Left-hander Paul Maholm is one of the reasons Atlanta has but a single loss this season, and is currently riding a 10-game win streak. In 3 starts, Maholm has allowed nary a run, and hardly a baserunner (0.787 WHIP).

So, which other starting pitchers are off to hot starts in 2013? Quite a few, actually. In fact, if you’re a starting pitcher with at least 12 IP so far, your ERA needs to be under 2.00 to crack the top 25.

After the jump, more on pitchers who are strong out of the gate – this year and in the recent past.

So, here are those top 25 ERAs through games of April 16th, for starters with a minimum of 12 IP.

I was curious how often pitchers have a hot spring. Is it a hit miss thing, or do certain pitchers consistently perform better right out of the gate? To answer this, I’ve collected the 300 lowest ERAs in March/April for currently active pitchers with at least 20 IP in March/April in any of the past 10 seasons (2003-12). As these data are for pitchers who are currently active, there are more data for the most recent seasons, as indicated below.

For comparison to 2013, the 44th ranked ERA so far this season is John Lannon at 2.77, compared to 3.82 in 2010. Numbers 52 and 55 are 3.05 and 3.26, compared to 3.94 and 3.96 in 2012 and 2011. If those seem like huge differences, they are. But, the month’s not over, so the 2013 numbers will likely move closer to the figures you see above.

So, who are these fast starters? Here are the pitchers showing up most frequently among these 300 data points.

To explain the table:

• Times in Top 300 denotes the number of seasons represented in these data
• First Year and Last Year denote the range of years represented by these data
• Avg ERA is the average of ERA values for March/April among the years represented by these data, and equally weighted for each represented year
• Avg ERA Diff is the average of the differences between the March/April ERA value and the pitcher’s overall ERA for that season, among the years represented by these data, and equally weighted for each represented year. Negative results indicate March/April ERA better than overall ERA

Some observations.

• Pitchers in the table who are doing well this spring include Andy Pettitte, Cliff Lee and Justin Verlander (in the first list), as well as Kyle Lohse (2.08), CC Sabathia (2.25), Tim Hudson (2.50), Hiroki Kuroda (2.87) and Felix Hernandez (3.05).
• Together with Dan Haren, James Shields has the longest running current streak in the table. He currently has a 3.43 ERA for his new club in Kansas City.
• Notable fast starters who are not doing so well with their new clubs include Mark Buehrle (7.31) and Dan Haren (8.10).
• Fast starters from last year who are struggling this spring include Cole Hamels (7.56), Matt Cain (5.94), Barry Zito (4.86), Bronson Arroyo (4.05) and Jake Peavy (3.93)
• Pitchers who were fast starters before struggling to start 2012, and who are again starting slowly in 2013, include Tim Lincecum (5.62) and Roy Halladay (7.63)
• Ricky Romero had a 4-year streak of fast starts into 2012, but has now slid all the way down to Class A where he is reportedly working on a completely revamped delivery.
• Justin Verlander makes the table even with a March/April ERA that is the essentially the same as his overall ERA. Same story for David Price and Clayton Kershaw, both with 3 straight appearances in the table (2010-12). Kershaw is lights out again this year but Price (5.82) – not so much.