A Rotation Of One Win Pitchers
May 9, 2011 at 11:18 am by Ben Duronio under Atlanta Braves
The Braves are the only team in baseball that has a rotation in which each pitcher is already worth one win in terms of Fangraphs WAR. In fact, no other team even has four.
An off day seems like the perfect time to marvel over how incredible the rotation has been, a day after harping over what has gone wrong with the lineup. Eno Sarris has a piece that discusses why he believes Atlanta’s staff is better than the Philadelphia’s’ available to ESPN Insiders. The intriguing part about that article is that he focuses on the depth of the staff to contend that the rotation down south is better than the one in eastern Pennsylvania. This is absolutely the case, but Atlanta’s rotation has outperformed Philadelphia’s one through five thus far – not in terms of cumulative starting pitcher WAR but in terms of all five starters being above a certain level of production – which is surprising to almost everyone in baseball.
Here is a list of what the starters’ Fangraphs WAR currently is and what it is on pace to be at the end of the season (assuming 34 starts is a full season, 31 for Jurrjens since he missed time already)
Tim Hudson: 1.3, 6.3
Derek Lowe: 1.2, 5.1
Tommy Hanson: 1.0, 4.9
Brandon Beachy: 1.0, 4.9
Jair Jurrjens: 1.0, 6.2
I highly doubt each of these starters reach ~5.0 wins. Injuries and poor performances will occur during the season to knock them off course a bit. However, it is simply astonishing that through seven starts – eight for Lowe and five for Jurrjens – they have produced as well as anyone could have expected.
Hudson and Jurrjens will walk more batters, Hanson and Beachy will allow more hits to fall, and Lowe will not strike as many out, but each and every day these starters seemingly attempt to one-up each other and it has been just amazing to watch. This will not last forever, but Frank Wren has built one of the best and most consistent rotations in all of baseball. Plus, as Eno mentioned in his article, having what is likely the best sixth and seventh starters in the game will help this rotation stay atop of the leader boards over the course of 162 games.
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I’d drink to this post if I wasn’t at work.
Crashburn Alley is beefing this Peter. Probly just bitter after watching their team try and hit for the past month.
I would argue that the Braves might even have the best 8th starter, too (Minor, Lopez and Teheran). If Kawakami ever comes back and is healthy, you could argue that the team has nine serviceable starters. Anyway, it is great to see great pitching back as the norm again. The years of Campillo, Reyes, Morton, Carlyle, etc. were not fun to watch.
I agree with him. I expect those five starters to perform better than the rest of the four Braves he mentions and get better results as well.
The problem arises when to look at depth, which is what Eno did in his article. Injuries will occur to both rotations, and the Braves are much better suited to handle those injuries.
Read the phillies article. I feel like that website is going to give me a stroke
Great stuff Ben, keep it up.
I don’t expect 5 win seasons from 5 SP’s either, if only for the likely injury to come at some point for someone. However, there should be a much greater chance for the bats to explode then for the pitchers to significantly decline in production.
Lowe — Maybe the league will eventually figure out how to deal with his increased slider usage, maybe not. But he’s throwing more sliders (26.7%) in any year since 2008, when he was 7th overall in FIP. Lowe’s 2011 FIP ans xFIP are 2.62 and 2.99, respectively. I’m not saying I expect Lowe to get to a 5 win season, but I fully expect him to give it a good run should he pitch the whole season.
Tommy — He should be getting better every start out, so it would definitely not surprise me to see him eclipse 5 wins this year.
Jair — Has posted 3.5+ win seasons twice in the last 3 years. I think that is probably his ceiling to reasonably expect. While he is only 25 (which is crazy, he seems like he’s 28ish), he doesn’t have much more upside than 4 win type seasons. And that is of course perfectly fine.
Hudson — Funny tidbit: his 2011 WAR accumulation of 1.3 is already almost half of his 2010′s. Huddy will pitch well enough for this team, but 5 wins? Those are seasons of the past for Timmay.
Beachy — The wild card of the group; he will have a drop off of sorts at some point. Also, with a potential innings cap looming, he might not get the chance to get to 5 anyways.
Add in Minor, Teheran, Delgado, etc, and hot damn it’s going to be a fun next 5 years as a Braves fan.
Ben,
Has any team ever had 5 pitchers register 5 WAR? I very uch doubt it. And, that sets your limit, basically.
I would think the use of the 4 man and mod 4 roatations before the early 90′s would take most teams out. the most likely team would be the Braves.
Think of where the Braves would be right now if these guys were not exceeding expectations. They’ve just about singlehandedly kept the Braves within striking distance of first place.
Hopefully the bats will return the favor – and soon.
the only problem I have with the article on Crashburn Alley is that he’s not refuting anything. No one was saying that the Braves rotation is going to end up better than the Phillies. ESPN’s articles are like yours, just trying to marvel at the novelty of this relatively unknown Braves rotation outperforming (for now) the Big Four +1.
I really hope JJ keeps this up. He’s been phenomenal.
While Jurrjens has been great this year, I see him regressing a good deal before too long. If you watched him last night, he missed up and/or over the middle of the plate on several occasions. He was lucky a lot of balls were hit right at people or in the neighborhood of short. I liked that he was able to win (and only walk one) with very mediocre command. Either way it’s been a fun couple of weeks, even with the offensive inconsistency.
@cliff
I don’t believe there has ever been a team with five five win pitchers, but I am having a hard time verifying that.
@wanderingjohn
As stated in the article, there should be an expected regression for all of them. Each is doing something that likely won’t continue over the course of the season. The Braves don’t have a Halladay or a Lee in their rotation – none who are expected to contend for CY at current pace – but they have one of the most consistent 1-5 that I have seen in the past decade.
7
Think of where the Braves would/will be if any of the “big bats” were performing to or out-performing the level of expectation.
Is it too much to say that Alex Gonzalez has been the Braves’ position player MVP so far this season? Strange to think that of a player with an OBP less under .300.
Any chance that when Kris Medlen recovers that he’ll return in a starting role? He had filthy stuff last year before the injury.
Also, did anyone else hear Bobby Valentine’s comment on Craig Kimbrel last night? He said “he threw that Louisiana pitch. Its kinda ‘bayou’.” I almost died laughing — I’ve now adpoted this as my personal favorite baseball phrase.
JFH @ 11 – well said.
@Paciocco
That “Bayou” comment had me going as well. Pretty halirious.
The Crashburn Alley article is a bit disappointing in terms of tone, as I’ve grown to expect a bit more from Mr. Baer. He did a great job of proving something that we all know very well, namely, that the Phillies first four starters are better than any other first four in baseball, including that of our Bravos. It’s surprising that he didn’t see through himself in the course of his research. Thinking about how to support one of my arguments usually leads through a careful analysis of my opponent’s stance, and this process tends to have a wild-hair taming effect, at least on me. No one would have complained if he’d said “a lot of folks are making noise about the early success of Atlanta’s starting rotation, with some claiming that the Braves are actually fielding the better rotation. Though the Atlanta staff is currently keeping pace with if not slightly outperforming our much-heralded group, a look at the bigger picture will show that claims to Atlanta’s superiority are premature.” Who could or even would argue with that?
The smugness of Baer’s stance makes me want bad things to happen to the old and bloated Phillies with their win-now cashmongery. I’ll be licking my chops while their injury-shortened rotation and limping everyday lineup has to play 20 straight against real competition.
Can you show us another teams WAR to give us a reference? Say the Phillies and the Mets?
Here’s the entire list of team starting pitching WAR:
http://www.fangraphs.com/teams.aspx?pos=all&lg=nl&stats=sta&type=8&season=2011&month=0&season1=2011
And here’s the individual leader board:
http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=pit&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&season=2011&month=0&season1=2011&ind=0
The Braves are also tied for the highest reliever WAR at 1.9.
All those stats don’t change the fact that Lowe and JJ just outdueled Lee and Hamels. Period.
The Phils may very well have better stats for their rotation by the end of the year, but the Braves pitchers just showed they can throw zeros on the board too, which means they have a great shot in any short series.
@16 Lukas B,
Very well put. I got the feeling he was insulted by the two ESPN articles as opposed to taking them in context and with a grain of salt.
#13, MLB 08: The Show has a similar line in commentary. Sometimes when you throw a high velocity fastball, they will call it a Linda Ronstadt fastball – Blue Bayou.
@Todd
Don’t forget about Medlen when he comes back.
I always liked that the “Blew By-You” fastball became the “Linda Ronstadt pitch” since the original was by Roy Orbison, which I think scores higher on the cool obscure cultural reference scale.
Pretty unlikely to have all starters with a 5 WAR season.
I just looked up the 1971 Orioles who famously had four 20 game winners:
Cuellar 20-9 WAR 2.7
Palmer 20-7 WAR 4.1
Dobson 20-8 WAR 3.1
McNally 21-5 WAR 3.1
The World Champion ’95 Braves had Maddux with WAR of 8.8, and Glavine and Smoltz at 4.7 and 4.4 The next year the Braves big 3 were all over 5:
Maddux 6.3
Smoltz 6.1
Glavine 5.6
The ’66 Dodgers had Osteen, Drysdale, Koufax in his last year and a rookie Don Sutton. Only Koufax was over 5 (at 10.8, the 4th best year of the last 100 years!!!)
The current “big four” of the Phillies’ stats last year:
Halladay 7.0
Hamels 4.8
Lee 4.3 (With Seattle and Texas)
Oswalt 2.8 (‘Stros and Phils)
Which is not a bad four – BUT the entire rest of the Phillies pitching staff was a collective MINUS 1.3
It would be astonishing for all five Braves starters to have a WAR of even 3 by the end of the year. But the Braves talent and depth bodes well for the season.
It also bodes well that the Braves have three of the top six pitchers in the International League:
Teheran 3-0 1.80
Minor 1-1 1.93
Lopez 4-0 2.11
Like the big club, leading the NL with a 2.85 ERA, Gwinnett leads the IL with a sweet 2.83.
And something must be in the first baseman’s water bottle at Gwinnett: After Freeman tore up the International League, current G-Braves 1B Mauro Gomez has a Pujols-esque line: .393/.435/.673 with an OPS of 1.108, 6 HR and 23 RBI in 27 games.
I’m worried about Beachy honestly, he’s been a really extreme flyball pitcher in a not insignificant sample in the major leagues. His groundball rate is comparable to Chris Young (around 30 percent), and while Young has put up some nice looking seasons with the Padres, his home and away splits were pretty extreme (except for his first year there, where he was much better on the road than at home, wild).