Is the Starting Rotation Starting to be a Problem?
Statistics are updated through Monday, April 15th.
We’re 16 games into the 2019 Phillies season, and it’s been a rollercoaster of a ride so far. The offense has been mashing for the most part, even with a little bit of a cool down over the past week of games. The bullpen has been wildly inconsistent, but some guys have been having surprising performances (Adam Morgan comes to mind). And the starting rotation has been incredibly frustrating.
The Phillies’ ace, Aaron Nola, has looked nothing like the guy who finished third in Cy Young Award voting last season. Through four starts, Nola is 1-0 with an atrocious 7.45 ERA (the highest amongst qualified pitchers, according to Phillies.com) and 1.66 WHIP. He’s let up five home runs through 19.1 innings, and opponents are hitting a whopping .280 against him. For comparison, opponents hit .197 against him in 212.1 innings last year.
The biggest issue with Nola is his inability to find the strike zone lately. So far this season, Nola has thrown first pitch strikes to 47.1% of batters. Last year, he threw first pitch strikes to 69.2% of hitters. Yes, he’s been getting squeezed by the umpires a little bit. But an ace needs to be able to shake that off, not get rattled, and find a way to persevere.
Is it time to be worried about Nola? Not yet. But the baseball season has a funny way of flying by, and before you know it the calendar is going to flip to May. If Nola can’t figure it out by then, it’s going to put a little more pressure on the 2-5 pitchers.
Jake Arrieta has looked more like the Jake Arrieta of old so far this season, going 2-1 with a 2.25 ERA and a 1.15 WHIP, while limiting hitters to a .191 batting average. The question with Jake though is, which Arrieta are we going to get the rest of the way through the season? The guy who is pitching like the 2015 Cy Young winner, or the guy who has regressed every season since winning the award?
Zach Eflin has actually been pretty good in the early-going. His ERA and WHIP are solid – 3.94 and 1.25 respectively – and he has 18 strikeouts in 16 innings. Now he doesn’t have the greatest track record for his career, with an ERA over 5.00. But at only 25 years old, maybe this is the season that Eflin puts it all together.
The two huge question marks are Nick Pivetta and Vince Velasquez. While Velasquez has pitched well in his two starts, his propensity for giving up the long ball means that the opposition could put up a crooked number every inning he pitches.
Pivetta was a popular breakout pick going into this season, and he has been anything but. Before Tuesday night’s game against the Mets, Pivetta had a 9.45 ERA and a 2.18 WHIP. How is that even possible, you ask? Opponents are hitting .381 against him. .381! That’s absolutely insane, and while one would imagine that number goes down as the season progresses, it’s not a great place to start for a guy who could be on thin ice this season.
If Pivetta continues to struggle, or if Velasquez reverts back to his high career ERA, home run happy self, one of them could find their way out of the rotation and replaced by someone like Jerad Eickhoff.
*(Editor’s note: Pivetta has, in fact, been sent to Triple-A in favor of Eickhoff).
And as we get closer to the trade deadline, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the Phillies make a move for a big-name arm to help them down the stretch with the current state of the rotation. Madison Bumgarner, anyone?
It’s easy to overreact to some poor performances out of the rotation a few weeks into the season. But it’s frustrating that it’s been this bad, and has led the Phillies to a 9-6 record in a division that looks like it’s going to be a dogfight all season long.
The offense has helped bail the starters out, but that’s not going to last all season, as we’ve seen recently. The team can’t rely on the bats to do the job every game. Every once in a while, they’re going to need a gritty pitching performance in a 1-0 win.
Hopefully as the weather warms up and the starters get some more innings in their arms, these problems go away. Otherwise, the Phillies might be on the outside looking in come October.
Photo: Twitter (via @JeffSkversky)
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