Sunday, December 21, 2008
So Who’s Got the Best Rotation in the AL East Now?
With the Yankees’ signings of C.C. Sabathia and A.J. Burnett, many pundits are saying they now have the best starting rotation in the AL East. Let’s use CAIRO to see if that’s actually true or not. With all due respect to Baltimore and Toronto, I’m leaving them out of this analysis.
Here’s a look at Boston, New York and Tampa’s neutral CAIRO projections. These are not adjusted for the AL, for park, or for defense in order to have a level playing field for comparison. The neutral league I use is 2% worse than the AL. For now I’m assuming good health for every team, so I’m using only the top six starters on each team’s depth chart and pro-rating the teams to 162 starts.
RSAR: Runs saved above replacement-level
IP/S: Innings pitched per start
Jon Lester’s projection in particular is probably too pessismistic since it includes his 2006 and 2007 which were severly impacted by his illness. Still, until we have more data we shouldn’t expect him to continue to pitch as well as he did in 2008, although I’d probably bet on him to be around his 65% projection (neutral: 3.81 ERA, 30 RSAR). Matsuzaka’s 2008 ERA was way out of line with his peripherals, and CAIRO expects him to regress back towards those peripherals quite a bit in ‘09, as do I. The ERA projections go up once you move the pitchers to the AL and Fenway, but this is a pretty good rotation.
Obviously, Tampa’s a media darling now after their meteoric rise in 2008, although several statheads saw it coming beforehand. They also look to have a pretty solid rotation now, fronted by James Shields and Scott Kazmir. Edwin Jackson’s gone, replaced by David Price, whose projection is based on a single year’s data and is probably not very useful. He could be a lot better, or he could be worse, but he’s definitely got the talent to be a difference-maker in Tampa’s rotation.
Yeah, adding C.C. and A.J. looks pretty sweet on paper here. I’m including Andy Pettitte here based on this article that says Pettitte’s return is ‘inevitable’. Joba’s projection is probably too optimistic, but he’s a bad-ass regardless.
Assuming health out of Burnett, Chamberlain, Wang and Hughes, this rotation projects to blow away Boston and Tampa, to the tune of 6 wins above replacement. Part of that is in a better rate performance (ERA of 3.72 vs. 4.19 and 4.24), but there’s also an important factor here that could have a cascade effect. The Yankee rotation projects to have four separate pitchers who would average 6.2 to 6.9 innings per start. None of the other teams have more than one such pitcher. That means fewer bullpen innings, which helps a) rest the pen b) keep the ball away from the worse pitchers in the back of the pen.
Of course, I’ll again reiterate that this assumes good health which is a massive assumption, although the same holds in varying extents for Tampa and Boston. I’d also be interested in seeing what other projection systems besides CAIRO say.
Here’s a final comparison of the totals for each of the three teams.
This doesn’t mean the Yankees should be favored to win the AL East by any means. We have to look at the bullpens, offenses and defenses and how they all fit together. Before doing that though I’d assume Boston is still the AL East favorite, with the Yankees probably ahead of Tampa now, but a lot can change over the next three months. Now, if the Yankees can sign Teixeira, they probably jump ahead of Boston.
On a completely unrelated note, Sean Smith has opened a new website for his CHONE projections. Sean’s projections are some of the better ones out there, and are completely free. You can check it out at baseballprojection.com
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