{"id":7293,"date":"2013-08-09T09:47:29","date_gmt":"2013-08-09T13:47:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com.\/?p=7293"},"modified":"2013-08-09T09:47:29","modified_gmt":"2013-08-09T13:47:29","slug":"would-you-rather-have-houston-or-durhams-rotation-revisited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=7293","title":{"rendered":"Would you rather have Houston or Durham’s rotation, revisited"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the beginning of the season, Houston’s MLB rotation looked so weak that I asked in this space<\/a> whether you would prefer to have the Houston Astros MLB rotation or the Durham Bulls (AAA affiliate of Tampa) Opening Day rotation?<\/p>\n

Now, more than 2\/3’s the way through the season, lets take another look. \u00a0Here’s some quick links for reference: Houston’s B-R stats<\/a>, Tampa’s B-R stats<\/a>, Houston’s Fangraphs Stats<\/a>, Tampa’s Fangraphs stats<\/a> and MILB’s Durham stats<\/a>.<\/p>\n

All stats as of 8\/6\/13.<\/p>\n

So, here’s how Houston’s opening day rotation has performed thus far:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<\/colgroup>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Rank<\/td>\nName<\/td>\nAge<\/td>\n2013 Stats as of 8\/6\/13<\/td>\nNotes<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1<\/td>\nBud Norris<\/td>\n28<\/td>\n(MLB) 7-9, 3.89 ERA, 1.394 whip, 106 ERA+, 3.95 fip<\/td>\nTraded to Baltmore<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2<\/td>\nLucas Harrell<\/td>\n28<\/td>\n(MLB) 5-12, 5.37 ERA, 1.668 whip, 76 ERA+, 5.41 fip<\/td>\nDemoted to bullpen July 9th<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
3<\/td>\nPhilip Humber<\/td>\n30<\/td>\n(MLB) 0-8, 9.59 ERA, 2.019 whip, 43 ERA+, 5.81 fip<\/td>\nDemoted to AAA May 11th<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
4<\/td>\nErik Bedard<\/td>\n34<\/td>\n(MLB) 3-8, 4.29 ERA, 1.44 whip, 96 ERA+, 4.42 fip<\/td>\nTeam is 6-14 in his starts<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
5<\/td>\nBrad Peacock<\/td>\n25<\/td>\n(MLB) 1-4, 7.25 ERA, 1.583 whip, 57 ERA+, 6.57 fip<\/td>\nDemoted to AAA April 30th<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Here I see one #4 starter (Norris), one #5 starter (Bedard<\/b>), one guy who wouldn’t make any other team’s rotations (Harrell<\/b>) and two abject failures in\u00a0Humber<\/strong> and our own former farmhand\u00a0Peacock<\/strong> (though it should be noted, Peacock just got recalled, threw 7 innings of 3-run ball<\/a>, struck out 10 guys and lowered his ERA nearly a full point).<\/p>\n

Now, here’s the same stats for Durham’s opening day rotation, showing MLB stats where I could:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<\/colgroup>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Rank<\/td>\nName<\/td>\nAge<\/td>\n2013 Stats as of 8\/6\/13<\/td>\nNotes<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1<\/td>\nChris Archer<\/td>\n24<\/td>\n(MLB) 6-4, 2.65 ERA, 1.085 whip, 144 ERA+, 4.22 whip<\/td>\nPromoted June 1, 12 starts thus far<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2<\/td>\nJake Odorizzi<\/td>\n23<\/td>\n(AAA Dur): 8-5, 3.73 ERA, 1.20 whip<\/td>\nHas 3 spot starts in May and June with a 6.00 ERA in 18 MLB innings<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
3<\/td>\nAlex Colome<\/td>\n25<\/td>\n(AAA Dur): 4-6, 3.07 ERA, 1.31 whip<\/td>\n3 spot starts in May\/June with a 2.25 ERA in 16 mlb innings<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
4<\/td>\nMike Montgomery<\/td>\n23<\/td>\n(AAA Dur): 46-5, 4.28 ERA, 1.43 whip<\/td>\ninjured earlier in year, in minors all year.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
5<\/td>\nAlex Torres<\/td>\n25<\/td>\n(MLB) 4-0 0.26 ERA, 0.612 whip, 1470 ERA+, 1.64 fip<\/td>\nHas given up 1 ER in 34 MLB innings pitching out of the pen.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Durham’s opening day rotation has matriculated one mainstay to the Tampa rotation in\u00a0Chris Archer<\/strong> (he has the best adjusted ERA+ of any of Tampa’s rotation right now) and a second guy in\u00a0Alex Torres<\/strong> who has given up exactly one run in 34 mlb innings this year. \u00a0Alex Colome<\/strong> had three effective spot starts,\u00a0Jake Odorizzi<\/strong> had 3 relatively ineffective MLB spot starts, and\u00a0Mike Montgomery<\/strong>\u00a0missed some time with an injury and has not yet debuted. \u00a0It should be noted that both Odorizzi and Montgomery are just 23 and still a bit young for the big stage.<\/p>\n

So, which rotation would you rather have now? \u00a0It isn’t like the Ray’s AAA guys Montgomery or Odorizzi could do any worse than what Houston’s 4th and 5th starters did this season. \u00a0And you can clearly see that Archer’s performance trumps Norris’, and Torres’ amazing bullpen work is better than Bedard’s 96 ERA+ work.<\/p>\n

The Rays continue to have the best pitching development system in the majors, even ahead of St. Louis, who turns out mid-90s hurler after mid-90s hurler.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the beginning of the season, Houston’s MLB rotation looked so weak that I asked in this space whether you would prefer to have the Houston Astros MLB rotation or the Durham Bulls (AAA affiliate of Tampa) Opening Day rotation? Now, more than 2\/3’s the way through the season, lets take another look. \u00a0Here’s some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[1909,1705,35,1676,1263,1300,1304,1702,1305,1919],"class_list":["post-7293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlbpitching","category-minorspitching","tag-alex-colome","tag-alex-torres","tag-brad-peacock","tag-bud-norris","tag-chris-archer","tag-erik-bedard","tag-jake-odorizzi","tag-lucas-harrell","tag-mike-montgomery","tag-philip-humber"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7293"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7408,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7293\/revisions\/7408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}