JABO: The Historic Strikeout Pace of Cleveland’s Rotation

At first glance, Cleveland’s starting rotation could be considered one of the league’s poorest in terms of performance: their 4.40 ERA has them 9th-worst in the majors, and the fact that the Indians are 27-29 (though seemingly improving) probably doesn’t help them shed that label. Those surface-level numbers hide a lot, however. In fact, they obscure what is on pace to be one of the most strikeout-heavy rotations in the history of baseball, one whose on-field performance is being negatively impacted by factors largely outside of their control. Where does the 2015 Cleveland starting staff rank so far in a historical context of some of the great rotations throughout history? Let’s find out.

We’ve talked about Cleveland’s woeful defense in this space before. There’s a reason for that: it’s both historically terrible (since 1950, only the 2007 Rays converted fewer balls in play into outs than the 2015 Indians), and it impacts the pitching staff to a great extent. The Cleveland defense has become something of a hot topic: by all accounts, it’s basically turning the pitching staff into a bunch of pumpkins.

What the Indians rotation should be is a markedly different story from what it currently is: if we boil down the numbers only to what pitchers can control (i.e. if we take the terrible defense out of the picture), Cleveland’s rotation is at the very top of the league: by one measure, Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP), they’re the fourth-best starting staff in baseball. By another (xFIP), they’re number one.

This means that Cleveland’s defense has probably let them down to a serious extent, and also that they’ve been unlucky — though the elevated batting average on balls in play (BABIP) the Indians rotation has shown might be due in some part to the types of pitchers that Cleveland likes to bring through their system (hard throwers who are prone to giving up hard contact). Taken together, however, all of these factors should give us some optimism that there might be better times ahead for the rotation, even if the defense doesn’t improve very much.

The conversation about the rotation’s hypothetical vs. real-world results is just the introduction to why we’re really here, though. Now that we know Cleveland’s rotation has been subject to some unfortunate outside influences for the first two months of the season, let’s compare this rotation to other rotations throughout history, especially in terms of strikeout rates.

In terms of absolute strikeout rate, the 2015 Cleveland rotation is, well, the best since 1950. Take a look at the top-15 rotations since 1950 by strikeout rate:

That’s a lot of strikeouts! You might notice a clear issue with this leaderboard, however: all the teams highlighted are from after the year 2000. That’s because strikeouts are far more frequent these days than in decades past, as both offensive priorities and pitching performance have shifted. A strikeout for a pitcher in 2015 doesn’t quite mean what a strikeout meant in 1965.

Read the rest on Just a Bit Outside.