Ranking the Rotations

Now that we've entered July, it's time for things to start getting serious. As the Brewers and Cubs have showed us in the past week, you can only go so far as your rotation allows you, specifically the front-end. Sure, the guys at the back of the rotation are important, but unless you have three horses at the front, to go against the best the other contenders have to offer in head-to-head match-ups, the likelihood of your playing in October aren't going to be great.

Since the wildcard era saw it's first playoff season in 1995, no team that has been more than nine games out of either first place in their division or for the wildcard has made the playoffs. So, with the seven teams out of the way who do not qualify -- Toronto, Kansas City, Cleveland, Seattle, Washington, Houston and San Diego -- I've taken a look at the front three starting pitchers in each of the rotations of the 23 teams who still have a shot at the playoffs. Yeah, some of those teams (Pittsburgh, Baltimore) may not have a chance at post-season baseball, but based on the past thirteen seasons, they aren't exactly eliminated from contention just yet.

What I've done is, for each league, I've ranked the qualifying pitchers best to worst. From there, I determined the average rank of the pitchers for each team. And here are the results:

American League

Rank	Team	Pitchers
(1)	Tampa Bay	Shields, Garza, Kazmir
(2)	Boston	Beckett, Matsuzaka, Lester
(3)	Los Angeles	Lackey, Weaver, Garland
(4)	Oakland	Blanton, Buchscerer, Eveland
(5)	Chicago	Buerhle, Vazquez, Danks
(6)	New York	Pettite, Mussina, Chamberlain
(7)	Detroit	Verlander, Rogers, Galarraga
(8)	Minnesota	Hernandez, Blackburn, Baker
(9)	Texas	Millwood, Feldman, Harrison
(10)	Baltimore	Guthrie, Cabrera, Burres

National League

Rank	Team	Pitchers
(1)	Chicago	Zambrano, Harden, Dempster
(2)	Arizona	Webb, Haren, Davis
(3)	Milwaukee	Sheets, Sabathia, Parra
(4)	Philadelphia	Hamels, Moyer, Kendrick
(5)	Los Angeles	Lowe, Billingsley, Kuroda
(6)	New York	Santana, Maine, Perez
(7)	Atlanta	Hudson, Jurrjens, Reyes
(8)	Cincinnati	Harang, Volquez, Cueto
(9)	San Francisco	Lincecum, Cain, Sanchez
(10)	Florida	Nolasco, Miller, Olsen
(11)	St. Louis	Lohse, Looper, Wellemeyer
(12)	Pittsburgh	Snell, Duke, Malholm
(13)	Colorado	Cook, Jimenez, De la Rosa

So, there you have it.

I may take this a step further in the next few days and apply it to the heard of the lineup.

Until then, I've also got the third installment of my Braves' State of the Organization series still to come.