Among the things we love at New English D are the Detroit Tigers, starting pitching, math, and nonsensical rankings. This post will combine all three in glorious fashion. I’ve often thought about doing something like this because I’ve always had my own rankings of which starters I enjoyed watching the most. If you’re familiar with this site, I’m not just a fan of great pitching, I’m a fan of certain kinds of pitching. The rankings below reflect that. This is meant to be fun.
Among the factors considered here are how deep a pitcher pitches into games, strikeouts, walks, ground balls, first pitch strikes, and how quickly they work. Each number is compared to the team average (not league average) and added together with all six categories weighted equally. Hat tip to Carson Cistulli of Fangraphs for inspiring the idea with his NERD scores.
As July 23, the 2013 Tigers WATCH List looks like this:
5. Justin Verlander
4. Anibal Sanchez
3. Rick Porcello
2. Max Scherzer
1. Doug Fister
If you’re interested, here are the monthly ranks to date:
| Rank | April | May | June | July |
| 5 | Porcello | Verlander | Sanchez | Sanchez |
| 4 | Verlander | Scherzer | Verlander | Verlander |
| 3 | Sanchez | Sanchez | Porcello | Fister |
| 2 | Fister | Fister | Fister | Scherzer |
| 1 | Scherzer | Porcello | Scherzer | Porcello |
Should you be curious about full league WATCH scores, here are the best 10 and worst 10:
| Rank | Name |
| 1 | Adam Wainwright |
| 2 | Matt Harvey |
| 3 | Cliff Lee |
| 4 | Chris Sale |
| 5 | Felix Hernandez |
| 6 | Jordan Zimmermann |
| 7 | Max Scherzer |
| 8 | Hisashi Iwakuma |
| 9 | Doug Fister |
| 10 | Clayton Kershaw |
| Rank | Name |
| 80 | Dylan Axelrod |
| 81 | Ryan Dempster |
| 82 | Jeff Locke |
| 83 | Wade Davis |
| 84 | Edinson Volquez |
| 85 | Matt Moore |
| 86 | Ubaldo Jimenez |
| 87 | Lucas Harrell |
| 88 | Barry Zito |
| 89 | Jason Marquis |
Enjoy watching baseball!
New English D 