The World Baseball Classic has been a common area of blame for this offensive explosion. The logic is that pitchers did not get their usual supply of Spring Training innings, and therefore were a step behind the more ready hitters when the season began. So, I decided to do some original research.
I took the 22 starting pitches from the rosters of the US, Dominican, Venezeulan, Puerto Rican, Panamanian, and Korean WBC teams and gave them a rating. I mostly did this by eye. If a pitcher currently has an ERA exceeding his career norm by 3/4 of a run or better, I rated him "Exceeding", if his ERA is generally in line with career norms I rated him "Average" and if he is performing poorly, I rated him "Worse". Here are the results.
| Name | Exceeding | Average | Worse | |
| Jake Peavy | 0 | 0 | 1 | |
| Dontrelle Willis | 0 | 1 | 0 | |
| Javy Vazquez | 0 | 1 | 0 | |
| Johan Santana | 0 | 0 | 1 | |
| Joel Pineiro | 1 | 0 | 0 | |
| Danny Cabrera | 0 | 0 | 1 | |
| Bartolo Colon | 0 | 0 | 1 | |
| Jorge Sosa | 0 | 0 | 1 | |
| Miguel Batista | 0 | 0 | 1 | |
| Odalis Perez | 0 | 1 | 0 | |
| Bruce Chen | 0 | 0 | 1 | |
| Freddy Garcia | 0 | 0 | 1 | |
| Carlos Silva | 0 | 0 | 1 | |
| VictorZambrano | 0 | 0 | 1 | |
| CarlosZambrano | 0 | 1 | 0 | |
| Kelvim Escobar | 0 | 1 | 0 | |
| Gustavo Chacin | 0 | 0 | 1 | |
| Erik Bedard | 1 | 0 | 0 | |
| Jeff Francis | 0 | 1 | 0 | |
| Rodrigo Lopez | 0 | 0 | 1 | |
| Chan Ho Park | 0 | 1 | 0 | |
| Total | 2 | 7 | 12 | 21 |
| 9.5% | 33% | 57% |
The results look relatively definative. Over half of the starting pitchers who participated in the WBC are off to a bad start. Not only that, but if you look at pitchers who went farther into the tournament (Venezeula, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic [USA didnt have a lot of starting pitchers who we can analyze]), they have a much better chance to have a worse start.
Interesting numbers. I'll take a look at a similar sample of non-WBC starting pitchers in the next few days to see if the trend is any different.
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