Fortunately, I have something in the hopper that I like for you guys tomorrow or the next day, because, in terms of the pitching rankings, nothing continues to happen.   An astonishing amount of nothing.    Justin Verlander has pitched a couple of off games and could be in danger of slipping from his top spot, except that Kershaw, the only guy within hailing distance of him, didn’t pitch real well, either, so Verlander is still in a strong first-place position.    The top 10 remain essentially unchanged in the last month; some changes of position but the same top 10 as a month ago.    This is unusual, that there would be no one making a move within the top 10, but. . .that’s where we are.    I’ll present the data with little comment; blue background indicates a pitcher who has been pitching better than those around him in the last month; red indicates a pitcher who has not been pitching as well as those around him in the rankings:

The Desert

                In a sense, all rankings in this system under 400.00 are phony rankings:  in this sense, that no one is actually a bad enough pitcher to have truly established a performance level under 400.   If you posted a Game Score of 35, 35, 35 every time out, that would be equivalent to a ranking in this system of 350.00—but if you posted a Game Score about 35 every time out, you’d be out of  a job within a month or, if you’re defending a Cy Young Award, two months.    A pitcher has to post Game Scores around 40, on average, just to stay in the rotation.    The Rankings of 300 to 400 are inconsistent with the theory of the ranking system in a certain sense.

                But I had good reasons, I think, to set the system up the way it is.    I could have made 400 the base, started pitchers out at 400, and moved them up from there, up from the replacement level line.   If I had done that Stephen Strasburg would now rank about 45^th in the majors, rather than 101^st, and I know that a lot of people would like that better.   

                But if I had done that, to begin with, about 60 pitchers who are currently ranked wouldn’t be in the system at all.    It can happen, and occasionally does, that a young pitcher comes up, makes a start or even two starts, but pitches so poorly that he fails to show up in the rankings.   In the last week, for example, Garrett Richards and Casey Crosby have made starts, but don’t show up in the rankings because they didn’t pitch well enough to suggest that they deserve to be ranked.   It does happen.

                But if we started with a base of 400, rather than 300, that would happen a lot; there would be a lot of young pitchers hanging around, trying to get established in the rotation, who weren’t in the rankings.    I’d rather have them in there than not have them in there.

                If we bottomed out the system at 400, we’d have to change the off-season adjustment process, or half the league would start the new season at 400.   I’d rather have a system that distinguishes between those who proved something last year and those who proved nothing.   

                I call the area between 300 and 400 The Desert.    It is the long, dry stretch that a young pitcher must crawl across, must struggle across somehow, to reach the heart of the ranking system, that place where he is listed next to Ivan Nova and J. A. Happ and Jake Westbrook.  

                What we are doing, really, is this:  We are making the young pitcher prove that he can stay healthy and stay in the rotation and continue to produce, before we are willing to regard him as a "real" pitcher.   The reality is, most young pitchers will die in the desert.   Most of them are never going to make it to 400.   

                Remember how well Kyle Drabek was pitching a month ago?  Remember how well Luke Harrell was pitching early in the season, and Jake Arrieta, and remember those strong starts that Danny Duffy had?    Do you remember Mike Minor having that stretch of good games, and Jeanmar Gomez?    Remember Drew Smyly being mentioned as a Cy Young candidate?

                Young pitchers do that; they pitch well three, four, five games, and then they fall apart on you.   I used to call it Sam’s Law, after Sam Reich:   Young pitchers will break your heart.   They show flashes of brilliance, then they disintegrate in front of your eyes.

                I don’t want to rank them among established major league pitchers—even among not-very-good established pitchers, until they get through that period.   We’re far enough into the season now that the new pitchers and the pitchers coming back from injury are almost out of the desert.     Strasburg is at 389.0 now—89% of the way across the desert—and he now actually ranks in the top half of all ranked starting pitchers.   Johan Santana is in the 380s, Yu Darvish just short of 380, Lance Lynn at 377, Felix Doubrant at 372.    The good ones are starting to separate themselves from the herd.   That’s the way I think the system should operate.