Lance Lynn, Steven Strasburg, Tommy Milone and Yu Darvish are the fastest-rising players in the Worlds #1 Starting Pitcher rankings this week.  The top six pitchers are exactly the same now as they were at the start of the season:  1. Verlander, 2. Halladay, 3. Cliff Lee, 4. Kershaw, 5. Hamels, 6. Jered Weaver.  They’ve all pitched well, so they’ve all held their positions, which actually is a little odd.   The top ten pitchers in the majors are the same as they were at the start of the season except that CJ Wilson has replaced Tim Lincecum in the top ten, and there has been some shuttling of positions in the 7-10 spots.

                In the chart below, the column "Apr 4" represents the Game Score for any start that the pitcher made in the five-day start window April 4 to April 8; "Apr 9" represents the start window April 9 to 13.   At the moment we’re halfway through the start window April 24 to April 28, so a lot of pitchers haven’t made that start yet.

                A blue background in those columns indicates that this was the best start in the major leagues in that period.    Congratulations to Philip Humber on his perfect game, which was the highest-scoring game in the majors so far this season, with a Game Score of 96. 

                White-on-Black in the "Score" column indicates those pitchers whose scores have improved the most since the start of the season; White-on-Red indicates those who have fallen the furthest.   The largest improvement in the score since the start of the season is by Lance Lynn of the Cardinals, who has improved from 300.0—the starting point—up to 340.9. 

                There’s been a lot of movement in the rankings, if you look at it.   At the start of the season Freddy Garcia ranked 75^th, Bartolo Colon 113^th; now Colon is ahead of Garcia.   At the start of the season Jair Jurrjens was 33 spots ahead of Jake Westbrook (61 to 94); now Westbrook is ahead of Jurrjens.    The rankings are shifting very rapidly under 450 points, not so much over 450.

                Let’s look at the rankings now by team; in some cases these include pitchers no longer with the team, if those pitchers haven’t made a start with somebody else and I haven’t moved them for some reason.  I also probably have a couple of pitchers on the wrong team; I hope you’ll be tolerant of that.  I just don’t always look at the "team" category when I’m updating the rankings.

                Chris Carpenter is ranked as the Cardinals #1 starter, which is fine with me; he’s still their number one starter.   He’s just out.   Same with Tim Hudson in Atlanta

Thanks for reading.