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."