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This is the fifth in a series of six posts going through the MLB division by division to see who has the best projected 2009 starting pitching by Wins Above Replacement (WAR).  Today's subject: the NL West, the home of Brian Sabean, his progeny, and a bunch of really good pitching. Read on after the jump for more details...

How Did I Come Up With These Numbers?

Some details on the methods used (if you don't care, you can jump straight to the main body)

• FIP is used as the primary pitching stat.
  
• The projected 2009  for each pitcher is generated by averagfing the projections of the three best publicly available projection systems: CHONE, ZiPS, and PECOTA. The projected FIP for CHONE and ZiPS are from the player pages at FanGraphs. I generated the PECOTA FIP myself from the big spreadsheet.
  
• Playing time/depth chart projections are based on Baseball Prospectus's depth charts (not the PECOTA weighted mean) in order to account for spot starters as well. These change every week; the playing times used are those that were up when I was writing the present post.
  
• No team only starts 5 players all year long. However, I've also included a "top 5" figure for each team, based on the top 5 projected starter WARs for each team (not the top five projected IPs).
• Value is based on a Win% generated using PythagenPat in relation to a average FIP-ERA of 4.40 and an RA of 4.76.
  
• Run values are generated by are scaling FIP to RA rather than ERA for better accuracy and to properly value pitchers with respect to hitters.
• An appropriate replacement level win percentage for starting pitchers is used,   adjusted for relative league difficulty: .390 is replacement level for starters in the NL, and .370 for the AL.
• Adjustments for ballparks use the five-year regressed park factors used at FanGraphs.
• Adjustments are made for each pitcher's influence on his run environment through a dynamic run-to-win conversion for each individual pitcher.
• Starting with the AL Central post, aggregate team starter win % is listed. Important Note: that this is not directly convertible to team WAR, as it is a simple weighted average based on individual win% and IP. There will be discrepancies between team win% and team WAR, which is based on individual win % because this rough calculation occurs before individual impcat on run environment is taken into account for run-to-win conversion. WAR is the focus here. This feature is just for fun and a rough little guide to quality in relation to average. WAR is still the main focus of this series.
• Neither the rates nor playing time projections are "mine." I have simply the projections, averaged them, and combined them with Baseball Prospectus's playing time predictions. You can find the complete projected lines for each pitcher  at the home sites for the systems (and FanGraphs, for CHONE and ZiPS). In other words, don't blame me if you lose money betting with this stuff...

Team-By-Team

Comment: It wasn't that long ago that the Padres had a lot of promise, but, well, you've probably read about the ownership situation and the Jake Peavy non-trade fiasco elsewhere (Kyle is a big fan). This is another situation where I don't want to kick a team when it's down, but I also don't want to ignore them like ESPN does to any team not in LA, Chicago, New York, or Boston. A lot of question marks here, along with some guys whose park has probably made their numbers look better than they are... well, Patriot's park factors take care of that, Chris Young. Peavy is the only above average guy here, but he still looks good. I don't have strong feelings of like or dislike for Mark Prior, but it would be nice to see a guy come back after all he's been through. Not saying it is likely or anything, but still. At least from where I looked, ZiPS and PECOTA didn't even bother to put him on their spreadsheets. I don't have CHONE or ZiPS projections for Walter Silva, either. Lots of uncertainty here, and it would be nice for Padres fans to fill us in on what's up with the rotation going into the season.

Comment: Obviously I'd feel differently if I were a Giants fan, but Brian Sabean was more entertaining when he constantly made dumb moves. Now, he's signing reasonable contracts and has put together one of the better rotations in the league. Can he keep it up? Or did his stupidty migrate south to stay with Ned C.? Okay, Zito's contract is almost certainly the worst in baseball, and he will never be worth the money. But while he isn't average, but he's closer to average that to replacement level, so leaving money aside, he isn't worthless. Sabean got a bargain deal on Randy Johnson, who  even at his age projects as an above average pitcher that many teams could use even as their #2.. and we haven't even gotten to the best stuff. Matt Cain projects as a borderline #1. Then there's that other guy> Little what's his name. I dunno. Probably a bunch of luck. No way he'll hold up as a major league pitcher. No one like his mechanics, right?

Comment: Losing Jeff Francis was obviously a blow, although Anomalous Aaron Cook (are you kidding me with that K rate? Hey, whatever works for him...) and Ubaldo Jimenez both have better projections than Francis did, anyway, as far as FIP goes. Former Royal De La Rosa (or "Jekyll De La Hyde" as I dubbed him during his brief KC sojourn) seems to have real middle-of-the-rotation potential as well, if he's "for real" (whatever that means). It will be interesting to see what happens with the Rockies over the next couple of years; as Dan Szymborski commented a few weeks back, the issue with the Rockies isn't that they're terrible. Dan O'Dowd is a smart GM. It's just not clear what the long-term plan is supposed to be.

Comment: It might be satisfying to go after Josh Byrnes, et. al., for letting Randy Johnson go for cheap to a divisional rival while signing John Garland... except that they have 3 aces in Webb, Haren, and Scherzer, none of whom are 30 yet, and Scherzer doesn't turn 25 until July. All three have a win% over .600, which would make them the obvious ace on most teams. And having a .513 pitcher at the back end of your rotation on a one-year deal is nothing to fret about, anyway. Not much to say here -- being a bunch of badasses sort of speaks for itself. And since projections are always perfect, there's absolutely nothing to worry about, right (ahem)?

Comment: Ah Snakeskin Boots, what do you have for us? The Zito contract in San Fran as well as the Juan Pierre and Andruw Jones contracts made us forget all about the Jason Schmidt stupidity. There are some very good pitchers here, and Bilingsly and Kershaw are quite young, so much so that one wonders if Joe Torre will need to sub in former Yankee 2003 World Series "hero" Jeff Weaver sometimes for more "veteran experience." Hey, he's above replacement level, if you look hard enough! On the face of it, not a bad group, but when you look at that WAR, the whole seems less than the sum of its parts. Lots of innings of Kershaw, Billingsley, and Kuroda could definitely change things, though. It will be interesting to see how much the overrated double play combo  of Furcal and Hudson back these guys up. I almost forgot, this is about the Dodgers, so: Manny Ramirez Manny Being Manny Manny is in Camp Manny shows the Kids How Its Done Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny.

And now for the final tally:

Final Thoughts: Well, you can see why I made the big qualification about aggregate win% in the methodology section. If you are disturbed by the ...issue... I recommend going back and reading it if you haven't already. Other than the Padres, who are basically hitting franchise "reset" (on the major league level, anyway), these are four good rotations, and two of them are great. outside of the division, the Giants' projected WAR is rivaled only be the Cubs and perhaps the Braves, but their projects are better than either of those teams. And they are a distant second in their own division. With the usual qualifications, the Diamondbacks' starters project as clearly the best in the NL. Period.