Surprise! Shields And Farnsworth Were Top Arms In First Half

Yesterday we looked the Rays biggest first-half bats. Well, we can also use WPA to look at which pitchers came through when it mattered the most so far this season. In short, WPA gives the pitchers points for a good play and takes away points for bad plays. The amount of points depends on how much of an impact that play had on the Rays winning the game (for an intro to WPA, please check yesterday’s post). Here are the pitchers so far this season… James Shields has been the Rays most important pitcher, by far. Of course, that is no surprise. An interesting thing to look at here is the differences between relievers and starters. We always work under the assumption that starting pitchers are more important than relievers because they work far more innings. However, the outs later in the game can be far more important than the outs early in the game. And if a relief pitcher is given regular work in high-leverage situations, they can have just as much of an impact as some st...