In this post, we will take a look at how this year's crop of AL rookie starting pitchers have performed relative to other league starters, completely blinded to runs and hits allowed.

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Method

Every pitcher in the league gets charged with the number of runs shown in the table for each such fair, non-bunt, non-pitcher-batting event they have amassed in 2014; the value corresponds to the number of runs that said event was worth in 2013 American League ballparks, on average. The starting-biased pitchers of the league then get sorted from best to worst at runs avoided per batter faced; the corresponding value for the pitcher allows for computation of their Overall Performance Rating.

That process can be repeated looking only at batted balls to compute a Batted Ball Rating that quantifies how well the pitcher avoided the batted ball types that are most frequently associated with run generation. A Control Rating (references BB+HBP%) and a Strikeout Rating (references K%) are also computed to quantify how well they rate versus league peers on those skills. Each rating will be expressed on a percentile scale where the percentile amounts to the percentage of league peers who were beaten or equaled on the parameter.

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Study Population

The group of emphasis are 17 American League pitchers who had MLB rookie status entering the season and have since faced at least 100 major league batters while averaging 10 or more batters per game. All stats accumulated through the All-Star break were analyzed, including any compiled in relief.

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Results

Green text denotes a rating that was at least a standard deviation better than league-average; red text denotes a rating that was at least a standard deviation worse than league-average. Asterisks denote lefthanded throwers.

Offseason waiver-claim McHugh was the surprise leader at the break, just topping premium international free agent signee Tanaka. Tanaka's recent elbow calamity would stand open the door a bit for the likes of McHugh, Stroman, Odorizzi, Ventura, and Gausman to make a run at the top spot as far as pitchers go in the league Rookie of the Year chase.

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