It's Cringing Time

There has been a spate of Bullinger and near-Bullinger performances. Take a look at yesterday’s starting pitching statistics, and you won’t see many that don’t make you cringe. Almost everyone in fantasy baseball has been affected by the atrocious pitching, and it makes reading the box scores feel like walking through a mine field.

Listed below are the 60 starting NL pitchers and their ERA’s who have logged 25 or more innings so far this season. This excludes guys like Ryan Madson (8.14 in 24-1/3 innings) who have had several starts, but have pitched so poorly that they haven’t logged many innings.

John Thompson 1.32
Greg Maddux 1.35
Chris Carpenter 1.80
Branson Arroyo 2.06
Brandon Webb 2.22
Tom Glavine 2.29
Chris Capuano 2.36
Wandy Rodriguez 2.61
Brad Penny 2.68
Tony Armas 2.76
Roy Oswalt 2.76
Brian Bannister 2.89
Pedro Martinez 2.94
Woody Williams 3.06
Sidney Ponson 3.10
Derek Lowe 3.16
Toma Ohka 3.18
Brett Myers 3.23
Chris Young 3.41
Sean Marshall 3.45
Zack Duke 3.46
Aaron Cook 3.76
Serge Mitre 3.82
John Patterson 3.86
John Smoltz 4.09
Brett Tomko 4.20
David Bush 4.24
Claudio Vargas 4.32
Aaron Harang 4.35
Dontrelle Willis 4.38
Cory Lidle 4.40
Mark Mulder 4.43
Jeff Francis 4.50
Tim Hudson 4.54
Jake Peavy 4.58
Jamey Wright 4.63
Kyle Davies 4.70
Josh Fogg 4.73
Steve Trachsel 4.73
Jason Schmidt 4.76
Jason Marquis 5.04
Victor Santos 5.06
Matt Morris 5.18
John Suppan 5.19
Andy Pettitte 5.25
Matt Cain 5.28
Chan Ho Park 5.34
Carlos Zambrano 5.35
Livan Hernandez 5.49
Ramon Ortiz 5.65
Ian Snell 5.79
Jason Jennings 5.84
Paul Maholm 5.86
Brandon Claussen 6.04
Miguel Batista 6.33
Doug “Dale” Davis 6.39
Orlando Hernandez 6.39
Jon Lieber 6.87
Odalis Perez 6.90
Oliver Perez 7.53

It’s interesting to see the brothers O. Perez at the bottom of this list together.

There are 13 pitchers under 3.00, 11 between 3.01 and 4.00, 9 between 4.00 and 4.50, 7 between 4.51 and 5.00, 13 between 5.01 and 6.00, and 7 over 6.00. Most of these pitchers are in BABI, save the Colorado guys and just a few others. If you’ve got one of those 20 guys over 5.00, you’re thinking about cutting him. If you’ve got more than 1, you’re probably dying down near us in the standings.

There are some surprises at the top of this list. John Thompson was in limbo at the start of the season, hurt, about to be traded, his auction value dropping like a ball thrown off the top of the Empire State Building. Maddux hasn’t been under 4.00 in a while. Arroyo was a hot prospect, who may still get ugly after he’s been through the league once. And does anyone actually believe Wandy Rodriguez or Tony Armas yet?

More interesting, there are some major names toward the bottom. Carlos Zambrano, who earned a Bullinger this week, is on everyone’s A list. The Old Bat traded for Doug Davis in order to keep him this year. Andy Pettitte, Jason Schmidt, Matt Morris, Jon Lieber and our personal draft favorite, Odalis Perez are all below Steve Trachsel.

Starting pitching, what a crapshoot. Over half of the Pecklers’ current point total is comprised of ERA and WHIP points. We could be down in the twenties in a week.

God, I love this game. What I want to know is how did we become pitching experts?