. This will hopefully keep you from trading your entire offense for a bust.

1. Rich Harden (OAK) - Harden has some of the best stuff of any pitcher in baseball, but no player crushes fantasy hopes like Rich Harden. His only full year was 2004. Injuries have plagued his career each of the last four years (including 2008). Harden is almost guaranteed to give you an ERA under 4.00 and more strikeouts than innings pitched, but he will not leave this list until
he proves that he can stay healthy.

2. Ben Sheets (MIL) - Although Sheets has yet to have a bad season in his 7-year career, he's only been healthy all year three times. In his past three years, he was limited to 22 starts, 17 starts, and 24 starts. He's got really good stuff, but don't be surprised when the injury bug hits him again.

3. Ervin Santana (LAA) - Although Santana is off to a great start, he seems to follow a pattern. Santana's pattern is inconsistency. Just when you think he's finally settled in to playing well, he'll have numerous rough starts in a row. Santana, who debuted in 2005, has a career ERA of 4.72, and he's coming off a rough season in 2007 where he posted an ERA of 5.76 and averaged giving up one home run in each of his starts.

4. Cliff Lee (CLE) - Cliff Lee is by far the most impressive pitcher in baseball this season. He has given up one earned run in 31.2 innings pitched. However, Lee has a tendency to start of well, and then settle in to his normal 4.00+ ERA. Lee's ERA has been increasing for the past three years, and last year, in a season that plagued Lee with injury, he posted a 6.29 ERA.

5. Johnny Cueto (CIN) - In the rookie's first two starts, he gave up three runs in 13.1 innings, and he struck out 18. Since then, he's had four starts, struck out only 15, walked eight, compared to zero in his first two starts, and his ERA has risen to 5.40. Cueto throws hard, but that's all he does. He'll have to do something to change his flat pitches because hitters have caught on.