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September 10, 2004

Can Of Corn

Terrific Tandems

by Dayn Perry

Call it the "one-two punch" or the "tandem aces" or the "pitching Cerberus sans one head" or whatever you like. As the post-season looms, it's perhaps instructive to ponder which teams have the best business end of the rotation. If nothing else, this will allow you to do something other than pace and pare your nails while waiting for the TV show of the millennium.

To better consider which club indeed has the best one-two punch, let me lay out my criteria. First, I'm going to consider only those teams whose top two starters have a combined VORP (Value Over Replacement Pitcher) of at least 85. And that's it. So if Randy Johnson, Jason Schmidt, Livan Hernandez and Oliver Perez all make it with a dead-weight rotation compatriot in tow, then so be it.

Here's what we get, sorted by VORP:

Tandem        VORP    BABIP    IP     K/BB   HR/9   Adj R/G
Santana/      124.6   .276     399.2  5.6    1.0    3.32
Radke

Schilling/    115.5   .296     390.2  4.8    0.9    3.34
Martinez

Oswalt/        90.9   .302     389.1  3.0    0.7    3.65
Clemens

Mulder/        90.3   .291     355.2  1.9    0.6    3.92
Hudson

Sheets/        89.3   .295     374.1  3.8    0.8    3.58
Davis

Clement/       88.9   .278     349.0  2.5    0.9    3.54
Zambrano

Carpenter/     86.2   .292     346.1  2.8    1.1    3.67
Marquis

To acquaint you with the abbreviations above, I'll point that BABIP is opponents' batting average on balls in play, IP is innings pitched, K/BB is strikeout-to-walk ratio, HR/9 is home runs allowed per nine innings and Adj R/G is park-adjusted runs per game. All numbers provided are aggregate totals and averages for the top two starters.

In order to wrest some quick-and-dirty rankings out of this, let's award points to each of these top seven tandems for how they fare in each category. Seven points for leading a column, one point for finishing last, etc. I'll exclude the BABIP category since pitchers have limited control over what becomes of balls in play and since it's already amply reflected in the Adj R/G column.

Let's see what's under this rock...

Tandem            Points
Santana/          30
Radke

Schilling/        27
Martinez

Oswalt/           23
Clemens

Sheets/           21
Davis

Mulder/           16
Hudson

Clement/          15
Zambrano

Carpenter/         8
Marquis