(sorry for the very late post today...internet problems.)

Another indicator I like to look at to evaluate a team's performance is the innings pitched by starters vs. relievers. There are lots of reasons why any given team's starters might throw more of fewer innings. The two most common are:

• If the starters aren't as good or as durable, they tend to throw fewer innings per start
• If the starters are very young, their managers tend to have them throw fewer innings. This is piece of baseball wisdom that was largely ignored for many years but most managers now abide by.

So let's start in the American Leage by looking at splits by pitching role. The second set of data shows the number of games and innings pitched depending on whether the pitcher was a starter or a reliever. By clicking on the red text you can get an expanded breakdown by team such as this.

I extracted some of the key data and put it into an Excel spreadsheet. See here:

Starts    Relief    IP/start    IP/RG
KCR     82    208    6.09    1.08
MIN     83    223    6.05    1.06
TEX     81    204    6.04    1.15
TOR     84    235    6.00    1.08
LAA     81    216    5.97    1.08
CHW     82    203    5.96    1.15
BOS     82    234    5.95    1.04
SEA      82    208    5.89    1.21
DET     82    220    5.81    1.12
TBR     83    239    5.78    1.03
NYY     82    233    5.76    1.13
CLE     83    231    5.59    1.17
OAK     81    236    5.58    1.17
BAL     83    231    5.40    1.22

The four columns here are game starts, games in relief (total number of relief appearances) and then 2 numbers I calculated in Excel: innings pitched per start, and innings pitched per relief appearance.

Kansas City's starters are averaging 6.07 IP per start, meaning just barely into the 7th inning. Baltimore's starters are avering 5.40 IP per start, meaning that they get, on average, a bit more than 1 out in the 6th inning. This might not sound like a big difference, but so far Baltimore's bullpen has pitched 282.1 innings while Kansas City's has pitched only 224. That's nearly 60 innings of extra work being loaded onto Orioles relievers.

The point is this: with the exception of the closer and sometimes the setup guy, pitchers in the bullpen are usually the worst major-league pitchers. I'm not saying they are bad, but these are often guys that haven't been able to develop the pitching technique or stamina to be starters and are usually the worst performers on their teams. The more innings these guys pitch, the worse it usually is for their team because A) they are the worst pitchers and B) they have less stamina.

Point B) is the really significant one. It means that if they get used more over the course of the season, they are quite likely to see a significant decline in performance come August & September. (As an aside, sometimes playoff teams see a boost when they call up an extra bullpen guy or two in September but then can't use those guys in the playoffs and have to resort to their tired-arm relievers.)

When I look at the list above, the team the jumps out to me as being in trouble is Tampa Bay. They are averaging only 5.78 IP/start, one of the worst figures in the AL plus their relievers are pitching only 1.03 IP/game, the lowest figure in the game. Their relievers have already appeared in 239 games, most in the AL. More appearances by relievers means more times these guys warm up in the bullpen, more pitches thrown, and tired arms later in the season.

The Yankees and Tigers don't look much better. Both have IP/start figures similar to the Rays and have also seen many relief appearances from their bullpen.

Alternatively, the Rangers looks great. Their starters have one of the highest averages, as do their relievers. It means fewer innings and fewer pitches for their relievers. The Twins and Red Sox also look fine.

So what does this mean for the playoffs? Well for Tampa Bay, it's the opposite of what I wrote yesterday. Based on run scoring differential, they seemed to be shy a few wins and I expected to make them up later in the season. But based on what their pitching staff is doing, I also expect to see the team fade down the stretch. By combining those factors, I'd expect to see a similar record in the second half, meaning they'll finish with about 87 wins and out of the playoffs.

Yesterday, I liked the Twins, and today even moreso. I predict a fade for the Tigers and a third-place finish between the Twins and the White Sox.

And in the West, I like the Rangers.

Because of the strength of the Angels pitching, I'm taking them ahead of the Rays or the Yankees to win the AL Wild Card.

Now here's the same table for the National League.

Starts    Relief    IP/start    IP/RG
STL     85    258    6.13    0.90
SFG      83    222    6.12    1.02
CHC     81    236    6.11    0.99
COL     83    232    6.11    0.98
ARI     84    273    5.97    0.96
PIT     84    236    5.95    1.00
ATL     83    257    5.94    0.98
CIN     82    245    5.94    1.05
NYM     82    266    5.77    0.96
PHI     81    251    5.75    1.06
WSN     82    270    5.71    0.94
FLA     85    262    5.71    1.05
LAD     83    262    5.69    1.08
HOU     83    239    5.69    1.13
MIL     83    243    5.64    1.08
SDP     83    255    5.55    1.13

Right away we see some interesting differences between the leagues. The IP/start is just about the same between leagues (5.863 for NL and 5.840 for AL) but relievers in the NL tend to pitch fewer innings per appearance.  I assume this is due to the DH--in the NL if a pitcher gets in trouble and needs to be relieved, the reliever is going to come out of the game as soon as his place at bat comes up. In the AL, this concern doesn't come up. This probably means that it's a little more common for a reliever in the AL to come in to finish an inning and stay in to face one or more batters the next inning.

So in the NL East, all three leading teams (Phillies, Mets, and Marlins) are putting up some unimpressive pitching numbers. All three teams have low averages for IP per start. The Phils and the Fish, at least, have a higher average IP per relief appearance. The Phillies have one more ace up their sleeve, though, which is that the two biggest names in their bullpen, Brad Lidge and J.C. Romero, missed significant time to far this season, meaning that they will be fresher later in the season. Given that yesterday's run-scoring analysis suggested that the Phillies are already deserving of a bigger this, this reaffirms that they will run away with the division.

In the NL Central, both the Cardinals and Cubs have put up fantastic starting pitching so far, at least in terms of innings per start. Coupled with yesterday's results, this puts the Cardinals as the team most likely to win the divison.

The NL West gives us our first big surprise, where the Dodgers rank quite low on the list. The reason, though, is one of those exceptions I mentioned at the top--they've been holding up some of their youngsters from accumulating too many innings. After all, their team ERA is fantastic and their relievers are pitching just about the longest of any NL team. The Giants pitching has been great as well, but not enough to catch the Dodgers.

I do, however, like the Giants for the NL Wild Card.

So the picks are all the same results as from yesterday's analysis except for the AL Wild Card. I think the locks are Philly, LA, Boston, and Minnesota. I feel pretty good about the Rangers and Cardinals, as well as the Giants as the NL WC.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 at 1:03 pm and is filed under Splits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.