Young Guns in the Rotation

This season, with injuries to Sonny Gray, Daniel Mengden, and Chris Bassitt, the Oakland Athletics are turning to three players in their starting rotation with very little major league playing experience. These players include two rookies, Jharel Cotton and Raul Alcantara, and sophomore Andrew Triggs who only just exceeded rookie limits in 2016. Similarly, the Rockies are starting the season with two rookies with no prior major league experience, Antonio Senzatela and Kyle Freeland. This got us thinking, how does the inexperience of these two opening day pitching staffs compare to opening day rotations of teams over the last 10 seasons?

Here is a table of the teams since 2008 whose first five starting pitchers of the season had the fewest previous career starts:

Only one other team had a less experienced starting rotation than this year's Oakland Athletics, and that was also an A's team from 2009. Kendall Graveman and Sean Manaea, joined by Cotton, Triggs, and Alcantara combine for only 92 games started and 559 innings pitched. Sonny Gray is expected to return in mid-April though, and has more experience than the five current starters combined, starting 96 games so far in his career and pitching 608 innings.

This season’s starting rotation for the Colorado Rockies has the fifth fewest prior games started with 145. After Tyler Chatwood (88 GS, 500 IP), their next most experienced starting pitcher would have been Chad Bettis (60 GS, 370.1 IP) who recently started chemotherapy, but will hopefully be able to return at some point this season.

Here are the teams since 2008 whose first five starting pitchers of the season had the most previous career starts:

This season, none of the starting rotations rank in the top 10 most experienced rotations. The result of these experienced teams varies greatly with one team—the 2014 Giants—winning the World Series, one team—the 2011 Phillies—having the best record in baseball, five teams making the playoffs, and four of the five teams who didn't make the playoffs finishing below .500.