I have 20/20 budget and here are the three I'm debating:

	Health	Dur	Mk	Stm	Ctrl	vL	vR	Vel	GB	P1	P2	P3	P4	P5
Pitcher 1	100	16	99	88	94	92	74	93	84	82	75	62
Pitcher 2	97	28	74	84	95	82	79	39	61	91	62	60	63	56
Pitcher 3	68	20	66	99	71	82	80	91	77	95	68	68

The durability has me a little nervous on Pitcher 1 and 3, so I think I'm leaning pitcher 2, but Pitcher 3 has some nice Velo and GB and a better P1, so I'm torn. Thanks for the advice!

Not 3. The 24 points lower control drowns out everything else compared to the other 2.

I think 1 and 2 are close enough per inning that I would take the extra IP that 2 gives you.

2

Yep 2

Got to with 2. I’ve been burned by some 3 pitch starters, so I pretty much avoid them altogether. Maybe just a personal preference, but those guys always seem to be worse than they should be.

aside from that, I don’t like the 16 durability for number 1, and the control for 3 is weak, as someone mentioned above.

#1

2, 1, 3

2,1,3, but if you go with #1 use him in the bullpen you can maximize his innings that way

You think a guy with 16 DUR works best in the pen? How would you set up his preferences to max his innings that way?

Does Velocity have any effect on performance?

To give you a non-answer to your question, velocity directly relates to strikeouts.

I think lefties in this game must have velocity to be consistent. I find it rare that any lefty that has a low velocity to consistently put together back to back to back good seasons. I think the programming discounts the lefty pitchers too much in this game.

It's not intuitive, but I have run a few different models with ERA as the outcome and they have all said that velocity is associated with higher ERA (p = 0.09 !!). My model is not perfect, but my explanation is that velocity (a) causes pitch counts to increase and (b) causes more walks because balls aren't being put in play as much.

I did not use interaction terms, so there could be some combinations of attributes that are less optimal (like you said, perhaps lefties need velo for whatever reason).

FWIW - my model says that being lefty is associated with a 0.07 point increase in ERA. The confidence interval is (-0.26, 0.40) though.