Voros McCracken's DIPS is the latest and greatest publicly available method for figuring out how a good a pitcher really is. Voros parlayed his discovery that pitchers have little control over balls-in-play into a gig with the Boston Red Sox -- I assume he got a ring -- and so he's no longer sharing his findings with the general public.

One problem with Voros's work was that he treated Jim Edmonds-robbing-Jason LaRue the same as a little tapper back to the mound. In theory they'd equal out over a season, but it's not necessarily the case. David Pinto has been crunching the numbers, finding which pitchers got more or less help from their defense. According to Pinto's work, Suppan, Carpenter and Mulder all got a few extra outs from their defense in 2004, but Morris and Marquis weren't so lucky. Pinto's also verified that the Cardinals' defense was very good, maybe the best in baseball last season.