Pitching in the American League East

When one thinks of the AL East, they think of slugging teams and tough ballparks for pitchers to pitch. They think of sluggers like Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez, Kevin Youkilis and Big Papi, Evan Longoria and Carlos Pena, and, more recently, guys like Jose Bautista, Vernon Wells, Nick Markakis and even Luke Scott. What they don't think of usually is pitching, however. But exactly 1/3 into the season, the AL East is producing all the Cy Young candidates for the American League.

ESPN.com produces a Cy Young Predictor based on The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers. Although with advanced pitching metrics, these basic statistics have been less important to some voters in recent years, it still gives a good idea of who is performing at a high level on the season. I posted below the current rankings for the American League pitchers. Since Victory Bonus (VB) is something that is only really applied at the end of the season, I will take away a prorated 3 from Neftali Feliz meaning that the top 9 candidates in the American League are from the AL East.

2010 Cy Young Predictor - AL
RK	PLAYER	TEAM	CYP	G	GS	IP	ER	K	SV	SHO	W-L	ERA	VB
1	David Price	TB	71.9	11	11	74.2	19	53	0	1	8-2	2.29	0
2	Phil Hughes	NYY	62.7	10	10	63.2	18	64	0	0	7-1	2.54	0
3	Andy Pettitte	NYY	61.7	10	10	65.1	18	41	0	0	7-1	2.48	0
4	Rafael Soriano	TB	59.5	23	0	22.1	4	19	15	0	2-0	1.61	0
5	Clay Buchholz	BOS	55.7	10	10	62.2	19	47	0	0	7-3	2.73	0
6	Jon Lester	BOS	54.8	11	11	72.2	24	77	0	0	6-2	2.97	0
7	Shaun Marcum	TOR	51.4	12	12	81.1	25	62	0	0	5-2	2.77	0
8	Jeff Niemann	TB	51.2	11	11	71.0	22	45	0	0	5-0	2.79	0
9	Neftali Feliz	TEX	50.5	25	0	25.1	8	26	14	0	1-1	2.84	3
10	A.J. Burnett	NYY	50.1	11	11	71.1	26	53	0	0	6-2	3.28	0

The interesting part of this list is that the pitchers are not the ones you would expect on each of the teams (when I used the pre-season projections to predict the Cy Young, the only name that came up that is still there is Jon Lester). On the Yankees you would expect CC Sabathia or Mariano Rivera (or even Javier Vazquez who came in 4th in the NL Cy Young voting last season) when their three candidates are Phil Hughes, Andy Pettitte and A.J. Burnett. For Boston, you would probably think of Josh Beckett or their free agent signing, John Lackey, but here is Clay Buchholz leading the charge with Jon Lester right behind him. For Tampa Bay, you'd immediately say Matt Garza or James Shields but the three Tampa pitchers are David Price, Jeff Niemann, and Rafael Soriano (yes, a closer for Tampa). And despite trading perennial Cy Young candidate Roy Halladay, the Blue Jays have produced a candidate of their own in Shaun Marcum.

Now we must ask ourselves how many of these guys are for real and how many are early-season aberrations? John Perrotto of Baseball Prospectus wrote on the ESPN TMI blog today that while David Price, Clay Buchholz and Phil Hughes have all started out strong, not all of them are pitching as well as it appears. Perrotto expects Price's ERA to look more like 4.50 than his stellar mark now due to ridiculously good luck so far this season (.248 BAbip). Similarly, Perrotto expects Buchholz to come back to earth due to his dropping stirkeout rates. Of all the starters on the list above, Buchholz has the lowest K total and swings and misses are a big part of his game. But Perrotto likes Hughes to continue his strong start going forward due to his extremely low HR/9 rate (0.6), his ability to throw his fastball over and get first pitch strikes (72% on fastballs and 67% overall). Also, Hughes' SIERA (Skills-Interactive Earned Run Average) is more in line with his ERA unlike Price and Buchholz.

FanGraphs likes Hughes too, putting him 3rd in the American League with a FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching) of 2.85. Ahead of him on the list are Francisco Liriano and Ricky Romero and behind him are Shaun Marcum, Jered Weaver and Jon Lester. In the top 20 are guys like Justin Verlander, Felix Hernandez, Clay Buchholz, A.J. Burnett, and Andy Pettitte. If you look at xFIP, though, FanGraphs drops Hughes down to 7th in the American League and Romero, Liriano, Shields, Lester, Weaver and Justin Masterson move ahead of him. So if you sum it all up and look at pitching WAR on FanGraphs, you have Ricky Romero #1 followed by Liriano, Marcum, Weaver, Lester, Hughes, Verlander, John Danks, Hernandez and Burnett rounding out the top 10. Baseball-Reference's pitching WAR shows a bit of a different story, however, with Marcum taking the lead followed by Weaver, Ervin Santana, Pettitte, Lester, Danks, Romero, Liriano, Hughes and Jeremy Guthrie (?!) rounding out the top 10.

Now some of this pitching prowess seems to be because of the "Year of the Pitcher" we have seen so far in the Major Leagues. We've had two perfect games (should have been a third but more on that in another post), no hitters, and many near no-no's. Now I don't know if this is, as some suggested because of better advanced scouting on hitters, less players on steroids, better pitchers or larger strikezones. I think, really, it's because of more of a focus on defense which has meant less balls falling in as hits on the defensive side and more defense-oriented players leading to less offense on the other side.

But however you look at it, the AL East has gotten some great pitching so far in the 2010 season and I wouldn't be surprised to see a few Cy Young candidates emerge from the pack by the end of the season. And regardless of how the season turns out, young guns like Phil Hughes, Clay Buchholz, David Price and Shaun Marcum are making names for themselves.

Picture from The Star-Ledger