March 23, 2008
Rotation Evaluation, Pittsburgh Pirates
The series looking at team pitching rotations using the Marcel the Monkey projections continues with the Pittsburgh Pirates. Their starters posted a 5.02 ERA in 2007, thirteenth in the National League.
Note that in figuring ERAs, I'm using Marcel's mIP and mER columns. The ERA listed in the spreadsheet uses the average of mER and bsrER. I wanted to avoid posting 1/2 runs in the table. Pitcher order is taken from the CBSSportsline depth chart.
Ian Snell
Photo: Icon SMI
Marcel predictions for the Pittsburgh Pirates top five starters for 2008.
| Starter | Innings | ER | ERA |
| Ian Snell | 181 | 84 | 4.18 |
| Tom Gorzelanny | 166 | 74 | 4.01 |
| Matt Morris | 180 | 96 | 4.80 |
| Zach Duke | 160 | 67 | 4.50 |
| Paul Maholm | 166 | 85 | 4.61 |
| Totals | 827 | 406 | 4.42 |
On a team with a great offense, this would not be a bad pitching staff. A 4.42 starters ERA is going to win a lot of games if you team is scoring runs at a per game clip of 5.5. With the innings predicted here, the Pirates won't need to go to their sixth and seventh starters too often. While there's no truly great starter on the team, there's no truly bad one either.
There is some reason to believe the youngsters might improve. Snell if the oldest of the four at 26. There's room for maturation and experience to make these players better. While it won't be a great staff, it shouldn't be the reason the Pirates play poorly in 2008.
Previous posts in this series:
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