Just a disclaimer: You aren't going to get any fancy graphs with my posts, I'm just not that skilled.  Yes, I understand it doesn't take much skill.  No, I'm not ignorant to learn, just more incapable and admittedly lazy.  With that being said..

(I'm assuming throughout this entire post that I'm not going to have to defend stats like FIP, and other slightly sabermetric methods of valuing players.)

Maybe its just me and my defiance to believe anything that has happened thus far is real, but why are people allowing simply understood details to slip right under their noses.  I'll start with what I believe is the more obvious of the oversights: Andy Sonnanstine. (Probably going to be the least controversial as well)...

2-4, 7.38 ERA, 40.1 IP, 24 K, 14 BB, 5 HRA

Oh Boy! Thats bad! I knew we should've traded Sonny instead of Jackson, just look at how good he is in Detroit.  Well. not so fast.

Firstly, Sonny's FIP is at 4.72, a touch below league average, but not as horrible as most people want to make out (or as bad as a 7.38 ERA indicates).  That being said, there are issues with a 4.72 FIP, as that makes him Edwin Jackson, and we didn't trade Edwin Jackson to be blessed with another (although we do have the little Niemann problem, but I'm not getting into that now).

While the League Average Strand Rate is closer to the mid 70s than to the mid 60s we're accustomed to with Sonny, he has consistently posted strand rates in the low-mid 60s.  He has performed well, obviously, despite this, but it could be a reason for his tendancy to give up more runs than his FIP/tRA would suggest.  More alarming is a 59% strand rate this year.  This is bound to progress as the lowest strand rates in the league over the past few years have been as follows: Brian Bannister, 64%, 2008 - Jose Contreras, 62.5%, 2007 - Randy Johnson, 61.8% - 2006, etc. etc. (I do notice that it seems to be rising every year, maybe someone should look into that).  Point is, he is due for some progression in this area even if he is bound to finish subpar in this category for a third straight year.

Another thing bound for progression is at .371 which would be 6th among qualifying starters (yes, he has been bad enough to not qualify...).  Even with a disturbing spike in Line Drive Rate to 23.8%, his BABIP shouldn't be much higher than .350 (and I expect the line drive rate falls back around his career average of 18% the rest of the way, which would reduce this even more).  This should progress, his .371 BABIP hasn't been matched over a full season in over a decade and even .350 was only broken twice over the past decade by Glendon Rusch in 2001 and Kevin Milwood last year.  Just for reference, Kevin Milwood's LD% last year was 25.3%, and we don't have batted ball data for 2001, but Glendon Rusch's career LD% was 23.5% and his career BABIP was .334.  Its not great, but a full .40 points of BABIP can and does mean alot (and this implies absolutley no progression to Sonny's past performance).

Lastly is some basic look at Sonny through Pitch F/x where I'm pretty much going to rehash things already said.  First off, his curve has gotten better (most likely as a result of a slightly new release point).  He is throwing more over the top, as his release point is about 1/2 a foot more towards being directly over-the-top as opposed to his more three quarters delivery of old.  Despite the positive effect it has had on the curveball, it has seemed to affect the slider which has lost a bit of the vertical movement it never really had.  The change-up has gained some drop which was to be expected with a more over-the-top delivery, but it lost a few inches horizontally.  Anecdotally, the change in stuff seems foreign to Sonny, as his trademark low BB rates have been abnormally high.  I'll chalk it up to changed pitch usage (his cutter was good in small doses last year, I don't think I'll ever know what has possessed him to start throwing it even more now (up about 20% from last year when he was already using it 30% of the time... ugh.).  That being said, the velocities and breaks themselves seem to be stagnant (if you factor in the better curveball and tthe loss of slider/change-up decency), so despite my negativity I don't see why these pitches aren't going to start working for him.

I understand I could've been a little contradictory at times, as I wanted to throw out both sides of the argument, but don't be confused, Sonny needs to and has deserved to be in this starting rotation.  At this point he is the third best starter in the rotation, and while slight things have changed there aren't any glaring issues as there are with say... I don't know... Scott Kazmir (I like Niemann too much to throw him under the bus).