Big thanks to Eric Simon of Mets Blog Amazin’ Avenue for both the inspiration and some spreadsheet help along the way.

(Click to large-ify)

This stacked colum graph depicts the WAR values for the starting rotations that we looked at last week. I’ve set the replacement-level for starting pitchers to 5.50 runs. All projections are from CHONE with a best-guess for innings pitched. You can re-visit the pitching post if you missed it the first time. It should explain a few things for those that didn’t see it the first time around.

Rapid-fire Thoughts:

• The Giants rotation is nicely distributed among the top starters of Lincecum, Johnson, Cain, and Sanchez.
• The Rockies rotation gets pretty ugly once you get past Ubaldo Jimenez and Aaron Cook. Jason Marquis, Greg Smith, and Jorge De La Rosa are all projected to be worth less in 460 innings pitched (+2.92 wins) compared to Matt Cain in 190 innings pitched (+3.20 wins).
• The D-Backs are getting HUGE production from their top two rotation spots. The rest of the rotation is pretty darned balanced, too.
• The Padres aren’t getting much from the back-end of their rotation. It could be a long year in San Diego if one of Greer, Prior, Correia, or LeBlanc can’t step up and soak up some innings.
• The Dodgers rotation isn’t bad at all. Billingsley and Kuroda are doing some of the heavy lifting but Clayton Kershaw and Randy Wolf should make for a nice back-end. The Dodgers would be thrilled to get 100 innings out of Jason Schmidt, but I’m not sure that’s going to happen.