Starting rotation depth, now and then

Reading about Hiroki Kuroda's start yesterday, and watching it on TV, it occurred to me how welcome the Japanese right-hander would've been in Yankees camp a year ago. In light of Cliff Lee opting for the Phillies and Andy Pettitte opting for retirement, Kuroda would have stood as the second starting pitcher, behind only CC Sabathia and ahead of less reliable options like A.J. Burnett, Bartolo Colon and Freddy Garcia.

Now...Kuroda is still very welcome, yet he takes up less of the spotlight thanks to the arrival of Michael Pineda, as well as last year's development of Ivan Nova.

So I think we'd all agree that the Yankees have greater starting rotation depth than they did a year ago at this time. Of course, their 2011 starting rotation wound up performing extremely well, so what we're talking about here is your classic "on paper" look, which I suppose can be updated in this stat-analysis-heavy age to "probabilities and expectations."

Let's look at the 14 teams that went .500 or better in 2011 and compare their starting rotation depth now to a year ago at this time. We'll break up the classifications into "Markedly better," "Arguably better," "About the same," "Arguably worse" and "Markedly worse."

Thoughts? Of the 14, we have seven "betters," three "worses" and four "sames." So the well-run teams generally remained well-run.

Among teams with losing records, you'd have to designated Cincinnati, Miami and Washington as "markedly better," as they're all expected to contend, and Oakland as "markedly worse," by design. The Mets would be "about the same," in that there's at least some hope that Johan Santana can contribute this season.

--Check back later for a contest.