Early Expectations - Pirates Rotation, Wrapping It Up

I'm finishing up my "Early Expectations - Pittsburgh Pirates Rotation Series" tonight. Here's the previous installments:

Part 1: Click Here
Part 2: James McDonald - Click Here
Part 3: Ross Ohlendorf - Click Here
Part 4: Paul Maholm - Click Here
Part 5: Kevin Correia - Click Here
Part 6: Charlie Morton - Click Here

As you may have noticed, neither Scott Olsen nor Jeff Karstens were included in this series. That shows how little of a factor I think either of these two will be in the rotation this year. I do expect one or both of them to make a handful of starts this year, but that to me isn't worth it. My hope is that neither of them will have to make a start, because that would mean that the 5 talked about in this series will have been effective enough to stay in the rotation, or at least stayed in there long enough to be replaced by Rudy Owens or Bryan Morris in June or July. So we're going to wrap it all up and give some expectations for the rotation as a whole.

First, here's what I predicted for each pitcher, in order of expected ERA's.

James McDonald: 3.60 ERA, 3.35 FIP, 8.2 K/9, 3.1 BB/9
Ross Ohlendorf: 4.20 ERA, 4.10 FIP, 7.0 K/9, 2.7 BB/9
Kevin Correia: 4.45 ERA, 4.25 FIP, 6.5 K/9, 3.2 BB/9
Charlie Morton: 4.70 ERA, 4.35 FIP, 6.5 K/9, 3.3 BB/9
Paul Maholm: 4.75 ERA, 4.25 FIP, 4.8 K/9, 2.7 BB/9

All of those ERA's averaged out bring those 5 starters to a 4.34 ERA. Of course that's not an accurate way of measuring that, because if you're going to average pitchers out you'd have to weigh in the innings pitched, since a pitcher with more innings pitched would have a bigger impact on the over all average ERA. But this works just for speculation. Last year's starters average ERA was 5.28, so 4.34 would be a pretty good improvement. This might be somewhat optimistic, and the Pirates pitching usually finds a way to do well worse than expected, so if I had to guess I'd say the team ERA will be higher than my clumsily arrived at 4.34 number.

So from my analysis, James McDonald is going to lead this rotation, and it won't be close. I have him at 3.60 ERA with 8.2 K/9, which is significantly better than everyone else on the staff. It's pretty close after Ohlendorf with Correia, Morton, and Maholm all having pretty low expectations in my mind. Morton and Correia have the ability to outdo my expectations, but I'm really low on Maholm this year. I don't think McDonald could do much better than the numbers I gave him, and he'll probably do worse. The Pirates infield is not going to be good, so that isn't going to help the staff. I did factor that in however, as you can see every single pitcher has a lower FIP than ERA.

Now these 5 are certainly not going to be making all the starts for the Pirates this year. I expect Rudy Owens and Bryan Morris to make their big league debuts this summer, as well as Justin Wilson having a pretty decent shot at it. Owens is the guy I have the most confidence in, just because of his superior control. If you can locate your pitches, you can make it in the majors even with average stuff, which he has. Morris has better stuff but still a lot of issues to work out with his location and pitch selection. It's optimistic to seeing him being a solid force in the rotation in 2011, but I think he'll do well enough in AAA to earn a call-up, especially because of the thinness of what will be in the major leagues.

When I started this series, the Pirates were still in pursuit of Carl Pavano, Jeff Francis, and a couple other starters, but both of those guys have been signed and the Pirates will have to go into 2011 with what they have right now.

It's not going to be pretty. This isn't a playoff team by any stretch of the rotation. I am honestly expecting the offense to have its best season since the Brian Giles days. The tools on this unit are exciting, but it is by no means a guarantee that they are going to produce at the rate they are capable of. It's still a really young team and mistakes are going to be common. However, if the Pirates want to become near respectable (80-85 wins), this pitching staff is going to have to perform out of its mind.

So there you have it. I'm going to be starting up a little fantasy baseball analysis in the next week or so, so check back for that if you're into that stuff.