Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
March 28, 2008
Rotation Evaluation, Texas Rangers

The series looking at team pitching rotations using the Marcel the Monkey projections continues with the Texas Rangers. Their starters posted a 5.50 ERA in 2007, highest in the American League. Their 838 innings represented the fewest pitched by a starting staff in the majors.

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.

Kason Gabbard

Kason Gabbard
Photo: Icon SMI

Marcel predictions for the Texas Rangers top five starters for 2008.
StarterInningsERERA
Kevin Millwood168864.61
Vicente Padilla140774.95
Jason Jennings130694.78
Kason Gabbard100494.41
Luis Mendoza51234.06
Totals5893044.65

This is just a bad rotation. When the one-two starters each project to ERAs well over 4.00, and only one of them has barely enough innings to qualify for the ERA title, there's going to be trouble. They can't go deep in games, which puts pressure on the bullpen. They get injured, so that brings in replacement starters, who tend to be not as good. Everything builds, and before you know it the whole staff is performing badly.

The positive spin is that Gabbard, Mendoza and McCarthy might develop into good starters, and a healthy Jason Jennings can give the rotation some much needed innings. The rotation starts with such low expectations, there's nowhere to go but up!

Previous posts in this series:

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Posted by David Pinto at 04:59 PM | Team Evaluation | TrackBack (0)
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