How Good Are the Twins' Young Starters?

Pitching can be hard to gauge. 

Not only are a pitcher's stats dependent on the park he plays in and the gloves behind him, they also vary according to the  teams he starts against and what his own hitters do for him.

Take the young guns pitching for the Minnesota Twins in 2007.

Matt Garza, Boof Bonser, and Scott Baker have combined to go 16-20 this season with a 4.38 cumulative ERA—a poor record, to be sure, but an ERA below the league average.

The discrepancy is easy to explain: The Twins roster is populated by some of the worst hitters in baseball, and those poor hitters have failed to score runs.
 
It’s clear, then, that win-loss record is a poor indicator of a pitcher's "real" value. To accurately judge Garza, Bonser, and Baker, you have to "neutralize" their stats.

Bill James first made the case for neutralization in his New Historical Baseball Abstract. In theory, it’s pretty simple: Make some adjustments to a player's stats so that they reflect his expected performance playing for and against "average" teams.

In practice, neutralization can be a real pain.
 
Luckily, the good folks at Baseball Reference do all that math crap for you.
 
To neutralize a player’s stats, go to his Baseball Reference page and click on “Neutralize Stats.” Easy enough, right? 

Neutralization allows you to compare stats across teams and eras. After you’re done, don't hesitate to write an article about your findings in Bleacher Report’s MLB section.
 
For an in-depth explanation of stat neutralization, you can go to Baseball Reference's “How This Works” page, which goes into great detail about how every stat is calculated for both pitchers and hitters.
 
As for Garza, Bonser, and Baker? Using the neutralized numbers, I find the Twins' young guns would be 17-17 with a 3.95 ERA under "average" conditions.

Not exactly Cy Young material at the back of the rotation, but pretty encouraging on the whole. 

In the youngsters, the Twins have three above-average pitchers who give them a fair chance at winning over half their games. Combined with Johan Santana at the front of the rotation, Garza, Bonser, and Baker should help the Twins finish out the year above .500—always an important goal.
 
I also have a lot of optimism for the 2008 season. Garza is 23 years old; Bonser and Baker are 25. Players generally improve through their 26th birthdays, and are at their peak ability until their 27th birthdays. 

Thanks to the neutralized stats, I know the Twins have reliable pitchers heading into their primes in the next few years.
 
Stat neutralization isn’t perfect, but it does allow fans to evaluate the relative worth of their players. It’s another sabermetric tool of which all baseball fans should be aware.