Rotation Rankings: Week 7

Previous Rankings: Week 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

Week seven of our Rotation Rankings: the statistical ranking of every rotation in Major League Baseball. More a fan of offense? Check out our Leadoff Rankings, based on every teams' first and second batters.This week, we're bringing out something new: a normalized formula. For the last few weeks, we've been basically eyeballing the stats, using our knowledge of the teams as well as the numbers to try and place each time in a slot that made the most sense based on season performance, while keeping in mind how the last week went for each team. Now, however, we have a formula--using WHIP, ERA, and some other statistics, we've compared them all to league averages to come up with normalized scores, which we've then set to a ratio according to importance (WHIP being more important than K/9, for example), which gives us a final, weighted, relative score. The season stats get weighted towards 90% of the total, while the last week's statistics account for the last 10% (allowing some fluctuation based on recent performance, which is really what most Power Rankings do without realizing it). To see how much movement there was when we switched to the formula (as well as how your favorite team stacks up), hit the jump!

Rotation Rankings: Week 6

Previous Rankings: Week 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Week six of our Rotation Rankings: the statistical ranking of every rotation in Major League Baseball. More a fan of offense? Check out our Leadoff Rankings, based on every teams' first and second batters.This week, we're bringing out something new: a normalized formula. For the last few weeks, we've been basically eyeballing the stats, using our knowledge of the teams as well as the numbers to try and place each time in a slot that made the most sense based on season performance, while keeping in mind how the last week went for each team. Now, however, we have a formula--using WHIP, ERA, and some other statistics, we've compared them all to league averages to come up with normalized scores, which we've then set to a ratio according to importance (WHIP being more important than K/9, for example), which gives us a final, weighted, relative score. The season stats get weighted towards 90% of the total, while the last week's statistics account for the last 10% (allowing some fluctuation based on recent performance, which is really what most Power Rankings do without realizing it). To see how much movement there was when we switched to the formula (as well as how your favorite team stacks up), hit the jump!

Rotation Rankings: Week 5

Previous Rankings: Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4

Week five of our Rotation Rankings: the statistical ranking of every rotation in Major League Baseball. For a better explanation, check out our debut rankings. More a fan of offense? Check out our Leadoff Rankings, based on every teams' first and second batters. As we get further into the season, these rankings are based mostly on season performance, with a bias towards this week's performance when two teams are comparable. To see which teams were the real movers and shakers this week, hit the jump!

Rotation Rankings: Week 4

Previous Rankings: Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3

Week four of our Rotation Rankings: the statistical ranking of every rotation in Major League Baseball. For a better explanation, check out our debut rankings. More a fan of offense? Check out our Leadoff Rankings, based on every teams' first and second batters. As we get further into the season, these rankings are based mostly on season performance, with a small bias towards this week's performance when two teams were very comparable. There were some interesting ranking quirks this week, mostly because of fantastic weeks by some of the teams that had previously been lower in the rankings--something to be expected early in the season. A few teams actually improved on their season performances but managed to fall in the rankings, due solely to the fact that the teams behind them out performed them as well. Eventually these sort of things will even out, but after four weeks it's still easy enough for one great week to pull a team up 15 slots. To see which teams were the real movers and shakers this week, hit the jump!

Rotation Rankings: Week 3

Previous Rankings: Week 1 | Week 2

Week three of our Rotation Rankings: the statistical ranking of every rotation in Major League Baseball. For a better explanation, check out our debut rankings. More a fan of offense? Check out our Leadoff Rankings, based on every teams' first and second batters. As we get further into the season, these rankings are based mostly on season performance, with a small bias towards this week's performance when two teams were very comparable.

G: Games; ERA: Earned Run Average; WHIP: (Walks + Hits)/Innings Pitched; GS: Game Score; K/BB: Strikeout-to-walk ratio; K/9: Strikeouts per nine innings

30. (LW: 26) New York Mets (5-13)
This Week: 1-6, 5.80 ERA, 1.74 WHIP, 41.9 GS, 1.32 K/BB, 5.58 K/9
Season Stats: 4-10, 5.68 ERA, 1.63 WHIP, 44.3 GS, 1.58 K/BB, 6.96 K/9
R.A. Dickey became the first Mets starter to make it into the eighth inning last night, but he still managed to let up four runs on eight hits to the lowly Astros.

29. (LW: 27) Arizona Diamondbacks (8-8)
This Week: 2-2, 5.22 ERA, 1.40 WHIP, 47.8 GS, 2.36 K/BB, 7.98 K/9
Season Stats: 5-7, 5.65 ERA, 1.48 WHIP, 45.8 GS, 1.87 K/BB, 6.92 K/9
Not much changed this week for the D-Backs' starting rotation. Though they are striking batters out at a higher rate (almost 8 K/9), the staff ERA is still above 5.50 and their WHIP remains in the bottom half of the league.

28. (LW: 14) Cincinnati Reds (9-9)
This Week: 1-4, 7.92 ERA, 1.76 WHIP, 38.7 GS, 2.14 K/BB, 8.80 K/9
Season Stats: 7-5, 5.35 ERA, 1.37 WHIP, 48.4 GS, 2.62 K/BB, 8.64 K/9
On four occasions in the last week, a Reds starter allowed five or more runs in a game. That includes a 3.1-inning, six-run outing from from youngster Travis Wood, who has a 5.73 ERA on the season.

(For number 27 all the way to #1, hit the jump!)

Rotation Rankings: Week 2

Week two of our Rotation Rankings: the statistical ranking of every rotation in MLB. For a better explanation, check out last week's rankings (also shown as LW). More a fan of offense? Check out our Leadoff Rankings, based on every teams first and second batters. 

G: Games; ERA: Earned Run Average; WHIP: (Walks + Hits)/Innings Pitched; GS: Game Score; K/BB: Strikeout-to-walk ratio; K/9: Strikeouts per nine innings

30. (LW: 29) Boston Red Sox (2-9, 5th AL East)
This Week: 2-3, 5.51 ERA, 1.47 WHIP, 48.0 GS, 2.54 K/BB, 9.09 K/9
Season Stats: 2-7, 6.83 ERA, 1.59 WHIP, 42.2 GS, 1.80 K/BB, 6.98 K/9
Well, the Red Sox are in last place in just about everything, aren't they?  I guess last night's rainout was a fortunate for them and they're 6.83 rotation ERA.  Daisuke Matsuzaka is the biggest culprit, giving up seven earned runs in two innings Monday night to the Rays.

29. (LW: 30) Houston Astros (3-9, 6th NL Central)
This Week: 2-2, 3.98 ERA, 1.42 WHIP, 50.1 GS, 2.23 K/BB, 6.07 K/9
Season Stats: 2-6, 6.02 ERA, 1.60 WHIP, 41.8 GS, 1.88 K/BB, 6.02 K/9 
You know, the Astros lineup really isn't that bad. And Brett Myers is trying, he really really is--he's got a nice 1-0 record with a 1.77 ERA in three starts for Houston, including what should have been an opening day home victory over the Phillies before the bullpen blew it. This week was actually not that bad for Houston, but other than Myers and a fairly promising J.A. Happ, there's not much to look forward to in terms of who shows up on the Astros "probable starter" that day.

28. (LW: 17) Chicago Cubs (6-6, 3rd NL Central)
This Week: 3-2, 7.72 ERA, 1.88 WHIP, 37.8 GS, 2.23 K/BB, 8.61 K/9
Season Stats: 4-4, 5.80 ERA, 1.61 WHIP, 44.7 GS, 2.65 K/BB, 8.69 K/9
Matt Garza (0-1, 5.68 ERA) has been underwhelming in his first two starts, and in that sense he's paced the Cubbies rotation perfectly. Carlos Zambrano picked up a win yesterday despite giving up 5 runs in 5.2 innings, not exactly a good recipe for success--the Cubs need someone to start acting like an ace, and it needs to happen quickly.

(For number 27 all the way to #1, hit the jump!)

Rotation Rankings: Week 1

Lincecum got off to a hot start, but how 
about the rest of the Giants rotation?

One full week has come and gone in the 2011 Major League Baseball season, enough time for hopes to be built (see: Baltimore; Pittsburgh) or for fanbases to wonder what has happened to their team (see: Boston, Tampa Bay). Are these evaluations always accurate? Of course not--five or six games is not nearly enough time for a large enough sample size in basically any statistic--but they're something, so we use them with quite a large grain of salt. With that in mind, we present our first Rotation Rankings--similar to our Leadoff Rankings (released every Monday), our Rotation Rankings are purely statistical evaluations of the performance of each starting rotation. We've tracked each start, and looked at a few basic, key statistics: earned run average, game score (explanation: here), strikeout-to-walk ratio, and some others explained below. In the first week, ERA is very volatile--just one extra run over the course of a week can mean a difference in ERA of 0.20-0.30 for an entire rotation, so keep that in mind when comparing differences in ERA. Obviously there is going to be quite a lot of movement between weeks one, two, and the rest of the season, but here's what we have so far: