Pitching Wins Championships

One of the lines I've seen trotted out about the performance of the pitching staff so far this spring is that it's too early to look at it, and that much of the damage has been done by stiffs who won't make the roster. I decided to test that theory.

I picked 12 of the pitchers most likely to make the opening day roster -- you can quibble with some of the choices, I s'pose -- and crunched (read: copied) some numbers.

PITCHER             IP    H   ER  BB  K
John Patterson      2.0   3   1   0   0
Shawn Hill          9.0  10   2   0   3 
Jason Simontacchi   7.0   9   5   1   4
Matt Chico          5.1   7   4   1   4
Jason Bergmann      5.0   5   0   0   3

Billy Traber        4.2   6   1   0   4
Chad Cordero        3.0   2   0   0   3
Jon Rauch           2.1   3   0   0   2
Ryan Wagner         2.0   3   2   1   1
Ray King            3.1   6   4   1   1
Saul Rivera         3.0   7   4   1   0
Jerome Williams     4.1   7   5   2   3

TOTAL               51   68  28   7  28
ERA: 4.94
H/9: 12
BB/9: 1.24
K/9: 4.94

That's certainly better than the staff as a whole. But it's not much better than last year, and it's not including those disastrous performances we're sure to get from a few pitchers who fill in for injuries or ineffectiveness.

There are some problems with this quick and dirty look such as that the playing time isn't distributed properly -- ie, Ray King isn't going to have twice as many IP as John Patterson at the end of the year (we hope!). So don't read more into this than is there; I just wanted to isolate the men from the boys.