Improbable Leaders: Who Will Keep It Up?

I was reading the paper this morning when I came across shocking news. As you might or might not know, Colorado’s Jason Marquis now leads the National League in wins. This piqued my curiosity. Is he lucky, or is he legitimately good? My first thought was to check the Rockies’ record, as most teams I follow play east of the Rocky Mountains. In any case, the Rockies are barely out of last place in the NL West. Marquis accounts for almost a third of their wins. So, I decided to check his stats on Baseball Reference. As a Cardinal fan, I primarily remember Jason for his work in 2004 and how much he fell apart afterwards. After checking that, I determined this is actually very close to his 2004 breakthrough year:

2004: 15-7, 3.71 ERA, 201.1 innings in 32 starts, 138 K’s, 1.416 WHIP, 115 ERA+

2009: 8-4, 3.98 ERA, 81.1 innings in 12 starts, 39 K’s, 1.340 WHIP, 114 ERA+

He’s doing better than I expected, and probably better than Colorado expected, as I can’t imagine them seeing him as higher t