Happy Labor Day, everyone! Wait, you say that it's not Labor Day? Maybe in the US it isn't, but in most of the world it is, and that means I've got the day off.

I am well aware of the fact that most of the posters here on BD are more knowledgeable than I am when it comes to analyzing performance data; heck, I'm still trying to figure out most of those new-fangled sabermetric stats that so many of our crew can cite with such authority. (No, that's not snark, but rather a statement of fact.) Anyway, I still thought it might be interesting to present some basic data on our starting pitching for the first month of the season.

For the most part, I'm just going to put the data out there, because I'm quite sure that others will be able to draw more telling conclusions. So let's think of this as a collaborative effort, shall we?

22 games are now in the books; less than 14% of the season, so we're probably in "SSS" territory. Nonetheless, provided that I tabulated and calculated correctly, here's where our starting pitchers stand in terms of certain basic stats:

Alas, but I can't insert a table, so my apologies for the format here. But you'll see in this order: Pitcher, Appearances, Innings Pitched, Batters Faced.

1) Bedard: 5 / 29.0 / 122

2) Burnett: 2 / 13.0 / 52

3) Correia: 4 / 22.3 / 91

4) Karstens: 3 / 12.0 / 53

5) McDonald: 5 / 30.3 / 119

6) Morton: 3 / 17.0 / 72

Total: 22 / 123.7 / 509

Averages are fickle things when the sample size isn't too large, but so far our "average starter" has gone 5 and 2/3 innings, faced 23 batters and thrown 63% of his pitches for strikes. Obviously the disparity in appearances is significant: Burnett has only appeared twice but we have two starters who have been on the mound 5 times already.

But let's look at a few statistics anyway, some of which I may be inventing, and pick out the best, worst and average performance. (BTW, I put these numbers together myself, so if there are any errors they are on me. And I haven't even taken the precaution of going to an established data website to see if my numbers are 100% in line with the official stts. Chutzpah or laziness, you decide.)

Batting Average Against

Best: Correia, with .181

Worst: Karstens, with .300

Staff Avg: .231

Strike Ratio (as % of Total Pitches)

Best: Burnett, with 64.7%

Worst: McDonald, with 57.2%

Staff Avg: 62.8%

Best At Inducing Ground Balls (as % of Batters Faced)

Best: Correia, with 46.2%

Worst: Bedard, with 16.4%

Staff Avg: 29.0%

Hits Per Innings Pitched

Best: Correia, with 0.69

Worst: Karstens, with 1.25

Staff Avg: 0.88

BB / 9 Innings Pitched

Best: Karstens, with 1.50

Worst: Bedard, with 3.72

Staff Avg: 2.88

K / 9 Innings Pitched

Best: Burnett, with 10.4

Worst: Correia, with 3.6

Staff Avg: 6.4

Hits and Walks as % of Total Batters Faced

Best: Correia, with 25.3%

Worst: Karstens, with 34.0%

Staff Avg: 29.5%

If no one else is interested in this stat, that's okay, but I was curious to see how often our staff lets a batter on base or gives up a hit. That's why I calculated this. But it means that 70.5% of the time, our staff gets a batter out; 29.5% of the time the batter gets on base one way or another.

Pitches Thrown in An Appearance

Most: McDonald, against the Braves, 30 April: 114

Least: ( * excluding Karsten's 20 pitch outting when he was injured) Tied, between Karstens (vs. Dodgers, 12 April) and Morton (vs. Giants, 14 April), with 71

Staff Average: 86

At the risk of getting totally flamed, looking at these stats, Correia doesn't seem to deserve all of the abuse that he tends to get, IMHO. However, it's true that he started off great guns last year and then grew ever less effective as the season wore on, so I guess a lot of you expect that he'll repeat that pattern of performance this year. You may be right, it is early, after all. Still, until he totally implodes out there, the doubters could, perhaps, show him a little more love.

Anyway, I won't be surprised if others can throw out more revealing stats and I don't say that just to be self-depreciating. But I thought this information could serve as a starting point for an exchange of opinions.

My apologies for the format; I suspect there are easier ways of typing up a Fanpost, but this has taken far too much time. If anyone with administrative oversite faculties wants to brush this up, that would be fine by me.

Let's go Bucs!