What do James Baldwin, Scott Erickson and Geremi Gonzalez all have in common? They all started games for the Mets in the last 10 years. Congratulations if you’ve successfully put those performances out of your mind. That trio combined for 29 ER in 28 IP. And they’re hardly alone for rotten performances on the mound in the last decade.
We spend so much time focusing on who will be the five starters on the Opening Day roster that we lose sight of the fact that the team will use many more than five different guys to begin a game. Over the last 10 years, the Mets have used 113 starting pitchers, an average of over 11 per season. The fewest they’ve used in the last decade has been eight, which happened in 2005. And that year Kaz Ishii and Victor Zambrano pitched, so it’s not like using fewer pitchers guarantees better guys will be on the mound.
Last year the Mets used 12 different starters, which was an improvement over a season ago when the club used 13. That tied for the most starting pitchers in the past decade, matching the total achieved by the 97-win 2006 club. Only twice in the past 10 years have the Mets used fewer than 10 starting pitchers in a season. In addition to 2005, the 2011 club failed to reach double-digits in starters. That year’s edition used nine different pitchers in a starting role.
Since we’re looking at 10 years’ worth of starters, let’s take the 50 seasons with the most innings pitched, break that into groups of 10 and derive an average for the five rotation slots. Here’s what we come up with:
#1 – 212.1
#2 – 191.1
#3 – 168.2
#4 – 130.2
#5 – 104.2
Now, let’s compare those numbers to the five starters who logged the most innings for the club last year.
199.0 – Dillon Gee
178.1 – Matt Harvey
143.0 – Jonathon Niese
130.2 – Jeremy Hefner
100.0 – Zack Wheeler
The top three spots all fell short of our 10-year average, the fourth slot was exactly right and the fifth slot was 4.2 IP shy. But all in all, last year’s numbers were not too far off from what we would hope our top five starters would give us in innings.
Let’s use our 10-year numbers and attach 2014 names. Let’s pencil Niese in for 215 IP, Gee for 190, Bartolo Colon for 165, Wheeler for 130 and Jenrry Mejia for 100. Maybe Niese seems too high and Wheeler seems too low but as a group, if the Mets get 800 IP from the guys they hope form the rotation on April 1st, it seems most of us would be happy with that total.
Last year’s starters pitched 969.2 IP, leaving us 169.2 innings for our depth starters to absorb. Hopefully Rafael Montero and Noah Syndergaard get the bulk of those, but the odds that those two combine for 169.2 IP are just about nil. Wheeler’s 100 IP last year is the absolute upside of what we should expect and Harvey’s 59.1 in his MLB debut season is probably a more realistic goal. So, let’s give Montero and Syndergaard a combined 100 IP.
That still leaves roughly 70 IP up for grabs, with Jacob deGrom, John Lannan and Daisuke Matsuzaka the most likely candidates. It’s possible Carlos Torres will get a spot start or three and he might soak up some of those 70 innings, too.
If those are the 11 pitchers who start a game for the 2014 Mets, it’s likely deGrom and Lannan will be the worst of the bunch. Hey, that beats last year when Aaron Laffey and Collin McHugh started games. Or 2012 with Chris Schwinden and Miguel Batista or previous years with D.J. Carrasco and Pat Misch and David Williams and Jose Lima and on and on and on got the call.
And who knows – maybe Darin Gorski outpitches one of the others at Triple-A and get his shot.
Great post. A lot of fans misunderstand the Lannan and Dice-K signings as some vote against Mejia when it’s most likely exactly what you’re writing about here–depth.
If the starting 5 stay healthy and avoid any significant time on the DL how will the Mets be able to bring up any of the youngsters who will have inning limitations on their season? Unless Colon is traded at the deadline and the Mets use his slot. I don’t think SA will see any urgent need.
The Mets will be thrilled if none of their pitchers need time on the DL!
Last year they lost Santana for the entire year, Marcum had his season both delayed at the start and end with injury, they lost Niese for roughly 50 days, Hefner had a season-ending injury, Harvey missed September and Mejia got hurt after just a handful of starts.
Hopefully, it won’t be that bad again but odds are against them being the 2013 A’s and needing just seven starters all year.
I decided to do what you did, except with 2013 stats from all NL teams and sorted by GS instead of IP because pitchers how deep a SP goes does depend on the offense. I also included the standard deviations.
#1:
Starts-32.6, std-0.83
IP-205.9, std-17.26
#2:
Starts-31.4, std-0.51
IP-194.87, std-16.91
#3:
Starts-29, std-1.73
IP-174.93, std-11.37
#4:
Starts-21.93, std-2.25
IP-128.16, std-18.37
#5:
Starts-16.47, std-2.03
IP-94.49, std-14.97
#6:
Starts-11.4, std-0.99
IP-60.09, std-7.6
#7:
Starts-8.13, std-0.83
IP-44.2, std-7.69
#8:
Starts-5.93, std-0.88
IP-30.44, std-5.27
#9:
Starts-3.6, std-0.74
IP-16.49, std-5.56
#10:
Starts-1.35, std-0.49
IP-5.86, std-3.36
Now we’ll compare those stats to 2013 Mets.
#1:Gee-32 GS
#2:Harvey-26 GS
#3:Niese-24 GS
#4-Hefner-23 GS
#5:Wheeler-17 GS
#6:Marcum-12 GS
#7:Torres-9 GS
#8:Dice-K-7 GS
#9:Mejia-5 GS
#10:Harang-4S
So #1 was average, #2/3 were well below average but #4/5 were slightly above average. #6 down were all about average too.
Couple differences when comparing your analysis with mine.
-Most teams have 2 starters who are absolutely locks for a full healthy season. The 3rd starter is really close, but may miss a few starts.
-There is a huge drop off after #3 in terms of GS.
-#4/5 has the largest standard deviation in GS. This spot probably accounts for a lot of the players who were injured for a decent time on the DL. Also a lot of midseason prospects fall into this category too.
-The top5 usually start around 80% of the games.
-In addition to the top5, a team will likely have 3 additional starters who will spend at least a month in the majors starting games (5 starts)
Now for some projections.
Harvey was a #7 when he debuted in 2012, Wheeler was #4 in 2013. Using that as a guide, i’d place Montero and Noah between that. Montero will probably be on the higher end while Noah on the lower end. If we add #7 and #4 together, we get 30 starts and 175 IP. Even being uber conservative and adding #8 with #5, we get 22.5 starts and 125 IP. It might be hard to believe, it’s very likely we’re gonna get almost a full season of Montero/Noah stats combined next year.
With normal luck, only one of Colon/Wheeler/Niese/Gee will miss significant time next year. I hate projecting something bad, but my money is on Wheeler being that guy (no reason, just gut feeling)
Good stuff! Thanks for doing this.
Yours is more detailed but I don’t think the conclusions are materially different than mine – they’re just stated in starts rather than innings. If I carried mine out past the first five starters, I expect that trend would have continued.
Nice work on both accounts Brian and name. Thanks for adding the std data. That is very useful. I really enjoyed reading this.
Hey Brian and Name,
Great stuff! This gives meaning the old saying that you never have enough good pitching. We all know the “s**t” happens. Hopefully the Mets will have enough decent arms when it occurs.
The fact that Alderson has stacked at least 10 ML quality starters is a testament to how much the quality and Quantity of talent on this team has improved. The second set of 5- Syndergard, Montero, de Grom, Dice K, and Lannan could all win 8 or more games if things broke right for the Mets and them.