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Last year

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, I looked at
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the records of 2011′s Opening Day “rookies” (pitchers making their first OD start) vs. OD veterans (those who had made an OD start in a previous season. This post will take the same look at 2012′s Opening Day starters.

Last season, there were 11 matchups between OD “rookies” and “veterans.” In those games, the veterans pitched better in 7 and their teams won 6, so they had a slight edge over the rookies. Counting all games, the 17 veterans pitched a bit better than the 13 rookies overall, though the rookies had slightly better  strikeout and walk rates.

This year, 19 OD veterans toed the rubber for their teams, while 11 rookies got the call. Because of the weird 1-game series that the Cardinals played in Miami to open the Marlins’ stadium, two of the pitchers (the Brewers’ Yovani Gallardo

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and the Reds’ Johnny Cueto
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) made their OD starts against a team playing in its second game.

That leaves 14 matchups between OD starters. Of those, just 1 was a matchup of Opening Day rookies: the Rangers’ Colby Lewis

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vs. the White Sox’ John Danks
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. Another 5 matchups were between OD veterans. Here’s how they stacked up, with the winning teams underlined and the players with the better pitching lines bolded*.

* I used WPA for this, but you could also use Game Scores. The results are the same in this case.

Tm1 Starter OD GS# Tm2 Starter OD GS#
PHI Roy Halladay
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10th PIT Erik Bedard
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3rd
NYY CC Sabathia
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9th TBR James Shields
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4th
SFG Tim Lincecum
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8th ARI Ian Kennedy
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4th
MIA Josh Johnson
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3rd STL Kyle Lohse
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2nd
LAD Clayton Kershaw
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2nd SDP Edinson Volquez
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2nd

All of these were fairly close games, but the team whose pitcher had fewer OD starts won 3 of the 4 matchups with unequal OD start totals. The one exception was Roy Halladay, who edged Erik Bedard and the Pirates 1-0. Of course, while the Rays won, Shields actually pitched a bit worse than Sabathia (though both got shelled).

There were also 8 matchups between vets and rookies, of which the veterans’ teams won 6. The veteran starters also had the higher WPA in 6 of the 8 games.

Tm1 Starter OD# Tm2 Starter OD#
NYM Johan Santana
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6th ATL Tommy Hanson
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1st
DET Justin Verlander
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5th BOS Jon Lester
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1st
SEA Felix Hernandez
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5th OAK Brandon McCarthy
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1st
LAA Jered Weaver
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4th KCR Bruce Chen
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1st
CHC Ryan Dempster
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4th WSN Stephen Strasburg
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1st
COL Jeremy Guthrie
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4th HOU Wandy Rodriguez
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1st
MIN Carl Pavano
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3rd BAL Jake Arrieta
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1st
TOR Ricky Romero
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2nd CLE Justin Masterson
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1st

That table makes it seem like the OD veterans pitched better on the whole than the OD rookies, but that’s actually not the case when you look at the whole sample. For one thing, many of the losing rookies actually pitched very well (Lester, McCarthy, Chen, and Strasburg in particular, as well as Johnny Cueto, who isn’t on the list above). For another, the worst performances of the various Opening Days were all by veterans; Sabathia, Shields, Lincecum, Romero, Johnson, Volquez, and Yovani Gallardo all had worse WPA marks than any rookie. The worst WPA by an OD rookie was John Danks’ -0.086 against the Rangers, and Danks actually pitched pretty well, with 6 strikeouts vs. no walks, though he gave up 3 runs in 6 IP.

Overall, the rookies’ average pitching line was fantastic, though the veterans didn’t do too badly, either. Here are the averages for each group (this is per start, not per 9 innings):

Group # IP R ER H BB K HR WPA ERA
OD Rookies 11 6.6 1.2 0.9 4.5 1.4 5.0 0.4 +.186 1.24
OD Veterans 19 6.3 2.4 2.4 4.8 1.9 4.9 0.7 +.078 3.41

The peripherals are pretty similar, though the rookies had slightly better walk and HR rates. While the OD veterans had more success in the head-to-head matchups, I think it’s fair to say that this year, the OD rookies actually pitched a bit better.

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