(Sorry for the long post, I just don't think it is thread worthy and couldn't think of a better place to put it)
I got bored and decided to do some spreadsheet work, and while I have been concerned about the pitching situation this offseason, it is so much worse than I realized that I think Breslow is in a really tough spot.
In my opinion, (!!!obvious statement alert!!!) availability and consistent quality are the most important aspects of a starting pitcher. It's nice to have a guy who can throw and absolute gem every now and then, but if that same guy blows up two out of every three starts then he is going to seriously tax your bullpen over the course of the season. With that in mind, I wanted to look at starting pitchers around the league on a start to start basis, figuring out which teams were getting the most consistent amount of starts that gave their team a chance to win. I think that QS's are a good baseline for this, but I want to look a little bit deeper than that.
Paraphrasing what I did, is I looked at all of the individual starts throughout the league and assigned a score based off of innings, earned runs allowed and unearned runs allowed. Without boring with details, I started with a baseline of 5 innings pitched and 4 runs allowed, anything better and the pitcher gained points, anything worse and they lost points. My thinking with these numbers was that if a pitcher gave his team this much, he was at least giving them a chance to win the game. Unearned runs are also used in the calculation, though to a lesser extent than earned runs, as I think the best pitchers have an ability to prevent these when errors happen as well. I gave small bonuses for going 8+ innings and took extra points off for games in which they went less than 3 innings. I looked at total season scores, averages, and stuff like that, and I also look at how often a pitcher ended up in the top quartile of the 4860 games started and their delta with how many times they were in the bottom 30% (I didn't use bottom quartile because I wanted to account a bit for the openers that are used, who will always end up in the bottom of this type of data).
This was not a predictive analysis, as I did not look at things like K/BB rates, or HR/FB rates or BABIP against so it's a pretty surface level kind of analysis, but I think it gives a good idea of how much extra wear some of these teams put on their pitchers over the season.
Individually I only ranked against players who made at least 10 starts (and only included starts), but team wise, all starts were considered. There were 188 players to make 10 or more starts this season.
Findings:
1. Not that it will be a surprise to anyone but... it didn't look good for the Red Sox, as they ended up 26th in total value from their starters. They were 27th in value from innings and 20th in value from runs prevented, and maybe more alarmingly were 24th in starts in the top quartile while their delta between top and bottom starts was -26, with only the A's and Rockies having a worse delta. This seems bad to me.
2. The top 11 teams by Total Value were all either playoff teams or in the race until the final weekend. These teams included Seattle, Toronto and Texas at 1-3, and pretty clearly a step above the rest of the league (and this is where I may start a new thread in the MLB forum). The only teams outside of the top 11 to make the playoffs were the Dodgers (22nd), the Marlins (18th) and the Rays (24th, and also maybe an idea for another thread).
3. Logan Webb is really, really good. He was #1 overall, and also #1 by average game value, and his top vs bottom delta (I really need to come up with a better name for this), though Gerrit Cole was tied with him for most games in the top quartile at 19. Also, George Kirby is excellent and anyone who thinks the Mariners are going to move him to the Red Sox for Jarren Duran should send me some of what they are smoking. Finally, Chris Bassitt might have had the most underrated season of 2023. I have no idea how he managed to be worth only 2.5 WAR, it doesn't make any sense.
4. Of the other players who I have seen mentioned in this thread at various times: Framber Valdez was a top 5 value guy (and, quite frankly, I think is underrated), Burnes came in at 9th, Montgomery at 13th, and Giolito (believe it or not) just missed the top 20 (I never said this work was perfect). Snell was 30th overall, but was #1 in run prevention. His value is really held back by how rarely he goes deep into games.
5. Bello was clearly the Sox best pitcher here, and came in 46th overall, but his lack of consistency was a clear tick against him, as his delta was just +1. He was also basically the only Sox player inside the top 100 (okay, Pivetta was at 98). Sale at 20 starts was at 108 overall, but it actually looks a little worse than that as his rankings in the average categories were not better, especially his value for innings.
6. You guys really, really don't want to know where Nate Eovaldi ended up on the list.
Why did you type all of this?
Finally, the reason I did this. I then plugged the current projected rotations in for each MLB team as currently constructed, and I have to say.... it looks really really bad for the Red Sox. The data basically puts them just above the Rockies, White Sox and A's when it comes to starting pitching for 2024. The Padres pitching looks bad, too, and the Dodgers are currently near the bottom of the list, but I am only using 2023 stats, so, for instance, getting Buehler back will bump them up (and I might go back and do some work with 2022 and 2021 data... but frankly that isn't going to help the Sox much anyway). The Sox current rotation was actually last in the league in their delta metric.
Perhaps worse is the fact that the Yankees, while not quite in the bottom tier with the Red Sox, also clearly need to add a starting pitcher before opening day, and I can't imagine they are going to let any of the big 4 (I throw 4 out there assuming Burnes is going to get moved) go easily to the Red Sox.
Again this was something I just put together this afternoon and I really haven't done more than glance at where the Sox stand. If anyone wants to reach out for more info let me know. Sorry again for the long post.