Just a note here.   I wanted to use our new Starting Pitcher rankings to compare starting rotations.   I did something sort of like this a couple of years ago, when I first presented the starting pitcher ranking system.

                This is a take-it-for-what-it-is-worth exercise.   I went down the list of starting pitchers (the list as of April 30, 2015) and entered the #1 pitcher (Kershaw) in the slot for the Dodgers, S1, the #2 starting pitcher, Felix, in the slot for S1, Seattle, etc.    I made no exceptions for pitchers who are on the DL, known to be going on the DL, etc.; Wainwright is listed as the Cardinals’ S1 because that’s what the list shows.   Wainwright will begin to fade very rapidly in the rankings; all inactive pitchers will.   Obviously this was a debatable choice, and if you wanted to do this for some sort of predictive purpose, you might want to substitute a "300" for Wainwright.

                The teams with the strongest starting rotations in their divisions, as of April 30, are Baltimore, the White Sox, the Angels, the Nationals, the Cardinals, and the Dodgers.   The teams with the weakest rotations, by division:   the Yankees, Indians, A’s, Phillies, Brewers, and Diamondbacks.   Other notes:

                1)  Strongest rotation in the majors, by far:  Washington.    Washington’s #5 starter, Gio Gonzalez,  ranks ahead of the number one starter for no less than 13 teams.   That’s astonishing.   If it holds up over the course of the season. . . .one of the strongest rotations of all time.

                2)   Weakest starting rotation in the majors:  Arizona.    Arizona’s #1 starter, Josh Collmenter, ranks as the #75 starting pitcher in baseball.

                3)  The AL East generally has weak starting pitching.   No pitcher in the AL East is among the top 15 in baseball.

                4)   Not here to defend the Red Sox rotation or apologize for it; the Red Sox rotation is what it is, and we’ll see how it works.   But I will note that our #5 ranked starter, Joe Kelly, is a) better than the #5 starter of sixteen other teams, and b) climbing the charts rapidly, having already moved from 132^nd to 116^th since the season began.  

                5)  Wainwright’s injury obviously gives the Cubs the best starting rotation in that division, since St. Louis is ahead of Chicago only by a hair even WITH Wainwright.

                6)  My real purpose in doing this was to educate myself about the 30 major league rotations.   If I can force myself to do this once a week—which I probably can’t, but if I could—then I would develop a stronger understanding of who was in the rotation right now for all 30 teams, who their #1 starter was, etc.    I’m old; I have a hard time lodging all of that information in my head.

                7)  Miami’s rotation is surprisingly good.  . . not big names, but they’re pitching well, and most of them have been for a least a couple of months.  

                8)  Oakland is the wild card.   Oakland scans as having the weakest rotation in the AL West, but we’ve all seen Oakland re-construct their rotation over the course of the season a dozen times.   What matters is not how they look on paper over the course of the season; what matters is how they perform over the course of the season.