I tip my hat to Jim McLennan who inspired this piece with his round table question, “The D-backs have used 16 different starters this year. What does that tell you?”
Does the number of starters matter? Is there a characteristic of pitching that separates winning teams from losing teams? Let’s look at a few possibilities.
Did teams that used a lot of starters lose more games? Through 31 August, the Diamondbacks used 16 starters. Only 3 teams used more pitchers through 31 August: the Dodgers, the Marlins, and the Mets.