Starting Pitchers 2010 (Entry #1)

The Major League Baseball season for 2010 is underway! I can’t tell you how happy I am to write those words. This year I wanted to do something on a regular basis and I’m going to do my best to keep up with it on a weekly basis.

Not surprisingly, it’s going to be related to pitching. I say this because of the last nine years that I played baseball I was a pitcher for eight of them and a starting pitcher for seven of those. I was poking around baseball-reference.com (a truly wonderful website for nearly anything that any fan could want with regards to baseball stats and triviality) and I came across Game Score metrics for starting pitchers and almost immediately, I made my decision. I decided to keep track of these Game Scores (using the formula created by Bill James) and search for random trivial things.

So without further adieu, we’ll dive right in. First of all, I want to explain his formula which is a very good start as far as evaluating starting pitchers goes. Granted, I would say that there are some things it doesn’t take into account and it certainly could be more precise (no offense intended, Mr. James, if you happen to be reading this) but as I said, it’s a very good first glance at the day a pitcher had.

First, you start with 50 points. Then you add one point for every out recorded (7.1 innings equals 22 points). Next, you add two points for every inning completed after the fourth inning (if you pitch 6 innings, you get an additional 4 points but you still only get 4 points for 6.1 innings). You get one point for each strikeout and you lose a point for each strikeout. You lose two points for each hit allowed and each unearned run and you lose 4 points for each earned run.

So if you were to pitch five and two thirds innings, allowing six hits, two runs (only one earned), walk three, and strike out seven, your Game Score would be 55.

50 + 17 (5.2 IP x 3) + 2 + 7 (strikeouts) – 3 (walks) – 12 (6 hits) – 2 (unearned run) – 4 (earned run) = 55 total points.

One last note before we move on. If I happen to put a series of numbers separated by hyphens, that is the line of the pitcher in this order; innings pitched-hits-runs-earned runs-walks-strikeouts.

Now that I’ve explained that, on to the games!

Not too surprisingly, the worst overall day for starting pitchers this year was Opening Day. A lot of adrenaline goes into that day considering that many starters know they’ll be pitching on Opening Day for five or six months before it actually happens. On top of that, the first day on the mound in the regular season is always different than taking the mound in Florida or Arizona in the spring.

(Note: I’m going to be mentioning “average” Game Scores quite a bit and I just wanted to let you know how those will be calculated. Rather than calculate the individual Game Scores, abbreviated GS from here on out, and then average them, I took the averages of innings pitched, hits, runs, earned runs, walks, and strikeouts and then calculated the GS given that line)

In the first week of the season, there were 77 games and therefore 154 starts by starting pitchers and their average GS was 49.6. On the first full day of the season, that average was just 47.8, when supposedly the best pitchers in the game were all hurling on the same day (with a few exceptions of course, due to injury or schedule or rotation set-up). On April 8th, the fourth full day of the season, that average was 53.7 and the combined ERA of the 22 pitchers who started a game that day was 2.57.

So far, only two pitchers have recorded a GS over 80; CC Sabathia of the Yankees in his second start of the year against the Tampa Bay Rays and Jorge De La Rosa of the Colorado Rockies facing the San Diego Padres. Sabathia’s line was 7.2-1-0-0-2-5 for a GS of 80.

Jorge De La Rosa started 2009 by going 2-7 with a 5.81 ERA but finished incredibly strong, going 14-2 with a 3.51 ERA and a .238 batting average allowed. He started off 2010 with more of the same from late 2009, going 7 innings against the Padres, allowing one hit, one walk, and striking out 9, good for a GS of 83, the best so far in this young season.

On the flipside of the coin is the up and down tale of Chicago Cubs “ace” Carlos Zambrano. His second start against the Reds was strong (7.0-6-3-3-2-9) with a GS of 60. In his first start of the season in Atlanta, however, he performed so well (sarcasm) that he was the only starting pitcher of the first week of the season who had a GS under 10. He recorded just 4 outs and allowed 8 runs (all earned) on 6 hits, walking 2 and striking out 1 (GS = 9).

But now, the search for trends begins in earnest!

In games in which the starting pitcher was awarded a win, the average GS of those 45 games was 59.7. The average GS amongst the 41 pitchers who received a loss was a much more dismal 39.5 (no doubt aided greatly by Mr. Zambrano). In the other 68 games where the starter did not record a decision, the average GS was 50.3.

Now, I will freely admit that judging pitcher’s by wins and losses isn’t fair to just about anybody but there’s very little denying that amongst the media and especially fans, wins and losses are much sexier than ERA+ and FIP, even if the latter two are much better judges of how well a guy actually pitched. Therefore, I am going to perpetuate the status quo and examine wins and losses as related to the opposing starter. In other words, a question I’ll be asking frequently in this series of posts is; how important is it in order to get a win to outperform the opposing starting pitcher?

Based on this week’s games, the answer is very important. Pitchers that had the higher GS went 41-2 with an ERA of 2.13 while pitchers with the lower GS went 3-38 with an ERA of 6.90.

A few more trivial notes:

- There were three ties in GS this week. One between Justin Duchscherer (5.2-7-5-5-2-4) of Oakland and Ryan Rowland-Smith (5.0-8-4-3-1-1) of Seattle, both at 37. Another was between Gavin Floyd (6.0-5-2-2-3-7) of the White Sox and Justin Masterson (5.0-4-1-1-2-5) of the Indians, at 58. The third was between David Huff (6.0-6-4-1-2-2) of the Indians and Rick Porcello (5.0-5-2-2-2-3) of the Tigers, who both had a GS of 50.

- Only once this week did the lower GS getting a win coincide with the higher GS getting a loss. Oliver Perez of the Mets put up a line of 5.2-4-4-4-4-6 (good for a GS of 47) while John Lannan of the Nationals went 5.0-6-3-3-3-2 (GS = 42). Lannan recorded a win in that game and Perez the loss, though it wasn’t necessarily because of Lannan’s brilliant pitching.

- Highest GS in a loss? 62 by Freddy Garcia of the White Sox (vs. Minn, 7.0-3-2-2-5-4)

- Highest GS in a No-Decision? 74 by Dallas Braden of Oakland (vs. Sea, 7.0-4-1-1-1-10) and CJ Wilson of the Rangers (vs. Tor, 7.0-5-0-0-2-9)

- Lowest GS in a win? 33 by Jamey Moyer of Philadelphia (vs. Hou, 6.0-9-5-5-1-0)

- Largest difference in GS? 45 between Rodrigo Lopez (60) and Charlie Morton (15)

- Highest combined GS? 141 by Max Scherzer (71) and Luke Hochevar (70)

- Lowest combined GS? 50 by Derek Lowe (41) and Carlos Zambrano (9)



Well, that’s all for now but come back next week for another edition of Starting Pitchers 2010!