How Good is an NL Ace?: Mean Performance of Pitchers by Slot

There is a series of articles by Jack Sackman that you can find here.  It is an idea I found interesting an often use when I describe pitchers as a certain type of slot pitcher.  I think in common use a person referring to a guy as a one slot pitcher is more or less actually saying that the guy is a one slot pitcher on a first division team.  In other words, an ace on one of the ten best teams in baseball.  In this series of posts, I plan on going through each division and describing what each slot means and how that relates to teams.

AL East | Central | West
NL East | Central | West

NL Summary of Slots

In this post we will go through and look at four team FIP performances for each slot: median, first division cut off, best, and worst.  The following relates to numbers produced in 2011.

Slot 1
An NL pitcher at this slot could be described as:

Median	3.15
67th	3.24
33rd	3.05

The Nationals' Jordan Zimmerman (3.16 FIP) is your typical ace pitcher.  Philadelphia Phillie Cole Hamels (3.05 FIP) would be the threshold first division ace and Cardinal Jaime Garcia (3.23 FIP) would be the closest to a bottom rung ace.  In 2011, the Phillies had the best ace (Roy Halladay 32g 2.20 FIP) and the Astros were the worst (Lucas Harrell 2g 3.27 FIP; Bud Norris 30g 4.02 FIP).

Slot 2
An NL pitcher at this slot could be described as:

Median	3.62
67th	3.79
33rd	3.48

The average Slot 2 pitcher would be the Brewers Yovani Gallardo (3.59 FIP).  Reds' Ace Johnny Cueto (3.45 FIP) is the threshold first division second slot.  New Yankee Hiroki Kuroda (3.78 FIP) would qualify as a bottom threshold second slot pitcher.  The team with the best slot 2 performance are the Philles again (Cliff Lee 32g 2.60 FIP) and the worst was the Pirates (Paul Maholm 23g 3.78; Brad Lincoln 8g 3.88 FIP; Aaron Thompson 1g 3.95 FIP).

Slot 3
An NL pitcher at this slot could be described as:

Median	3.91
67th	4.05
33rd	3.73

Your typical three is the Cubs' Ryan Dempster (3.91 FIP).  The first division gate keeper is the Brewers Shawn Marcum (3.73 FIP).  Jason Marquis (4.05 FIP) would be the bottom rung three man.  The Phillies again have the best performance for the slot (Cole Hamels 31g 3.00 FIP; Vance Worley 1g 3.24 FIP) and the worst was, once again, the Pirates (Jeff Karstens 26g 4.29 FIP; James McDonald 6g 4.68 FIP).

Slot 4
An NL pitcher here can be described as:

Median	4.23
67th	4.55
33rd	4.08

Jhoulys Chacin (4.23 FIP) of the Rockies is the pitcher that embodies the meaning of the fourth slot.  The Brewers' Chris Narveson (4.06 FIP) would be your threshold 4 man and the Phillies' Kyle Kendrick (4.55 FIP) would be your lower tier line.  The Phillies once again set the tone here with the best 4 slot squad (Vance Worley 20g 3.24 FIP; Roy Oswalt 12g 3.44 FIP) and the worst was the Reds (Mike Leake 7g 4.21 FIP; Sam LeCure 4g 4.57 FIP; Edison Volquez 20g 5.29 FIP; Bronson Arroyo 1g 5.71 FIP).

Slot 5
An NL pitcher here can be described as:

Median	4.64
67th	5.27
33rd	4.41

The median 5 slot pitcher would be the Mets' Dillon Gee (4.65 FIP).  Your first division fiver was the fellow Met Mike Pelfrey (4.47 FIP) and the bottom third gate keeper was the Reds' Edison Volquez (5.29 FIP).  The Phillies sweep the slots (Roy Oswalt 11g 3.44FIP; Joe Blanton 8g 3.55 FIP; Kyle Kendrick 13g 4.75 FIP) in better fashion than the Orioles who rated last across the board. The team with the worst back end performance in the NL was the Diamondbacks (Joe Saunders 5g 4.78; Wade Miley 7g 4.79 FIP; Micah Owings 4g 4.85 FIP; Jason Marquis 3g 6.91; Barry Enright 7g 6.98 FIP; Armando Galarraga 6g 7.29 FIP).

AL Average Rotation
1 - Jordan Zimmerman, Nationals
2 - Yovani Gallardo, Brewers
3 - Ryan Dempster, Cubs
4 - Jhoulys Chacin, Rockies
5 - Dillon Gee, Mets

AL First Division Threshold Rotation
1 - Cole Hamels, Phillies
2 - Johnny Cueto, Reds
3 - Shawn Marcum, Brewers
4 - Chris Narveson, Brewers
5 - Mike Pelfrey, Mets

AL Team FIP by Pitching Postion

Keep an eye on the y-axis.  It changes from one graph to the next.  Also, the order of the teams change as well except for the Orioles who ranked as having the worst pitching by slot for every slot.

First Slot

Second Slot

Third Slot

Fourth Slot

Fifth Slot

As a little extra...here is the Orioles xWAR vs the World

Click to Enlarge

NL West FIP and Pitching xWARs by Slot

There is a series of articles by Jack Sackman that you can find here.  It is an idea I found interesting an often use when I describe pitchers as a certain type of slot pitcher.  I think in common use a person referring to a guy as a one slot pitcher is more or less actually saying that the guy is a one slot pitcher on a first division team.  In other words, an ace on one of the ten best teams in baseball.  In this series of posts, I am going through each division and describing what each slot means and how that relates to teams.

AL East | Central | West
NL East | Central | West

Methodology
For each team, slots were broken down in 32 starts per slot (for a total of 160 games).  Pitchers were ordered by FIP, lowest to highest.  They were then broken up into slots.  Their FIPs were weighted by inning allotment and a weighted average was calculated for each slot.

An example:

Chris Tillman had an FIP of 3.99 over 11 starts, Zach Britton had an FIP of 4.00 over 28 starts, and Jeremy Guthrie had an FIP of 4.51 over 32 starts.  For the purpose of this study, Tillman's 11 starts all counted for the Orioles slot 1 along with 21 of Britton's 28 starts.  The remaining 7 starts were put into the slot 2 position with 25 of Jeremy Guthrie's starts.  When a pitcher's starts are split between multiple slots, it is assumed that their FIP is equal for every inning thrown and that their IP are equal for every start.

NL West

FIP

The Diamondbacks look pretty awful here, but part of it has to do with how home run friendly their park is.

Below is the NL Central FIP by Slot Table.

	1	2	3	4	5
Diamondbacks	3.22	3.28	3.79	4.68	5.88
Dodgers	2.47	3.65	3.82	4.07	4.34
Giants	2.67	2.90	3.15	3.68	4.67
Padres	3.16	3.56	4.01	4.10	4.21
Rockies	3.41	3.94	4.30	4.72	5.79

xWAR

The following graph is simply a predicted fWAR value using only FIP and IP as described in this post.  It serves as an approximation of fWAR worth.

Below is the NL Central xWAR by Slot Table.

	1	2	3	4	5
Diamondbacks	4.42	4.31	2.45	0.70	-2.90
Dodgers	6.48	3.09	2.44	1.62	1.15
Giants	5.35	5.17	4.49	2.99	-0.13
Padres	4.23	2.95	2.02	1.85	1.36
Rockies	3.22	2.08	1.39	0.22	-2.54