Texas Rangers currently have the best starting pitching in the AL

You’re reading that headline correctly: the Texas Rangers currently have, statistically speaking, the best starting rotation in the entire American League!

That’s right, the Texas Rangers. Not the pitching-rich Cleveland Indians or Tampa Bay Rays or any other team, perhaps to baseball’s collective surprise.

If you go by staff ERA as a reliable metric, of course, which we do.

I believe most of baseball generally accepts ERA as a pretty standard metric to measure pitching performance as well.

The Texas Rangers have the best rotation in the American League by ERA.

The Texas Rangers’ 3.16 ERA as a starting rotation 18 games into the season is a complete shock, but a pleasant one, at that.

Texas has gotten quality starts nearly every time out this season from a rotation that calls Kyle Gibson its “ace” (2-0, 2.53 ERA) followed by Dane Dunning (1-0, 0.60 ERA), Mike Foltynewicz (0-3, 5.63 ERA), Kohei Arihara (2-1, 2.21 ERA) and Jordan Lyles (1-0, 4.70 ERA).

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Folty is the outlier among this group, but it speaks volumes about this group as a whole when even skewed ERA figures like the ones Folty and Jordan Lyles still manage to keep the staff’s ERA at a solid 3.16 on the season.

The Minnesota Twins are second in the American League in starting rotation ERA, with their unit posting a 3.24 ERA so far, followed by the Indians at 3.71, according to FanGraphs.

Coming into the season, the Texas Rangers were projected to have one of the worst rotations in all of baseball, and rightfully so with much uncertainty looming over how veterans would bounce back and if newcomers like Dunning and Arihara would pan out.

All of the above has happened, and it’s culminated into the best starting rotation by ERA in the American League.

For whole league context, the Rangers’ starting rotation ERA ranks sixth in all of baseball, which is also supremely impressive given how many quality starting groups there are across both the American League and National League.

Of course, the Texas Rangers will be tasked with maintaining this high level of performance from their starters, but so far, so good!