Hey All,

Sorry about my lack of posts recently. I just got back from a wonderful trip to Ireland and I didn’t have whole lot of computer access. But now I’m back, done with college apps (mostly), and close to being a second semester senior, so the posts should be much more frequent.

Anyway, I had an interesting Yankee discussion today on the chairlift at Okemo Mountain in Vt. I was talking to this guy about the the Yankees’ and Red Sox’s rotational top 3s. We were specifically discussing which team had the upper hand in this regard. He argued that the Red Sox had a far better top 3, mainly citing AJ’s inconsistencies and Vasquez’s most recent Yankee go-round as his evidence. I, on the other hand, argued that the difference between the two top 3s is not all that big. While the combination of Lester, Beckett, and Lackey is pretty formidable, I just don’t see the CC-AJ-Vasquez combo falling too far behind. So, I hopped off the lift and I thought to myself, I SHOULD DO A STATISTICAL ANALYSIS WHEN I GET HOME! So here we go…

Yankees Top 3-

As we all know, the Yankees top 3 is made up of jolly old CC Sabathia, AJ Burnett, and the newly acquired Javier Vazquez. Any one of these pitchers could be considered #1 starters on many teams across both leagues.

Sabathia had a stellar last season. He lived up to his work horse expectation, starting 34 games and pitching 230 innings over the regular season. In the postseason, he pitched 36.1 innings. He pitched to the tune of a 3.37 ERA, a 1.15 WHIP, and had a 2.94 SO/BB ratio. These numbers didn’t stray too far from his career totals (3.67 ERA, 1.23 WHIP, 2.69 SO/BB). In 2009, his WAR was 6.0. In short, he was awesome last season and has been pretty consistently awesome over his career.

AJ Burnett is Mr. Inconsistent, but we knew that when he signed. He pitched brilliantly at times, like game 2 of the World Series (I was there. It was amazing). And then pitched games like the 1-14 loss to the Sox in August (I was there. It was miserable. He gave up 9 ER over 5.). Anyway, all of that inconsistency over 34 starts adds up to a 4.04 ERA, a 1.40 WHIP, a 2.01 SO/BB, and a respectable 3.1 WAR. It is important to not that Burnett pitched 207 innings and did not get hurt. It was the first time in his career that he pitched back to back 200 IP seasons.  For his career, Burnett has a 3.84 ERA, a 1.30 WHIP, and a 2.22 ERA. So, like Sabathia, he didn’t stray too far from his career numbers.

Javier Vazquez was one of the two big Yankee additions, the other being Granderson. Javy had a stint with the Yankees in 2004, but it was not great to say the least. He finished with a 4.91 ERA… Granted, he did have a brilliant first half that got him onto the All-Star team. Later on in the season, he had a shoulder injury that he tried to play through and apparently failed. Anyway, Javy is known as a work horse and a strikeout guy. He has lived up to those expectations over the last few years. Vazquez has racked up more than 200 innings in each of the last 5 years (he only missed the mark once in the last 10 seasons where he pitched 196) and struck out no less than 184 batters. Last season was arguably his best season. He had a 2.87 ERA, a 1.03 WHIP, a 5.41!!! SO/BB, and a stellar 6.6 WAR. These unfortunately don’t match up with his career 4.19 ERA and 1.25 WHIP, but I’m kind of hoping the Vazquez of last season will stick around for a bit.

The Yankees Top 3 had a combined 15.7 WAR.

Red Sox-

Ok, so Lester, Beckett, and Lackey is pretty impressive. Lackey was obviously the big addition there. He netted a cool 82.5 million dollars over 5 years. Like the Yankees, any of these guys could be #1 starters.

Jon Lester, to me, is the scariest of the Red Sox. He is just so good. The guy is already a bonafide ace at age 25. Last season, he posted a 3.41 ERA, a 3.15 FIP, a 1.23 WHIP, a 3.52 SO/BB, and a 6.2 WAR. He struck out 225 men in 2009 and pitched 203.1 innings. He is another work horse strike out kind of guy. Good stuff from Lester in his second full season. His career numbers are similar, but it is a relatively small sample size. For his career, he has a 3.66 ERA, a 1.33 WHIP, and a 2.39 SO/BB. He has had a pretty unbelievable career so far. He has thrown a no-hitter, beat lymphoma, and won a World Series. Jeez…

Beckett doesn’t impress me all that much, to be honest. Granted, there is no doubting that he is a very very good pitcher. Last season, he had a 3.86 ERA, a 1.19 WHIP, struck out 199, pitched 212.1 innings, had a 3.62 SO/BB, and a 5.3 WAR. For his career, Beckett has a 3.79 ERA, a 1.22 WHIP, 85 SO/9, and 3.12 SO/BB. He is a very solid number 2 for the Red Sox.

Lackey was a pretty big acquisition for the Red Sox. He had always been consistently solid in LA, and I’m sure it will continue in Boston, which will certainly solidify that Top 3. Last season, he started 27 games, had a 3.83 ERA, a 1.27 WHIP, a 2.96 SO/BB, a 7.1 SO/9, a 3.9 WAR, and a 3.73 FIP. For his career, he has a 3.81 ERA, a 1.306 WHIP, a 2.72 SO/BB, and a 7.2 SO/9 (its crazy how similar his last season was to his career averages). There is no doubt in my mind that he will be a solid #3 in that rotation.

The combined 2009 WAR for the Red Sox Top 3 was 15.4

Verdict: When you look at these stats, it is pretty darn close. The Yankees pitchers had a slightly higher combined WAR, but Vazquez was pitching in a completely different league and his WAR was elevated. While it is almost a draw, I might give a very slight edge to the Sox, simply because we don’t know what Vazquez we are going to get. Going back to the chairlift conversation, all I was trying to prove was that the Red Sox’s Top 3 was not THAT MUCH better than the Yankees.  It is not. As a matter of fact, it is closer than I expected from a statistical standpoint. I mean it’s really really close. It will be very interesting to see what happens.

What do you all think?