Dodger Pitching Comparables

Depth at starting pitching is a strength of the Dodgers team. There is alot of question as to who the Dodgers should use as a 5th starter, or even a 4th starter if Jason Schmidt is not healthy to start the season. I have put together a matrix listing the most similar Dodger starting pitchers. Keep in mind that I am no Bill James, and this may or may not be of any importance. The three variables I am using to find similarities between starting pitchers are K/9, HR/9 and (K-BB)/IP. I am not taking age or health into consideration, this is a pure statistical analysis, which uses 2008 ZIPS projections as it's input data. I have a utility that calculates the similarity scores for me and I choose these three categories based on what I felt was most important. I could have easily choosen different categories. I am throwing in NL Cy Young Award winner Jake Peavy just to get a fill as to which Dodger pitcher has the closest similarity score as the best National League pitcher. The formula used to compute the similarity scores was the square root of the deltas squared of the three categories summed together. Deltas are measured by the percent difference in each category.
Sqrt((xp1-xp2)^2 + (yp1-yp2)^2 + (zp1-zp2)^2)
Where x=K/9, y=HR/9, z=K-BB/IP, p1=Player1, p2=Player2, p3=Player3
See comments below...

Dodger Starting Pitcher Similarity Score Matrix
	Penny	Lowe	Billingsley	Schmidt	Loaiza	Guo	Houlton	Stults	Kuroda	Peavy
Penny	NA	.3403	.3804	.5192	.7853	.7809	1.1192	.8550	.4605	.9946
Lowe	.3403	NA	.3567	.6444	.3758	.8664	.6239	.4291	.2165	1.2509
Billingsley	.3804	.3567	NA	.2876	.4263	.4818	.6902	.5500	.2408	.8788
Schmidt	.5192	.6444	.2876	NA	.6841	.2102	.9839	.8967	.4509	.4811
Loaiza	.7853	.3758	.4263	.6841	NA	.7995	.2323	.1940	.2691	1.3179
Guo	.7809	.8664	.4818	.2102	.7995	NA	1.0784	1.0710	.6094	.4127
Houlton	1.1193	.6239	.6902	.9839	.2323	1.0784	NA	.1662	.5451	1.7185
Stults	.8550	.4291	.5500	.8967	.1940	1.0710	.1662	NA	.4434	1.6733
Kuroda	.4605	.2165	.2408	.4509	.2691	.6094	.5451	.4434	NA	.9795
Peavy	.9946	1.2509	.8788	.4811	1.3179	.4127	1.7185	1.6733	.9795	NA

You will notice that HongZhi Guo and Jason Schmidt have the closest similarity scores to 2007 Cy Young winner Jake Peavy and of the most likely top 5 starters, Esteban Loaiza and Derek Lowe are the least similar to Jake Peavy. While Loaiza has a very close similarity score to Houlton and Stults, Loaiza is much more similar than Houlton and Stults to the stronger Dodger pitchers. I may add more NL West starting pitchers at a later date and a possible rundown of Dodger hitter similarity scores. Below is a list of the top 10 similarity scores of Dodger starting pitchers.

Rank	Pitchers	Similarity Score
1	Houlton/Stults	.1662
2	Loaiza/Stults	.1940
3	Schmidt/Guo	.2102
4	Lowe/Kuroda	.2165
5	Loaiza/Houlton	.2323
6	Billingsley/Kuroda	.2408
7	Loaiza/Kuroda	.2691
8	Billingsley/Schmidt	.2876
9	Penny/Lowe	.3403
10	Lowe/Billingsley	.3567