Look no further than the 2008 Washington Nationals. They did just as you’re advocating, and signed affordable SPs for around league minimum salaries. Julian Tavarez, Kip Wells and Daniel Cabrera. Together they were paid $3.6mil- very affordable for three veteran starters. How did that work out? They were worth a combined -$800,000 (note the negative sign), and none of them finished the year with the team.

To fill the void left by those old scraps, the Nationals were forced to put someone on the mound. In this case, Jordan Zimmermann and Craig Stammen both suffered season ending injuries after pitching through pain in their arm. The Marquis signing was made to take 200 innings of responsibility off their 5 or so other young arms, who will be given a shot this year.

Aside from the fact that his teams always seem to make the playoffs, is that he’s also been on pretty good defensive teams for his whole career, especially the last few years, spending his time on the Rockies, Cubs, and Cardinals. All three were very good defensively during the time they employed Marquis. Going by BP’s PADE, in the last six seasons, he’s been on teams ranked no lower than 9th in MLB, and in three of those years he was either on the club with the first, second, or third highest PADE’s in the game. It makes his ability to keep some distance between his ERA and DIPS rates like FIP and tRA throughout his career look less like a repeatable skill than the consistency with which he does it suggests. 2009 really looks like the first year of his career he was an above average pitcher, thanks to the career best GB%, but I think 2-2.5 WAR is still pretty generous.