All 30 Starting Rotations, Slots 1 Through 5

by Sky Kalkman on Nov 1, 2008 2:16 PM EDT

We've linked to a couple studies recently on determining what to expect from each slot of the rotation. David (spurdynasty over at Lone Star Ball) decided to take a more applied route and analyzed each team's rotation on the 1-5 scale.

It's a pretty basic methodology, but does a solid job of painting a representative picture of what each team had going for it. All pitchers with at least 100 IP (to remove the relievers) were sorted in order of tRA* (thanks, StatCorner.com). The first thirty were called #1s, the next thirty #2s, and so on. There were only 130 pitchers with 100 IP, so only ten pitchers were labeled #5s. To fill out rotations, empty spots were called #5.5s. Then David averaged the five ratings to put all thirty teams in order. Take a look:

Team	#1	#2	#3	#4	#5	Avg
D'backs	1	1	1	2	3	1.6
WhiteSox	1	1	2	2	3	1.8
BlueJays	1	1	2	3	3	2
Dodgers	1	1	1	2	5.5	2.1
Angels	1	2	2	2	4	2.2
Brewers	1	1	2	3	4	2.2
Rays	1	2	2	3	4	2.4
Rockies	1	1	2	3	5.5	2.5
Braves	1	2	2	3	5.5	2.7
Cubs	1	2	2	3	5.5	2.7
Indians	1	1	3	4	5	2.8
Royals	1	2	3	4	4	2.8
RedSox	1	1	3	4	5.5	2.9
Mets	1	3	3	4	4	3
Cardinals	2	3	3	3	4	3
Reds	1	2	3	4	5.5	3.1
Astros	1	2	3	4	5.5	3.1
Padres	1	2	3	4	5.5	3.1
Twins	2	2	3	4	5	3.2
Phillies	1	2	4	4	5	3.2
Giants	1	2	3	5	5	3.2
Marlins	1	3	4	4	5.5	3.5
A's	2	3	4	4	5.5	3.7
Pirates	1	3	4	5	5.5	3.7
Nat's	2	3	4	4	5.5	3.7
Yankees	2	2	4	5.5	5.5	3.8
Tigers	3	3	3	5	5.5	3.9
Mariners	2	4	4	5.5	5.5	4.2
Orioles	3	4	5	5	5.5	4.5
Rangers	4	4	4	5.5	5.5	4.6

Some observations:

Evidently the Rangers' defensive problems can't just be explained by fielding and home park.
There were three teams without a #1 or #2 starter: the Tigers, Orioles, and Rangers.
There were three teams without a #4 or #5 starter: the Diamondbacks, White Sox, and Blue Jays. Two of those teams missed the playoffs.
Eight teams had two or more #1 starters. The Diamondbacks and Dodgers had three.
The Cardinals were the only team without a #1 or #5 starter.
CC Sabathia counted as a #1 for both the Indians and Brewers, with his stints ranking ninth and first respectively.
The Phillies had the lowest-ranking rotation of any playoff team. Yay, defense.
The Reds, Astros, and Padres all had rotations that went 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.5. The Indians, Twins, Phillies, and Giants were all a single point away from 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 rotations.
There weren't any teams with three #1s or #2s and two #4s or #5s, which would be the ideal rotation to leverage for the playoffs. The Indians had the best rotation to include two pitchers no better than a #4

If anyone's interested in building on David's work and accounting for things like innings pitched, go right ahead

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Comments

Amazing work.

First observation is one of the most obvious ever. EVERYONE knew that already.

Clutch: A measurement of how much better or worse a player does in high leverage situations than he would have done in a context neutral environment. http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/glossary/

by bdalebs on Nov 1, 2008 2:19 PM EDT reply actions

I think the Diamondbacks and Dodgers got a bit skewed.

They were pitching against the AL West remember. I don’t know how tRA works, but I know it’s not universally accepted (understatement), so this maybe a point against it.

by bdalebs on Nov 1, 2008 2:22 PM EDT reply actions

Why not read up on tRA and tRA*

It will really change your view of pitching talent.

NL West teams by OPS+:
COL – 97
SDP – 96
LAD – 95
ARI – 94
SFG – 89

So you have a point, as tRA does not account for strength of opponents.

Beyond the Boxscore // Calling BJ Upton lazy is lazy.

by Sky Kalkman on Nov 1, 2008 2:57 PM EDT up reply actions

Do you respect SNLVA?

At least enough that you’d be interested in how the same sort of list would look using that?

by philkid3 on Nov 1, 2008 3:24 PM EDT up reply actions

The support-neutral stats have a niche use.

Namely, to “correct” W-L records, but they still depend on actual runs allowed, and you’ve probably seen people harp on ERA as a bad measure of pitching talent.

There are a bunch of things that determine ERA: pitching talent, fielding, ballpark, luck in the way batting events combine, and other luck. tRA (and other fielding-independent stats like FIP, xFIP, DIPS, etc) does a very good job of focusing on just the pitching talent part, although it’s certainly not perfect. Basically, tRA credits pitchers for their K-rate, BB-rate, HBP-rate, GB-rate, LD-rate, FB-rate, HR-rate, IFFB-rate and nothing else. Given those rates, it comes up with what you would expect a pitcher’s ERA to be all else being equal. It park adjusts. tRA* attempts to account for one-year sample size issues in those rates, regressing each towards league-mean a different amount based on how stable each one is year-to-year.

http://statcorner.com/tRAabout.html
http://www.statcorner.com/blog/2008/10/the-guts-behind-tra-now-viewab.html

Beyond the Boxscore // Calling BJ Upton lazy is lazy.

by Sky Kalkman on Nov 1, 2008 3:47 PM EDT up reply actions

It seems like because of what tRA measures. . .

. . . taking a next step and having a form that takes strenght of schedule in to account wouldn’t be too hard.

Am I wrong?

by philkid3 on Nov 1, 2008 4:19 PM EDT up reply actions

I'm sure it can be done, considering what it took to get their site up and running

BPro does strength of opponent adjustments. One thing that needs to be accounted for that BPro doesn’t is L/R platoon split.

Beyond the Boxscore // Calling BJ Upton lazy is lazy.

by Sky Kalkman on Nov 1, 2008 4:31 PM EDT up reply actions

Maybe. Never really got that interested in it becuase of the anti-support for it.

by bdalebs on Nov 1, 2008 9:31 PM EDT up reply actions

Anti-support?

A quick search shows users on the following SBN sites have used the non-SBN backed or produced metric:

Lone Star Ball
Royals Review
Lookout Landing
DRaysBay
Viva El Birdos
Minor League Ball
Beyond the Boxscore
AZ Snakepit
Athletics Nation
The Good Phight
McCovey Chronicles
Over The Monster

That’s more than a third (12/33) of SBN’s baseball sites on a network that is in no way advertising the metric. For an extremely new statistic (went public August 14th) that’s impressive, especially considering that only a handful of site owners pimp the metric hard, myself admittedly included.

Read up on it, and if you have questions Graham/Matthew are quite open to them, in fact they have an open thread linked from the main page on StatCorner.com.

by R.J. Anderson on Nov 1, 2008 10:00 PM EDT up reply actions

Anti-support maybe not the wrong word.

Support against it is what I meant. Maybe if I get bored one day.

by bdalebs on Nov 2, 2008 2:26 PM EST up reply actions

I haven't seen anyone proclaim against it.

by R.J. Anderson on Nov 2, 2008 2:38 PM EST up reply actions

I thought you said a few times that it wasn't exactly the best stat because it hasn't been fully worked out yet.

Oh well. I’m neutral about it then. I’ll need to do some personal research first before I decide.

by bdalebs on Nov 2, 2008 4:22 PM EST up reply actions

I don’t know how tRA works, but I know it’s not universally accepted (understatement), so this maybe a point against it.

This is unbelievable awful logic.

“It’s not popular or well known, therefore it must be bad.”

by R.J. Anderson on Nov 1, 2008 3:18 PM EDT up reply actions

That's awful logic in attempting to understand what I meant.

I worded that bad, I grant you, but it was intended as “It didn’t work very well here, from what I can tell with little experience with it. Maybe this is why people don’t like this stat (intended as a opportunity for confirmation).”

by bdalebs on Nov 1, 2008 9:35 PM EDT up reply actions