Ryan Dempster will start the Cubs' Cactus League opener on Thursday against the Giants, hoping to take the first step toward securing a position in the team's 2008 starting rotation.
Dempster, as most Cub fans know, is hardly new to the starting role: before he earned his first Major League save, pitching for the Cubs in 2004, Dempster had already started 156 games with the Marlins and Reds. With six more starts under his belt in 2005, Dempster's career numbers as a starter are 51-58, 4.99, with 1031 hits allowed in 988 2/3 IP, hardly anything to inspire excitement in Cubs fans, but certainly worthy of inspiring an Arcane Cubs List Of The Week and maybe a glimpse of what we can expect if Dempster nails down that starting job.
Here, then, are the ten Cub pitchers since 1961 who started at least 15 games in a season and finished with a Dempster-like ERA between 4.89 and 5.09 (ordered by number of wins):
| PITCHER | W | L | GS | IP | ERA | ||
| 1. | Jack Curtis ('61) | 10 | 13 | 27 | 180 | 4.89 | |
| 2. | Dick Ellsworth ('62) | 9 | 20 | 33 | 209 | 5.09 | |
| 3. | Kevin Tapani ('00) | 8 | 12 | 30 | 196 | 5.01 | |
| 4. | Mike Bielecki ('90) | 8 | 11 | 29 | 168 | 4.93 | |
| 5. | Les Lancaster ('87) | 8 | 3 | 18 | 132 | 4.90 | |
| 6. | Jamie Moyer ('86) | 7 | 4 | 16 | 87 | 5.05 | |
| 7. | Don Cardwell ('62) | 7 | 16 | 29 | 196 | 4.92 | |
| 8. | Dick Ruthven ('84) | 6 | 10 | 22 | 127 | 5.04 | |
| 9. | Kyle Farnsworth ('99) | 5 | 9 | 21 | 130 | 5.05 | |
| 10. | Shawn Boskie ('92) | 5 | 11 | 18 | 92 | 5.01 |
Statistics from Baseball-Reference.com Play Index
Labels: Ryan Dempster
