Is it time to drop Andrew Cashner? He has an 11.25 ERA after one start.
Is it time to drop Collin McHugh who only got one out in his first start?
Clearly you should move on from Tyson Ross and his 11.81 ERA, right?
Clearly it’s time to move on from Wily Peralta and his 9.00 ERA. Well, you might be right in doing that.
Oh, and Zack Greinke is going to be a failure this season. Just look at that 15.75 ERA he posted in his first outing with his new team.
There is panic in the streets despite the fact that every starting pitcher in baseball has thrown one or zero games this season. Pitchers have made ONE START this season and people are freaking out. I’m serious. You should see the cavalcade of questions on my Twitter account about all the changes people want to make to their roster. It’s utter insanity.
Here’s what you need to know.
1 – We’re talking one start.
2 – We’re talking one start.
3 – We’re talking one start.
Before I get into that directly, a brief history lesson.
Here are the ERA’s of a three pitchers after the entire month of April last season.
6.55 – Jose Quintana
6.23 – Jon Lester
5.32 – Chris Sale
Remember, those ERA’s are for the entire Month of April, not just one start.
Obviously the trio ripped it up after April. Here are their season long ERA’s.
3.36 – Jose Quintana
3.34 – Jon Lester
3.41 – Chris Sale
A slow start does NOT doom a pitcher.
Back to the ‘it’s one start’ line of thought.
Here are some of the worst outings of 2015. I will use ERA for the sake of this argument. Listed is the pitcher’s worst effort and then their season long ERA.
PITCHER | Date | WORST OUTING | SEASON ERA | ERA W/O START(S) |
8-15-2015 | 10 ER, 2.1 IP | 3.53 | 2.71* | |
9-15-2015 | 10 ER, 3.0 IP | 4.96 | 4.61 | |
9-26-2015 | 9 ER, 3.2 IP | 3.23 | 2.58* | |
7-8-2015 | 9 ER, 6.0 IP | 3.23 | 2.58* | |
7-10-2015 | 9 ER, 3.1 IP | 3.65 | 3.32 | |
6-12-2015 | 8 ER, 0.1 IP | 3.53 | 2.71* | |
6-22-2015 | 8 ER, 3.1 IP | 4.37 | 4.00 | |
4-13-2015 | 7 ER, 2.1 IP | 3.66 | 3.39 |
Look how much lower the ERA of each guy is if you remove that one start (two for Archer and Hernandez). The point should be obvious. Pitchers often get bombed. It happens. However, that doesn’t mean that the pitchers are useless if they have a terrible outing or two.
Have some patience folks. I implore you.
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Ray Flowers can be heard Monday through Friday, 7 PM EDT and Friday on SiriusXM Fantasy Sports Radio (Sirius 210, XM 87). You can also hear Ray Sunday nights at 6 PM on the channel talking fantasy sports. Follow Ray’s work at Fantasy Alarm and on Twitter (@baseballguys).