Marlins Starting Pitching Comparables

Here is a look at some of the top comparables to the Marlins top starting pitchers: Josh Johnson, Anibal Sanchez, Mark Buehrle, Ricky Nolasco and Carlos Zambrano as per the MLB Depth Charts website.

In this exercise I used 2010-2011 data, looking at the skilled stats of K/9, BB/9 and GB/FB, while coming up with a similarity score based on these three stats for each Marlins starting pitcher. The cutoff was having pitched at least 150 IP as a starter (exception for Matt Moore and Stephen Strasburg, Fans Projections FG) over the last two years. Here is the top 25 list for each Marlins starter. There is some bias when comparing NL pitchers with AL pitchers due to the slightly inflated strikeout rate for NL pitchers who don't have to pitch to a DH, so feel free to make a mental adjustment for those pitchers. If you wanted to take something like this to the next level, you could look at age, contract status, handedness etc... but I've chosen to look at these three stats which are highly controlled by a pitchers skill level.

First thing that stands out are the great numbers and comparables for both Johnson and Sanchez. Nolasco has some pretty decent numbers too, I really like the low walk rate. I did a double take when I saw Buehrle's peripherals. That is a pretty poor K rate, the low walk rate does help offset it a little bit and more importantly (not shown) is his consistency when it comes to eating innings. Zambrano struggles with the high BB rate, giving him a rather unimpressive list of comparables.