NL East | NL Central | NL West | AL East | AL Central | AL West

Finally! We've reached the end of the 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). We're finishing up today with a division that definitely doesn't get enough play on ESPN: the American League East. Are they any good when it comes to starting pitching? Read on to find out...

Sure we'll be in the thick of things. We just need Doc to throw 400 innings.

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: The second-worst projected WAR of any team in the series (the Padres are the worst), and the worst in the AL. As you'll see, their starters don't really match up in the division too well. No one projects as league average, although Guthrie, the Alberts, and Hendrickson (Lurch!) and perhaps the mysterious Uehara could do okay in the middle of many teams rotations. Still, it's not like they're paying out a bunch of money for these guys, and a lot of them were freely acquired. There's good young talent among the position players, and I constantly read people raving about their minor league pitching talents. The front office seems to be smart, so the team will be good overall sooner rather than later, but they're going to need to score a lot of runs this season...

Comment: Yes, it's fun to mock J. P. Ricciardi, particularly after the Adam Dunn thing, or the Vernon Wells contract, or his general thin-skinned reaction to criticism. But the truth is that although I don't care if Adam Dunn "likes baseball" or not, that Moneyball was written a long time ago, and Adam Dunn is actually an above-average player at best, since he can't catch the ball (as anyone watching the U.S.A.-Japan WBC game can attest) to save his life. I'm beginning to agree more and more with Sky Kalkman in seeing Ricciardi as one of the more underrated GMs in the game. Most defensive systems had the Jays as one of the best defensive teams in the league last season, and their pitching was monstrous.. but we aren't here to talk about J. P. or defense, but starting pitching. And the truth is... A. J. Burnett is gone. Shaun Marcum was great last year, but is recovering frrom Tommy John now. Dustin McGowan was good, and has a nice projection here, but he's hurt (again)... With Tampa Bay making it a "Big Three" in the division, the Jays probably need to hit the reset button. Heck, if Jake Peavy can be all the rage, what would Roy Halladay (who's worth about twice what he's being paid the next two seasons) fetch? He's one of my favorite players not on my favorite team, and it would hurt, but if they could trade him for, say, half of the Rangers top prospects (I don't know, I'm just speculating) or something, maybe it's time. I don't know about Casey Janssen's numbers, as he was a reliever previously. Lot's of young guys and cheap pickups. So there's long-term possbility here. It's an above-average group, and before mocking J. P., keep in mind that while this group doesn't look good against the division, the "Top Five" by themselves project with more WAR than any single team in total in the AL Central...

Comment: Hey, it's the lovable underdogs! Not much to say here -- it's a great group of starters. I'm sure people doubt Buchholz's numbers, but I'm just passing along an average of projection systems. You may find Josh Beckett obnoxious, but he's still a monster pitcher, and chances are that his luck will even out this season. Matzusaka is good, but 4.03 FIP hardly screams "ace." Overrated. It will be interesting to see what Smoltz and Penny give them. Smart upside signings. Love the the Sox  or hate them, you have to hand it to Epstein, et. al.

Comment: Speaking of love/hate... Yikes. I'm sure you're looking at this with some skepticism, but when only one of a team's top 7 starting pitchers projects as below average, and he's slated to get 65 innings, I think they're probably going to OK. I wonder if they're willing to give up Hughes up for cheap, since he looks like a guy who could easily be the #2 on a lot of teams. The Pettitte signing again looks like another smart bargain, although he'll need the shaky Yankees defense to help him out more than they did last season (4.54 ERA versus 3.71 FIP). I'm not sure about A.J. Burnett getting 200 IPs, but I've stuck with Clay Davenport this far, so I can't change anything about it now. I just don't know if Chamberlain should be a starter or reliever. He's only projected for  3.9 WAR this season. I wonder how many relievers were that valuable in 2008?

Comment: The (AL) champ always enters last. Unless it's Hulk Hogan versus Randy Savage at Wrestlemania V, as Jesse Ventura angrily pointed out at the time. As if their AL pennant wasn't enough, having only a few guys on this list in itself is a sign of the Rays "arrival." If you look back, over these posts, the teams with more guys listed as getting SP time having lower WARs, in general,, probably because they're so unstable that it's hard to say who will start. The Rays may not be as "high up there" as you might thing, but 14.1 WAR and a .516 win% say this is another rotaiton that would be the best or second-best in a number of other divisions No clear "ace" here, but 3-4 guys who look like #2 pitchers. It's not only balanced, but all these guys are young and locked up for a while. Another thing about young guys is that they are more likely to make dramatic leaps in performance from year-to-year....

Final Thoughts: It's probably not very surprising that the best division in baseball has the strongest starting pitching. The Orioles are an exception here, and they are dreadful (when it comes to SP for the 2009 season), which only serves to underscore who good the other teams are. The NL West is the closest, but after the Diamondbacks' and Giants' great rotations, there's a real drop-off. The Yankees' advantage is concentrated on the top to a certain extent, and perhaps Hughes and Kennedy are overrated by the projections, but when your fill-in guys could be #3 on a number of teams, you're doing OK. The Sox have questions, but a lot of upside, too. The Jays and Rays are interchangable, with the Jays having Halladay, who is as good as anyone is baseball, and the Rays having a very balanced group. To repeat -- the "Top Five" of the top four teams in this division all have a higher projected WAR than any team in the AL Central. That's not meant as a slam on the Central. These are five teams that are well-run in general (or getting there), even those with bad offense (the Blue Jays) or bad pitching (Orioles). The media may spend too much time on the division (or, more precisely, the Yankees and Red Sox), but they're the class of baseball for a reason.