6-4-2 — an Angels/Dodgers double play blog

Jon posted another fine summary of the Dodgers' season at the two-thirds mark. In the comments section for that post, I fretted that the Cards would knock the Dodgers out of the postseason, to which reader Vic replied, "As incredible as the Cards' lineup has been, a potential playoff rotation of Carpenter-Marquis-Suppan-Morris is far from fearsome." That got me thinking: it's time to look at the contenders' rotations. Today, I'll do the National League, and get to the American League in a followup.

A couple notes before I start:

• Owing to the length of time it took to compile the statistics for this article, the numbers may not all be in sync across all players (i.e., Russ Ortiz's VORP won't be from the same day as Ishii's).
• I assume the teams will finish in the order they're in now; I'm not worried about the Padres bid for a Wildcard slot.

NL East: Atlanta Braves

Team Defensive Efficiency Rating: .687, 12th in the NL

The first thing you notice about this club's starters is how they've really got four -- Russ Ortiz, John Thomson, Jaret Wright, and Mike Hampton -- and three guys on the DL (or recently back from it). One thing's for sure, it's not the Glavine-Maddux-Smoltz rotations of the middle 90's that made this team the terror of the National League.

Pitcher	W-L	ERA	K/9	K/BB	VORP
Paul Byrd	4-3	3.86	5.53	4.13	9.2
Mike Hampton	7-8	4.91	4.84	1.34	7.4
Russ Ortiz	12-6	3.16	6.69	1.50	38.6
John Thomson	9-7	4.45	6.0	2.49	12.7
Horacio Ramirez	0-3	2.28	4.70	1.07	14.8
Jaret Wright	10-5	3.04	7.46	2.08	29.0

What do you make of Paul Byrd? His control suddenly became impeccable, with his K/BB rates increasing to nearly double his career average. Unfortunately, he's presently on the DL from elbow surgery to remove a bone spur. He might be back. Or not.

Hampton ranks among the most famous disappointments in baseball right now. He parlayed two great years in 1999 and 2000 into a ridiculous contract that now has three teams paying his salary. The fact that he's signed through 2008 plumbs the depths of general manager stupidity. His weak strikeout rate and underwhelming K/BB ratio tells you everything you need to know about this guy.

Ortiz has pitched well in the postseason, though DIPSomaniacs intently note his K/9 dropped in 2002, but has since rebounded. He's getting more efficient, too: from a high of 18.0 P/IP in 1999, he's down to 16.7 this year.

Horacio Ramirez hasn't pitched since May 26. His low strikeout totals and nearly 1:1 K/BB ratio tell you he's been unbelievably lucky so far to have that 2.28 ERA; last year in 29 starts, he had a 4.00 ERA.

Another guy with weak strikeout numbers but good control, Thomson came over from the pitching hells that are Texas and Colorado. Most of his high ERA came in May and June, and one game in July against Boston.

Wright used ta be a contenda, but two injuries -- one to his shoulder -- sidelined him. Atlanta's taking a gamble on him, and so far, it's paid off. He's got a career-low ERA, single-season K/9 is near his career record, and his K/BB is 2.08, all good news for the man who took the ball for Cleveland, and almost won the 1997 World Series.

Update: corrected the Braves' section paragraphs to be alphabetized by last name, same as the others.

NL Central: St. Louis Cardinals

Team Defensive Efficiency Rating: .714, 2nd in the NL

The Brian Gunn article at Hardball Times is a good introduction to how the Cards clobbered the NL Central. Discussing the pitching, Gunn says the Cards decided that they'd rather start guys who can keep the ball down and let their defense keep the team in the game rather than going after expensive and difficult-to-find power pitchers. In other words, the Cards pursued the same pitch-to-contact philosophy that Cincinnati adopted. The fact that the Reds' ERA now ranks 15th in the league is indicative of how quickly that can unravel. But St. Louis shows it can be made to work, as they own the third best ERA in the league. Here's the guys that got them there:

Pitcher	W-L	ERA	K/9	K/BB	VORP
Chris Carpenter	12-4	3.73	7.21	3.56	30.7
Jason Marquis	12-4	3.58	5.99	2.04	31.1
Matt Morris	12-7	4.71	5.38	2.07	11.9
Jeff Suppan	9-6	4.08	5.56	1.84	19.5
Woody Williams	8-6	3.91	5.77	1.85	22.4

None of these guys will knock you over with their stuff, as their ERAs attest. This is an adequate rotation for an offense that, taken one through five, is likely historic. Note that I don't include Danny Haren, who only started one game this year, and whose 10.66 ERA attests to the quality of work he did in that start.

New from Toronto this year is Chris Carpenter. Actually, he's not new, but it's the first time he's been able to pitch for the Cards, having spent all of last year on the DL. Another guy with a high G/F ratio (2.01), his career-low 14.4 P/IP speaks of a guy opposing batters love to swing at. His 3.73 ERA is also a career low, but his K/9 and K/BB are at career highs; this is a guy who put it together after six years in the bigs, and as of this writing, their best pitcher. On August 10, Carpenter left a game against the Marlins with back pain, the first time he has ever done so with that particular ailment. Stay tuned.

Some light went on in Jason Marquis's head this year, because he started getting groundballs like crazy. His career high groundball/flyball ratio had been 1.61 prior to this year; it's now 2.26. His strikeouts have declined a little from his career high 6.82 K/9, but his control has markedly improved.

Matt Morris leads the team in innings pitched, and has functioned as an ace for them in some years. He's having one of the worst ERAs of his career, but it's not a surprise when you consider that his K/9 has declined to a career low, and his K/BB has dropped to the second-lowest of his career (1.88 in 1998 was the worst). He's really fallen victim to the longball this year, giving up 27, a career record he'd certainly want to forget.

I've never found anything impressive about Jeff Suppan's numbers in the big leagues, but he keeps getting a paycheck. Like Marquis, he's taken a sudden upturn in his G/F ratio (at Boston, he was briefly a flyball pitcher), increasing his value to the Cards. Still, a career 4.82 ERA doesn't sound like the kind of guy you want to keep around if your team's having trouble scoring runs. That's no problem for the Cards this year, and so long as he can keep his ERA at a reasonable level, that paycheck will have Walt Jocketty's signature on it.

In years past, Woody Williams has been the other "co-ace" of the staff, but he's been supplanted by Chris Carpenter. Unlike Morris, he hasn't given up an unusual number of taters, but he also, oddly, doesn't get as many outs by the ground ball, either. He's on target for his 60th-70th percentile VORP projections from PECOTA, which amounts to a good but not great year.

NL West: Los Angeles Dodgers

Team Defensive Efficiency Rating: .716, 1st in the NL

I'm not going to provide writeups of the Dodgers, as I assume regular readers of this blog will be familiar with the Dodgers situation. For those not tracking the Dodgers closely, you can find a cursory look at the Dodgers situation overall at the two-thirds mark in Jon's analysis at Dodger Thoughts. Please note, I'm keeping Edwin Jackson out of this discussion because of the problems of sample size. He hasn't pitched enough major league innings for us to make anything useful of his statistics.

Pitcher	W-L	ERA	K/9	K/BB	VORP
Wilson Alvarez	6-3	3.32	7.46	3.08	22.7
Kazuhisa Ishii	11-5	4.76	4.54	.85	10.4
Jose Lima	10-3	4.01	4.65	2.23	18.4
Hideo Nomo	3-10	8.06	4.97	1.19	-17.3
Brad Penny*	6-3	3.15	7.20	2.69	33.7
Odalis Perez	5-4	2.92	6.30	3.17	38.4
Jeff Weaver	9-10	3.93	6.63	2.25	25.4

* as a Marlin

NL Wildcard: Chicago Cubs

Team Defensive Efficiency Rating: .706, 3rd in the NL

The Cubs were the sentimental if not prevailing favorites to win the NL Central this year, but four things really tripped them up:

• Health. Mark Prior, Kerry Wood, Sammy Sosa, Alex Gonzalez, Mark Grudzielanek, even fourth outfielder (and ex-Dodger) Todd Hollandsworth have all spent significant time on the DL. Shortstop especially has proven problematic offensively and defensively for the team to replace.
• Their luck ran out. Last year, they were three games over their Pythagorean W-L projections; this year, they're five under.
• Age. Combine Sammy Sosa's time on the DL with his continued offensive declines (he's currently posting his lowest OPS and OBP since 1997), and you can see that in a year or two he'll no longer be the kind of player who can anchor the offense. (It's questionable whether he can even now. No, Helen, RBIs don't count.) The same is true twice over for Moises Alou. This is a weirdly schizophrenic team with very young pitching and a very old offense.
• The resurgence of the Cardinals. Covered elsewhere, the Cards continued to get historically great offense while their pitching finally became acceptable. The Cards simply crushed the Cubs in their matchups this year.

Despite all that, the Cubs have a very real shot at winning the wild card, and are now two games over the Padres for that berth. Their pitching rotation is clearly the best in the NL Central, and arguably in baseball. Young, effective, and anchored by guys putting up Hall of Fame numbers, the Cubs will be a force in that division if -- and only if -- they can learn how to hit and they can somehow fix their chronically leaky bullpen.

Pitcher	W-L	ERA	K/9	K/BB	VORP
Matt Clement	8-11	3.29	9.26	2.71	35.1
Greg Maddux	11-7	3.99	6.01	4.08	24.4
Sergio Mitre	2-4	6.51	6.32	1.74	-4.1
Mark Prior	3-2	4.17	10.33	2.82	9.4
Glendon Rusch	5-1	3.87	6.28	3.00	15.6
Kerry Wood	6-5	3.20	9.59	2.81	21.0
Carlos Zambrano	10-6	2.92	8.30	2.30	41.5

Matt Clement has quietly become one of the game's premier pitchers, and rightly so; under the Cubs' tutelage, he's improved his K/9 and K/BB rates appreciably since his rookie year in 1998. In the absence of Prior and Wood, he's stepped up his production a notch; weak up-the-middle defense in the absence of a quality shortstop has hurt him, but so has the longball (he's on target to give up a personal record this year). He's a free agent at the end of the year, and Cub fans hope to see him return in 2005. He'll be a key part of any Chicago postseason run.

A lock for a first-ballot Hall of Fame bid, Greg Maddux isn't his old dominating self, as his unusually high ERA attests. Fortunately for the Cubs, Jim Hendry didn't hire him to be an ace, but merely to be better than Shawn "How Did I Get Here?" Estes. His peripherals continue to be solid -- his K/9 and K/BB have even jumped up a bit from his previous year. He's just getting hit a little harder (.279 average against) than he has in past years (career .245).

Sergio Mitre won't appear with the Cubs anytime soon, not unless the team gets desperate. He's on the list for completeness. His last start was a 6-run, 3.2 IP extravaganza on May 29th, after which he was demoted to AAA Iowa. He's got a lot to learn, but the Cubs are far from giving up on him.

Mark Prior has been quite a story this year: after a magical year in which he appeared, like Athena, to arise from the forehead of the Cubs' farm system nearly fully-formed, he's stumbled, spending time on the DL and never really seeming like the guy we saw in last year's postseason. Scouts ransack their lexicons trying to find superlatives about his stuff, control, and mechanics. Unfortunately, he's spent much time on the DL and his pitching since he returned hasn't been all that. He's still struggling, with three non-quality starts among his last ten. Returning him to last year's form is critical if the Cubs hope to get past the first round -- or even make it to the postseason.

The Brewers gave Glendon Rusch the bum's rush after a bad and then an awful season in Milwaukee, going 18 starts between wins, the second-lowest WPCT of any pitcher with 19 decisions in fifty years. (On the other hand, considering how badly Burnitz did subsequently, it might appear to be an even trade.) His control, erratic throughout his career, has returned to near-career-highs. (3.00 K/BB; his single-season low is 1.33 in 1999). He's not keeping the ball on the ground (1.08 G/F), but that could be a reaction to the kinds of problems Maddux has had. Signed to a minor league contract after the Rangers took a pass on him as an NRI in spring training, he's excelled out of the pen and as an emergency starter, but his history of inconsistency means he's not somebody Dusty will trot out every fifth day.

Outside of Maddux, the other four horses the Cubs bring are hard throwers, and none throws harder than Kerry Wood. He collects strikeouts faster than Roger Clemens (Clemens has only had a K/9 over 10.00 once, while Wood's done it three times). Historically, Wood has problems with home runs; not this year. He's only given up nine taters, and his on base against is at a career low (.300), as is his P/IP (15.7). Wood could become a first-ballot Hall of Famer if he continues at this pace and stays healthy.

Carlos Zambrano completes the Cubs' roster; like Kevin Brown, he's a sinkerball specialist, a valuable trait for a guy in the often pitcher-unfriendly confines of Wrigley Field. Zambrano's young and emotional, but he's improved every year; his 2.92 ERA is the best he's ever posted, as is his 8.30 K/9 and 2.30 K/BB. One thing to watch out for, though, is his G/F has suddenly taken a drop to 1.52 (vs. 2.28 and 2.10 in 2003 and 2002 respectively); hitters might be figuring out how to lay off his sinkerball and go for the fastball. Accordingly, he's on target for a dramatic increase in home runs in 2004.

Conclusion

Update: You might have been waiting for something here. Based strictly on VORP and actual likelihood of postseason appearance, the grand totals:

Team	VORP
Atlanta Braves	87.7
St. Louis Cardinals	115.6
Los Angeles Dodgers	138.6
Chicago Cubs	147.0

To get this list, I assumed anyone on the DL (or anyone with a negative VORP -- goodbye Mitre and Nomo) wouldn't rematerialize to contribute in the postseason. In short, the Cubs have the best rotation in the mix, but it's not as good as last year's, nor is it towering over the Dodgers' by that much. However, the gap between Los Angeles and St. Louis is pretty considerable, as is that between the Cards and the Braves.