Sorry I have been so absent lately. I decided to join the Dharma Initiative , but things got a little dicey when a plane crashed on our island and now I have returned.
Previously on this blog, I promised to explore the question of if aces consistently face other aces during a season. The idea for this test hit me while I was listening to a recent CBS Sportsline podcast where the guys insinuated that fantasy owners should care that a pitcher is the No. 1 hurler on his team because it would result in more matchups against aces from other squads. After watching baseball for about 20 years, I’ve noticed a thing or two, and my keen intuition has never picked up a noticeable trend of aces consistently facing other aces, at least not any more frequently than they face pitchers in other slots in the rotation.
Test: I chose to examine a sample size of 10 teams, which is one-third of the league. To ensure it was random I simply went down the list of teams alphabetically until I got five teams from each league. In this experiment, an “ace” is defined as the team’s Opening Day pitcher because he is the man on the top of the rotation at the start of the season.
While on many teams these pitchers will not end the year with the best statistics, the purpose of this test was not to see how often a team’s best statistical starter faced off with another team’s because that is not helpful to fantasy owners in the preseason as we prep for drafts. Obviously, it is impossible to know for certain who every team’s top pitcher in 2008 will be before the year begins. Instead, this experiment was to see how often a pitcher slotted at the top of his team’s rotation went up against another hurler in that same position.
Hypothesis: Aces will face other aces roughly 20 percent of the time because they have an equal opportunity to pitch against any of the five members of the opposing team’s rotation.
Data:
| Team | Player | Starts | vs. Ace | Percent |
| ARI | Brandon Webb | 34 | 5 | 14.7 |
| ATL | John Smoltz | 32 | 8 | 25 |
| BAL | Erik Bedard | 28 | 7 | 25 |
| BOS | Curt Schiling | 24 | 2 | 8.3 |
| CWS | Jose Contreas | 32 | 3 | 9.4 |
| CHC | Carlos Zambrano | 34 | 6 | 17.6 |
| CIN | Aaron Harang | 34 | 10 | 29.4 |
| CLE | C.C. Sabathia | 34 | 6 | 17.6 |
| COL | Aaron Cook | 24 | 7 | 29.2 |
| DET | Jeremy Bonderman | 28 | 6 | 21.4 |
| TOTAL | 304 | 60 | 19.7 |
Conclusion: Aces faced off with each other 19.7 percent of all starts, almost exactly one-fifth of the time. This confirms my hypothesis and makes sense since, statistically, every time they take the hill they have a one-in-five chance of battling the opposing team’s top starter. This is important to fantasy baseball players to know as we prepare for upcoming drafts because it proves that there is no reason to downgrade any starter because of his location in his team’s rotation. So while there are a variety of reasons (new ballpark, run support, ect…) to adjust your rankings for Erik Bedard, Dan Haren, and other hurlers who switched teams this winter, do not do so because he now occupies a different rotation slot than he did a year ago.
