I wrote a similar post last year. The first paragraph describing the methodology is pulled right from that post.
When describing starting pitchers, people often say things like "he's an ace" or "he's a #4 pitcher". A pet peeve of mine is the wrongful labeling of a pitcher to a certain rotation spot, based on subjective perception rather than objective fact. Poll a group of baseball fans about this topic and you will likely receive a vast array of opinions. My take, which is similar to the ones shared in this post and this post, is that if a pitcher is in the top 1/5 of starters in his league, then he should be called a #1 starter. The next 1/5 are #2's, the next 1/5 are #3's, etc. I pulled some statistics from FanGraphs to devise a quick and dirty way of classifying National League starters at this point in the season.
A total of 8,047.2 innings were thrown by 123 different NL starters through Wednesday. I put together a spreadsheet of all these pitchers, their innings pitched, and their FIP (fielding independent pitching). Dividing 8,047.2 by five, I created five groups of 1609.2 innings. Beginning with the pitcher who boasts the best FIP (Stephen Strasburg, 1.77 FIP through 36.2 innings pitched), I summed innings until reaching 1609.2 to determine #1 pitchers. I did the same all the way through the bottom spot on the list, filled by Fernando Nieve and his 15.63 FIP. Standard caveats apply here -- FIP doesn't account for batted balls like tERA, it isn't park adjusted, etc., but it's better than ERA for evaluating a pitcher's performance. Here are the results, showing pitcher classification, the number of pitchers that fit that classification, and the corresponding FIP:
Rank | Pitchers | FIP Range |
---|---|---|
1 | 23 | 0.00-3.41 |
2 | 18 | 3.42-3.86 |
3 | 18 | 3.87-4.33 |
4 | 24 | 4.34-4.73 |
5 | 40 | 4.74+ |
Of the top 23 pitchers, only 12 have thrown 90+ innings. Here is how Mets starters stack up:
Pitcher | IP | FIP | Rank |
---|---|---|---|
R.A. Dickey | 58.1 | 3.01 | Mid #1 |
Johan Santana | 120 | 3.67 | Mid #2 |
Mike Pelfrey | 108 | 3.82 | Low #2 |
Jon Niese | 89.2 | 3.95 | High #3 |
Hisanori Takahashi | 49 | 4.72 | Low #4 |
John Maine | 39.2 | 5.83 | Mid #5 |
Oliver Perez | 33.33 | 6.07 | Mid #5 |
Fernando Nieve | 2 | 15.63 | Low #5 |
Check out the spreadsheet for the rest of the league's starters.