Christopher Harris indulges in an exercise of the obvious. Writing about the Toronto Blue Jays pitching staff he writes:

Now, I’m not here to tell you that any of those guys will be major fantasy forces for the rest of 2009. But if you jumped early, for instance, onto the [Scott] Richmond bandwagon, how happy are you right now?

Well, duh. With this kind of modeling, Harris could be a global warming expert.

But rather than mock the evolving rankings of ESPN’s experts — they write to meet demand, after all — I thought I’d zoom out a level above rank and talk about strategy.

There are two kinds of starting pitchers — those you can count on and all the rest.

Those you can count on are Johan Santana, Tim Lincecum, Roy Halladay, and a few others. I’d mention Brandon Webb except that he’s injured, which means you couldn’t. These are the pitchers who almost always post a quality start. A pitcher can’t hit an ERA under 3.5 without great consistency.

Then there are the rest. Even if you avoid the truly horrible (think the Texas Rangers) or the horribly erratic (think Oliver Perez), the returns are still unpredictable. Most good but not great pitchers will have numerous bad starts. And you don’t know when those bad starts will happen.

For example, Javier Vasquez has pitched well this season, posting a 3.89 ERA in seven starts through May 9. But he also gave up 5 runs and 6 runs in successive starts on April 29 and May 4.

Given that reality, I look for pitchers that couple a respectable ERA with some additional tangible fantasy advantage. Strikeouts is the most obvious. Vasquez, for example, racked up 16 Ks in 14.2 IP in the two games mentioned above. The three other factors I look for are innings, team run production, and the backing of a good bullpen. All of these are indicators of whether or not your average pitcher can stay in games and get wins.

Finally, there’s one great intangible — youth. You never know when a young pitcher will take a step up in capability. That’s what you have to hope for with Richmond, even if he is already 29.