Optima Central Division Dashboard - Starters

This is the final of my belated NL Central preview posts.   In this post I am looking at the starters.   As I did in all three posts,  I am using Baseball Prospectus’s PECOTA pre-season forecasts from April 3^rd.   The starters are ranked in the order of highest WARP starter to the lowest WARP starter based on the forecast from PECOTA. Here is the dashboard:

 

This starter chart surprised me a bit.  I figured the Brewers upgrade made them better but I did not expect them to project to be the best starting staff in the division by a wide margin.  Injuries should pull them back to the pack.  The Cubs and Cardinals create a 2^nd tier.  The Reds and Houston form a 3^rd tier.  Last are the Pirates who somehow manage to field a major league team with 3 starters projecting to be worse than Nelson Figueroa.

Notes on starters:

• The Reds seem low to me.  I think the Reds make up for the top end quality with depth. So we can handle the inevitable injury better and that is not reflected here.  I think we have a better rotation than the Astros in reality.
• The Cardinals seem to have the opposite type of rotation compared to the Reds.  They are great at the top but then drop off to the near replacement Kyle Lohse.   I don’t wish injuries on anyone but the Cardinals are running much more injury risk than the Reds in the rotation.
• The Brewers are projecting to have the 1^st, 3^rd, and 4^th best starters in the division.  Those are Greinke, Gallardo, and Marcum in that order. 
• The Pirates have a horrible staff.  They have a 5^th starter as their #2 and it gets worse from there.