A Brief Post About A Stupid Comment Jon Heyman Made
Jon Heyman previews the best rotations, lineups, etc. I'm sure he writes some other stupid stuff, this being Jon Heyman, but let's focus on this:
The Red Sox, Yankees and White Sox rotations probably have stronger cases to be cited as the best overall starting staffs based on their top-heavy strengths. But it's hard to make a case any team has a rotation as solid as the Angels from top to bottom
No. No it's not hard to make a case. Let's ignore the White Sox, so as for me not to be accused of homerism and focus on how mind-numbingly easy it is to make the case that the Red Sox rotation is both better and deeper than the Angels.
Career ERA+ for Angels starters in 2010
Jered Weaver: 121
Joe Saunders: 106
Scott Kazmir: 117
Ervin "Don't Call Me Johan" Santana: 99
Joel Pineiro: 98
Career ERA+ for Red Sox starters in 2010:
Clay Bucholz: 95
Tim Wakefield: 108
Josh Beckett: 117
John Lackey: 117
Jon Lester: 128
So let's sum up: The Red Sox have a better ace in Lester (in fact, they probably have two aces in Lester and Beckett since Beckett's up and down...but let's not stack the deck since I guess you could say the same about Santana). The Red Sox have fewer players around the league average line. Blah blah blah blah blah.
Any possible argument you could make is null. "The Angels have younger player on their upswings"? BZZZT. Lester and Bucholz are every bit the talents Saunders and Weaver are. "The Angels have great peripheral numbers!" And the Red Sox don't? "The Angels go deeper than five deep if they need to."? Well, Dice-K's not exactly chopped liver.
And that's not even taking into account the White Sox, who of course...are probably every bit as deep as the Angels and better at the top.
But why let that get in the way of the annual installment of "Sportswriters distort reality to overrate Los Angeles Angels yet again."
7 comments:
Ervin Santana may have come on last year, but he's as up and down as it gets. He went from sensational rookie to demoted to triple-A to great starter. Maybe if they still had Lackey this argument could be entertained, but as it stands its completely ridiculous.
Bless you, Jon Heyman, for thinking so highly of the Angels rotation. But... you're wrong.
And to address something Jack M brought up in GChat--yes, I realize that ERA+ is by no means the be all and end all of pitching evaluations.
But it's a point of easy comparison. Go ahead and compare VORP or DIPS if you like. I think a quick glance at the names on the list suggests that those too will bear out my main point.
But who knows--maybe Jon Heyman is right. Not that he is right very often about baseball. But maybe!
And just imagine if Nick Adenhart hadn't gotten killed!
too soon john, too soon
So the Angels lost their second best pitcher from last year to the Red Sox (who also had a very good rotation last year) and still have the best rotation in baseball?
That is no proof but intuition might lead a more rational person to think twice.
:wongisright:
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