2018 Positional Power Rankings: Starting Rotation (#1-15)
Starting pitching might be the most interesting aspect of this positional power rankings series, given how much impact it has on a team’s season. Jay got you warmed up with 16th- through 30th-ranked rotations this morning. Now here is a graphical look at the top 15:
The mainstays atop the list aren’t going to shock you. It’s the cream of the crop, including both of last season’s World Series entrants, within the top three. Two American League teams open up the list then the National League has four of the top six; of the American League’s top five, three come from the East division. Perhaps most shocking of all is the Rockies landing in the top 15, as they’ve developed a nice group of arms. The two Pennsylvania-based teams could have enough pitching to make some noise this year, and a fourth AL East team sneaks in right near the end.
A couple of these teams will undoubtedly tumble into the 20s somewhere, as that’s just how baseball works, but identifying which ones is no easy task.
Was sort of surprised to not see Colorado in the 16-30 article. I suppose that’s because they were right on the cut line.
It will be interesting to see what happens with Senzatela. Chris Rusin has been extremely valuable out of the bullpen, and Senzatela strikes me as possibly morphing into a RH version of Rusin.
Could totally see that. For the first time I can remember, they have many useful arms so they don’t need to put pressure on any single pitcher to come through. Someone not throwing well through 4 innings, take him out and turn it to the bullpen. Both Rusin and Senzy can go multiple innings and then the backend of the pen is sharp.
Exactly this.
I’m also not sure that Senzatela’s stuff will play more than once thru a lineup.
I take some strong exception to HOU at #1. I think Keuchel’s stuff demands such precision (not that he’s not good at that on a regular basis) that I see more in the mold of what he has been the last two years: solid. Good for about 3.5 WAR, give or take. I’m equally skeptical of Cole, who has been trending the wrong way and enters to AL pitching at Minute Maid more often than not (and Texas more often than he has). Ditto for McCullers who needs to show less reliance on one pitch in my opinion and Morton who needs to show he can do it again.
I like Cleveland best ehre (Yes, I’m a homer). I think Clevinger got shafted a bit here with this rating as it’s based on 113IP. I see him reaching 150IP easy if he’s going well and stays healthy. I view CLE as the lineup with the best combination of proven ability, reliability, and talent; they get top nods to me for those reasons.
Strong exception to a projection system that is projecting .4 WAR difference over ~1000 innings?
The Astros difference over everyone else (even the elite Indians pitching staff) is one of depth. Brad Peacock was a 3 win pitcher last year. Colin McHugh was a 3 win pitcher from 2014-2016 and performed at the same level in minimal innings last year. These guys aren’t even starting the year in the rotation. The only recent comps we have for what Forrest Whitley did last year as a 19 year old in AA are Zach Greinke, and Clayton Kershaw, he’s being projected for 28 innings. Francis Martes was a talented 21 year old prospect last year who was worth half a win in his four starts and he’s not even in the projections.
Yea, because I am more enamored with the rotations of the Nats and Dodgers than I am the Astros. I’m just not sold on the Astros rotation. McCullers was an absolute mess in the 2d half, as was Keuchel. Have we forgotten why it was they needed Verlander and traded fro Cole (who I’m also not as enamored with as most it seems)? It’s because their rotation was a mess. If they prove me wrong, so be it. But I do not view them as even a top 5 rotation going into this year. They’ll play well enough to win given their offense, but they won’t be winning because they’re pitching lights out. Just my two cents; this is why they play the game.
I just don’t see how you can realistically slot them outside the Top 5 right now, even with questions about some of the players. McCullers did struggle in the 2H of the regular season as he once again battled health issues, but did you see how his season finished in the playoffs?
The thing is, they don’t need their starting five to be perfect – kinda like your Indians do, tbh – because they have real depth.
With due respect, this is all already covered in the write up. I acknowledged how things could go askew for them, but they have so much talent that they’re in a strong position. It’s hard to view this much beyond the prism of your Indians fandom. They’re really good, too, but Houston is better.
How not? They got solid production over the course of the year from Keuchel and McCullers last year, an otherworldly Verlander, and likely career years from Peacock and Morton and put up a *drum roll* 15.2 collective WAR. Add in Cole and they get to 18.2, but we all know his increased production would take away from somebody else so the math isn’t quite that simple. In contrast, the Tribe put up 23.1 (!). Even taking into account only the period of time they had other-worldly Verlander and probably ebst you could hope for Keuchel, they were 3d overall in WAR as a staff, negligibly above teams I view as better overall (like the DBacks and Nats).
As for McCullers in the playoffs, that’s not such a great example in my opinion. Take out his heroics against the NYY (who honestly could not hit a curve in either the ALDS or ALCS), and you get a middling stat line with a not so attractive 8BBs and 10Ks. As I said, he can’t go 32/200 or even ~25/130 as projected on one pitch, which is what he rode in the playoffs.
And I respectfully disagree as to depth. I like Cleveland’s depth. It’s possible the tribe would have gone into 2018 with Salazar as a swing man; not many other teams can boast that (and have guys like McKinzie and Merritt waiting in the wings. If pressed, I wouldn’t be surprised if Bieber got a call given his rediculous ratios. I’m just pointing out there’s more depth than accounted for here.
Here’s a good thing about projections: unlike the kind of analysis you’re doing here, and the kind that gets done on talk radio where you mostly run down the “top guys” and match the #1 against the other guys’ #1, etc., the projections take account of depth. Depth is a huge factor over the course of the baseball season and focusing on the headline names never captures it adequately.
Here’s a bad thing about projections: when you rank the teams by projected aggregate starting-rotation WAR over the course of a whole season, you can get too focused on tiny differences between teams. The top 5 or 7 or so teams on this list are probably virtually interchangeable. Don’t fixate on “top 5,” look at this as grouping the rotations into a top, a middle, and a bottom tier.
If you want to see the downside to any pitching staff you can frame an argument for any team to not being good. Generally with projections you take the good with the bad and try to find an average. My guess is the Astros are being ranked so highly simply because they have more proven depth in SP than other teams. They don’t have that core 5-man rotation that the Indians have, but they can better survive the injuries and downturn in performance you alluded to.
I do feel the Indians ceiling for its staff over the Astros, as do probably the Mets, or even the Cubs if Chatwood and Darvish both hit their top end possibilities. But the Astros and the Dodgers have built more for depth and floor. But overall all these teams are projected to have really, really good staffs and the ranking itself is less indicative of their values.
The Astros have gamed the 162 game season with the 10-day DL. These days, if your starting 5 makes every start over the season, that was a freak, statistical anomaly. To not hedge for the inevitable pitcher injury is to play roulette with your playoff/championship chances.
While Kluber and Syndergaard are superior to any of the Astros pitchers, if those guys go down for a period of time, those teams are going into a tailspin.
This is weirdly specific and mostly wrong information about the Astros 2017 season. They didn’t manipulate the 10-day DL heavily.
Most of their starters missed big chunks of time. They might have missed a start here or there otherwise but they definitely didn’t game the 10-day DL hard.
My comment was regarding their depth in 2018, not 2017. Having Verlander for the whole year plus adding Cole makes their pitching staff exponentially deeper than 2017 when they had Martes, Paulino, McHugh, and Peacock make 43 starts combined. Now, those guys are either in the bullpen or in the minors and most of those starts will be replaced by Verlander and Cole.
Now, if McCullers goes down, it’s Brad Peacock getting the start, not Dayan Diaz. It’s crazy depth that explains why Houston’s 1-5 may not be the best, but some combination of their players, even with injuries, has a good chance to get to 19 WAR.
Paul, the Astros are not in the NL, so not 5 of the top 6 in the senior circuit.
LOL I’m so dumb. I was playing a historical OOTP franchise with HOU in the NL last week and that triggered in my brain writing the intro… I’ll fix it!
As they should be (in the NL)
I’m still trying to figure out how they ended up in the AL West.
I think Kyle Hendricks (and guys similar to him) are undervalued by fWAR. There’s a 1.6 WAR difference in Kyle’s b vs f WAR and he just always seems to me to not be properly projected.
There’s also a difference between his writeup and his projection. How does “Hendricks continues to dominate and prove that velocity isn’t everything. His 16-point K-BB% mark since 2015 is 28th in the league and his 3.44 FIP is 18th.” reconcile with a 2.9 fWAR projection?
fWAR will credit Hendricks not at all for the outs made by his fielders even when his consistent missing of the barrel results in contact suppression that helps make those outs. bWAR will give him full credit as if he made those outs himself and the Cubs’ stellar middle infielders had nothing to do with it. The truth is somewhere in between.
The strangest part of Hendricks’ projection, though, is the .303 BABIP. His career high in a single season is .296 and the overall figure is .274.
He’s also posted ERAs of 2.13 and, 2.19 when healthy over the last two seasons. Last season he came off the DL in July and went back to replicating 2016.
All true … but fWAR does give a whole lot of credit to FIP, and even though the author lauds his 3.44 FIP since 2015, he is being projected at 3.94. And that may likely be tied in somehow to the odd projection for BABIP that you pointed out.
So Buehler and Font on the Dodgers are projected to put up 1 win each over 50 innings. Are these players projected to be functionally 4 win players should they get a full workload or is this assuming that they get relief or otherwise favorable innings?
Unfortunately we’ll have to wait 2 more years for the Gomber/Borucki. I was thinking “Boy something has to go catastrophically wrong for that to happen this year for both teams.” Or right for both players.
With the extra off-days built into the schedule, you could argue that’s how it really is, given how often the 5th starter could be skipped. The Nationals are going to need their 5th starter what, maybe five times before July? And with teams increasingly handing the game to the bullpen after the second time through the order, four starters and a bullpen full of matchup possibilities and guys throwing max effort for an inning is probably The Future, Already Here Today.
Depth matters. A team needs 5+ starters for more reasons than just keeping the other guys on regular rest.
Watching the yankees develop into a juggernaut, although maybe a year early, is entirely expected.
But as a red sox fan, wow is it depressing to simultaneously watch the slow slide back to the 90’s/00’s – “pedro and pray for rain”.
Doesn’t help that Aaron *#@$ing Boone is on the bench.
Have two rivals ever swapped places so rapidly?
As another Red Sox fan who came into his deep baseball fandom in the late ’90s, I would like to point out that this Boston rotation is a heck of a lot more 2002-2004 than 1997-2000. If you don’t realize it, you forget how bad it was in the earlier period (or else you are waaaaay to pessimistic about the current group).
It’s also worth pointing out that “Pedro and pray for rain” was good enough to be a playoff team circa 1999 despite a lineup that was basically Garciaparra and a bunch of…guys. The current Boston lineup is more appealing than any the franchise had from 1980 to 2001, so the balance is there.
I was using a heavy dose of hyperbole in my post, but the more I dig into it I see this team as much closer to that 99-01 group. It’s a solid team and if things break right they will be legit contenders, but scanning through projections it’s pretty easy to take the “under” across the board. Maybe that makes me pessimistic but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to bet against Rodriguez/Wright/Porcello/Price.
Maybe Benintendi really can’t hit lefties. Maybe devers’ power doesn’t match his strikeouts and his defense never develops.
I’m **not** saying the sky is falling – as you point out those were playoff teams, and Nomar/Betts, Pedro/Sale are legit studs. There’s no real major holes on the roster except maybe C or 1B. Having young talent like Devers and Beni has enabled signing JDM and absorbing Hanley/Pablo.
Every team faces those same questions, but boston seems to have a lot more questions than answers this year.
And the overall organizational trend is unmistakeable.
If you had to choose a group of players (& contracts) for the next five years you’d be a fool not to pick the yankees. Given the same choice a year ago? Boston seemed like the easy choice. It’s that swing that is interesting to me.
Baseball!
As a Blue Jays fan, this all feels too frustratingly familiar. Maybe Alexis Rios and Aaron Hill, I mean Vlady Jr. and Bo Bichette, can help lead us past one of you guys…
How about Dodgers and Giants from 2014 to 2017?
Love the depth charts overview. How would we rank rotations based on top 4? I’ll try to rank teams I’d least want to face in the playoffs:
1 – Indians
2 – Washington
3 – Cubs
4 – Astros
5 – Mets
6 – Dodgers
It’s hard to just match up top 3-4 starters these days in the playoffs. For instance Corrasco vs. McCullers is advantage Cleveland, but what about McCullers for 4-5 innings and then Peacock for 3-4? Managers these days are much better at utilizing pitchers in nontraditional ways it’s hard to really look at playoff series as a battle of pitcher matchups. I’d go so far and say there is almost no line between starters and relievers because teams will just use pitchers.
That said though I’d agree with you in terms top 4 starters rankings if we go by one to one comparisons among teams.
The Cardinals were record setters in 2015 and their projections weren’t world-breaking before that season. My point is that many will outperform projections whilst others will falter.
“….many will outperform projections whilst others will falter…”
Nah, never going to happen.
Why is Miles Mikolas projected for so few innings? If he pitches 120 innings only, St. Louis will be in trouble, I think.
I don’t see him here, but I imagine that Ross Stripling (3.68 FIP) will start a non-insignificant number of games for the Dodgers as well. He and Font seem to be the swingmen entering the season, and I strongly suspect he’ll start more games than Urias this year.
The innings projection for Houston is a complete farce. Every single pitcher in their top five is projected to exceed their 3 year innings per season average. McCullers is expected to set a new career high. Their depth is amazing but they will be drawing on it far more than these pollyannish numbers suggest.
Why list projected LOB% if it’s going to be on a scale that’s always between 0 and 1 with just one decimal digit of precision? That’s like taking the BABIP-against numbers and saying “Oh, everyone’s projected for 0.3.”
It’s a bit surprising to see the Mets crack the top five here. As good as deGrom and Syndergaard are, there’s a steep dropoff after those guys. Harvey and Matz have had durability issues and each posted ERAs north of 6 last year. Montero is about to undergo Tommy John surgery. Vargas is already on the DL. Gsellman is coming off of a disappointing year. Lugo is decent, but probably more of a back-end starter than a mid-rotation one. Hard to see this group outperforming the 4-5 teams that are immediately following them.
“Lively’s stuff fails to live up to his name while Leiter’s unfortunately does, tamping down expectations of any real breakout.”
Absolutely excellent.
Great article.