Pitching Backward: Which Hitters Have it Toughest?

Each summer thousands of Caribou, better known as Reindeer, make the trek from the southernmost portions of their natural range to the arctic tundra as warmer temperatures cause the ice to retreat. In the winter months Caribou feed on lichens and mushrooms, often digging through snow in the sub-tundra to get at these morsels. As the winter fades, rich grassy plains are exposed in the northern tundra, and the Caribou make an 800-mile trek to get there. Upon arriving the Caribou have a more varied diet and a generally happier existence, basking in the warm summer sun at the northern reaches of their range.

For the Caribou, this annual rite of passage is an important part of life. It’s vital to their existence and the rearing of their calves. At the end of the day the prospects of an easier lifestyle, if only for a few short months, is too good to pass up for the Caribou.

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Jon Lester, James Shields, and Max Scherzer all made the move from the American League to the National League this offseason. It's no wonder: The batters aren't as good in the NL, and the rules of the game aren't as onerous for pitchers in the NL. Last year, 35 AL pitchers faced a tougher average opponent (by TAv) than any NL pitcher did. So they flee. Who can blame them?

That's arguably tilting the balance of pitching power away from the AL. Last year, 21 of the 30 hitters with the toughest average opponent (by TAv allowed) were in the NL, and now it gets at least three aces worse. Next season PECOTA projects that three of the top four pitching divisions will come from the National League. The table below shows how much pitching WARP each division is projected to produce, along with the projected WARP of their opponents next season (more on that later).

The NL West and NL East are the best pitching divisions in baseball, and it’s not even particularly close. Even if the next-best division, the AL West, added Baltimore's entire staff (6.6 pitching WARP), it still wouldn’t be enough to eclipse either of the top two divisions.

It should come as no surprise that those two divisions have the two best pitching teams in baseball by PECOTA’s estimations: The Los Angeles Dodgers (16.9 pitching WARP) and the Washington Nationals (17.8 pitching WARP). One top team does not a division make, however. The AL East has the fifth-highest individual team by pitching WARP in Tampa Bay, but overall the division rates poorly compared to others.

What does this all mean? While it’s interesting that some divisions seem to place more emphasis on pitching than others, that doesn’t mean much by itself. The result of each division’s emphasis or lack thereof on pitching has a more fundamental ramification. It means that hitters in the NL West have to face much tougher pitching than teams in the AL Central—that fundamentally the playing field isn’t level.

In order to pull these numbers together I took the PECOTA projections for each pitcher across all 30 teams and compiled team and division totals. Once the yearly totals were determined, I simply distributed that WARP evenly across the 162 game on each team’s schedule, so that a per-game WARP average was determined. This per-game average could then be applied to each team’s schedule to identify how much WARP each team was projected to face in 2015.

Why take this simplistic approach? Since we don’t know which starters will start when or how many innings they’ll throw in each game, it makes sense to apply simple averages across the season. Ultimately the goal is to simply tell which teams’ hitters have the toughest road to success in 2015.

Before we dig too deeply into the specifics, let’s take a look at some overall statistics from the data for this study. The average MLB team in 2015 is projected to face opponents that will produce 8.2 pitching WARP. The standard deviation across the league is roughly 1 WARP. The range for opponent WARP is 6.4 on the low end and 10.0 on the high end, meaning that the team with toughest schedule will face teams that are set to produce 56 percent more WARP than the team with the weakest schedule. The eight teams with the toughest pitching schedules next season reside in either the NL West or the NL East. Below are charts for the teams with the easiest and toughest schedules:

Similar to the top teams, eight of the bottom 10 teams come from the two worst divisions when it comes to pitching: the AL East and the AL Central. Only the Mariners and Angels managed to sneak into the bottom 10.

Colorado had the worst of it: It will play each team in the NL at least six times, just like every other team in the senior circuit. And, unlike the rest of the NL, it won't get to face Colorado's pitching staff. It's a long season coming.

While it isn’t nearly as impactful as which division the team in question plays in, the division the team is set to face in interleague play also has some impact. Colorado is set to play 20 games against the AL West, the division projected to produce the third-most pitching WARP. Even when it comes to facing teams from the other league, the Rockies can’t catch a break.

On the other side of things, Detroit has the easiest projected schedule for opposing pitching largely because they reside in the AL Central, baseball’s worst division for pitching. The AL Central also lucks out in that the teams from that division get to face the NL Central for interleague play, meaning that they miss the best two pitching divisions entirely. As a result, the best pitching teams from the AL Central will have hitters that face the easiest schedule possible.

It's a long road to October, to free agent paydays and to well deserved months off. That road is filled with trials and tribulations for everyone, but make no mistake: Some roads are tougher than others.