supplement about pitching in 2007

Previously I discussed that the loss of Santana could be not as big as it seems in terms of his 2007 performance. Here is a list of all the 2007 starters with the record of games that the team won or lost when they were the starting pitchers

Slowey 7-4
Baker 13-11
Santana 16-16 *
Bonser 14-16
Garza 7-8 *
Silva 15-18 *
Ortiz 4-6 *
Ponson 2-5 *

The ones with asterisks are no longer with the team. In addition, the Diamondbacks were 16-17 in games that Livan Hernandez started (which would potentially put him under Santana in that list). The Twins were 10-4 in games Liriano started in 2006.

If we project 33 starts for 4 starters and 32 starts for the fifth, assuming that the team will perform similarly as last year, we'd have

Liriano 22-10
Slowey 21-12
Baker 18-15
Bonser 16-17
Hernandez 16-17

and total for the team 93-69. A bit of scrutiny about these assumptions and further refinement

• Liriano most likely would not be in his 2006 form, so let's give him 75% of 2006


• Hernandez is going from the NL to the AL, so let's give him 75% of 2007


• Bonser, Baker have improved, so let's give them 115% of 2007

The refined results:

Slowey 21-12
Baker 21-12
Bonser 18-15
Liriano 17-15
Hernandez 12-21

resulting to a team record of 89-73 (which is identical to that of the calculation based on close games lost last year, a few posts earlier)


Interested edit:

The ESPN projections have the Twins with a record of 86-76 and project Bonser at only 8 wins. The Baseball think factory's Zips projection (you need to do some work to find Livan Hernandez's numbers), has the Twins with 92 wins...