MLB Pitchers: First Half

[prohornblower]

Independent of ballpark factors and team defense, these are the pitchers who have given their team the best chance to win the highest percentage of games in which they’ve started. These are pitchers with an arbitrary minimum of 16 GS + a minimum of 100 IP.

1) Brad Penny
2) Dan Haren
3) Tim Hudson
4) Jake Peavy
5) Chris Young
6) Ian Snell
7) Jon Garland
8) Kelvim Escobar
9) Derek Lowe
10) John Lackey
11) John Maine
12) Matt Morris
13) Brandon Webb
14) Joe Blanton
15) Justin Verlander
16) Mark Buehrle
17) James Shields
18) Johan Santana
19) Jeff Francis
20) Daisuke Matzusaka
21) CC Sabathia
22) Noah Lowry
23) Gil Meche
24) Aaron Harang
25) Josh Beckett
26) Ben Sheets
27) Matt Cain
28) Fausto Carmona
29) Tom Gorzellany
30) Ted Lilly

Notable exclusions include: Perez, Mitre, Guthrie, Wang, James, & King Felix. Hopefully they start enough games for an evaluation at season’s end.

Overall value may be slightly different when considering total starts; for instance, Erik Bedard narrowly missed the top 30, but has started 19 games (Oswalt leads all with 20), whereas Escobar and Beckett are on the list, but have only started 16 games. That is to say, of course, that the latter two may not rank as high as Bedard after 19 starts.