Here is a list of #5 starters and their stats sorted by FIP defined here. I tried to set 5 GS as my baseline for choosing a #5 starter. The point was to see what a #5 looked like using FIP and where Tomko fit in. If you have any complaints just list your choice for the #5 starter that you have in mind for a team along with their Team, W, L, ERA, and FIP. I will edit the post to fit them in I don't know if I included guys that are injured or have been demoted so help in that regard would be great.

I considered the order in which fangraphs had them sorted (they used win probablity added, WPA, as their criteria I did not.) In some cases I chose the guy that seemed most like a #5 to me and in the case of the Athletics I just chose one because they have a really good staff so far. In the case of the Tigers they mostly suck so I just chose they guy the Royals will face next. The Oioles didn't have 5 guys who met my 5IP criteria so I chose Trachsel because he seems like a fifth starter to me. For the Red Sox I didn't chose Wakefield even though they probably view him as their fifth starter because knuckleballers just don't compare to other pitchers very easily.

I haven't yet figured out how this feature will be set up. This time I will post the numbers followed by some statistic that jumped out at me as a reason for the players success or lack thereof. This time the starters will be covered, maybe next time I will cover the relievers. All data from Royals.com and fangraphs.com.

Zack Greinke has lowered his line drive percentage to 5% better than any earlier point in his career. It currently sits at 15.8% and as roughly 74% of line drives fall in for hits this is probably a big factor in his success. Bonus stat(s):1.12 GB/FB Ratio 1.12 second highest of his career.

Gil Meche's fastball has dropped over 1 mph from last year  and is the slowest of his career. This could explain his high HR/9 Ratio of 1.58 ( the highest of his career). Bonus stat(s): 5.72 K/9 3.35 BB/9 both worse than last year.

Brian Bannister has thrown his fastball about 5% less than last year but fangraphs is showing a cutter at 85mph as the source of that change. This could be a sign of Banny's problems as he has said that he junked his cutter a few years ago (which fangraphs seems to back up showing none over the last few years) and Posnanski has noted in his Banny Logs that  this cutter that seems to have hurt him this year. Bonus stat(s): How could I give a bonus stat on Banny and not have it be BABIP: 2.85 which is still below league average and his K/9 is  the highest of his career at 5.10.

Brett Tomko has suddenly turned into a groundball pitcher with a GB/FB Ratio of 1.84. This is by far the best of his career, but otherwise his numbers seem to be well within his career averages. Bonus stat(s): He is slightly more than doubling his career curveball percentage throwing that pitch 13.4% of the time. This is at teh expense of all of his other pitches suggesting that he isn't junking something else to throw the curve.

Luke Hochevar 4.18 BB/9 is my only complaint as it  is too high but I suspect as he gets more time it will go down. Bonus stat(s): This is not a stat at all really but I was at the last game where he pitched and I was truly impressed. He looked done a couple of times and got himself through it. I was surprised to see him back out there in the 7th but he pitched well in that frame. The walk before the homerun was the killer to me because he should have been out of the inning by then.

Bonus Player: Joakim Soria has a K/BB Ratio of 15. Bonus stat(s): 10.13 K/9 there is no point in talking about any of the hitting stats against Soria because virtually no one has even come close. Forget about walking too as his BB/9 is .68. I will leave the starter v reliever debate to others but he has to pitch more than the 60 or so innings that he is on pace for. Bonus Bonus stat(s): .38 WHIP.

This offseason there was some discussion of Defense Independent Component ERA (DICE) as a way to rate a pitchers performance. I apologize to whomever brought it up for not giving proper credit but let me know and I will give proper attribution. For those of you who are not familiar with DICE here is a explanation.

The basic idea is to evaluate a pitchers performance in a readable way independent of defense. I have been thinking of providing the DICE for the Royals on a regular basis but when I ran the numbers earlier in the year they were all over the place (some pitchers had negative DICE numbers) due to small sample size issues. I hope now that there is some more data I will be able to do this at 2-3 week intervals.

As an observation the focus on defense has apparently not helped out the pitchers as almost all of them do better when defense is removed from the equation, although Nomo is still terrible.

I got bored and computed the DICE for the top 100 in wins last year. (Looking back I wish that I had done IP or ERA instead.)If anyone can tell me how to post an excel spreadsheet I can put it up; if you are interested.  The results were somehat predictable at the top but there were some interesting things that jumped out at me.

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Here are the results for Royals Review line-up and starters survey after 28 responses (if it gets to 40+ by Friday I will update it this weekend). I will give the results followed by some observations and comment on each sections. Overall I am not terribly surprised but the line-up is different than what Hillman seems to have planned. The starting five and the 6 in the bullpen had a pretty clear drop-off after the spots were filled. The formatting got a little messed up in the transfer from word, sorry.

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This one is to get what the consensus line-up would be 1-9. It also asks who should start and be in the bullpen along with their respective positions in each. It should only take a few minutes even though the questions may look long. I took the choices from the 40 man roster and the non-roster Spring training invitees. Click Here to take survey

I loved the idea of Royals Nation's questionnaire. I felt bad when I thought of how much time it would take him to calculate the results so I found a website that does it automatically. But it will only give a broad answer to how members of the site think and can't be used as Royals Nation's can for comparing two people's answers. I just want a quick overview of how people are responding. on each question.

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With Fox having the BCS, World Series, and the SuperBowl this year I was wondering which coverage was or will be worst. Thank god Fox doesn't cover March Madness. Some thoughts about each:

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I am here to go on the record that there will again be a split National title. There are several ways that this could happen but the one relevant one is that KU can be the AP national champion.

Beware this turned out to be a longer post than I planned. Back to studying for finals.

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