How will Pittsburgh Pirates’ pitchers perform in the 2nd half?

The story of the 2015 Pittsburgh Pirates has been the dominance of their starting rotation. Right now the team has two starters (Gerrit Cole and A.J. Burnett) with all-star worthy numbers, a starter in Francisco Liriano with an ERA in the low threes and a ridiculous strikeout rate, and they’ve gotten five really good starts from Charlie Morton in six tries. The offense has been close to average, which has been good enough to put the Pirates right in the thick of the playoff race as we approach the season’s midway point.

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But can the staff keep up its early season successes? In case you haven’t noticed, they aren’t the youngest group of guys (the average age of the current rotation is 30.5). Burnett, Liriano, and Morton certainly have a lot of experience, which is good in some ways, but doesn’t always bode well for their arms as they try to pitch deep into the summer. I was curious as to how these guys have fared in their careers on a month-to-month basis, so I dug a little deeper.

A.J. Burnett:

Burnett has been pitching for 17 years now, and in 2014 he threw the second most amount of innings he ever has in his career. The Phillies more or less abused him. That can’t be easy for a 38-year-old arm. How do you feel about line graphs?

AJ Burnett’s career ERA splits per month.

This graph looks a lot like you’d expect it to for a major league pitcher. As the season progresses, you make more starts, throw more pitches, and your arm slowly fatigues. Maybe in the middle of the year you try to save some gas for the stretch run and you really give it all you can in September when your team is in a playoff race (which many of Burnett’s teams have been). Will that be the case this year with Burnett? Probably. He’s had one of the best three month starts to his career. His numbers are so good right now that even a young stud pitcher would struggle to keep up that pace. There’s no doubt that Burnett’s 2015 line graph is going to go uphill from here. Let’s just hope that he’s got enough gas in that arm to finish the season on the downslope like he has so often in his career.

Francisco Liriano:

Francisco Liriano’s career ERA splits per month.

Liriano’s graph looks different than Burnett. His resembles the graph of x-squared (AMIRITE??). I suppose the explanation for this would be that he takes a handful of starts to get settled in and then he finds his groove mid-season just before fatigue sets in and he regresses a bit as the season comes to a close. He too is off to a much better start in 2015 than his career average, but he hasn’t put up spectacular numbers. His ERA sits at 3.26 right now while his career mark is 4.01. He’s been much better than that 4.01 since coming to the Pirates and the boost in strikeouts this year implies that he’s been legitimately strong this season. I would expect a pretty straight line for Liriano as the year progresses, he’ll stay around the mid threes and win the Pirates some big games down the stretch.

Charlie Morton:

Charlie Morton’s career ERA splits per month.

Morton is a smaller sample size here, but his 781 career innings are still enough for this graph to mean something. He’s been way less consistent/predictable than Liriano and Burnett, and understandably so. Morton had to kind of re-invent himself a few years back and has dealt with a lot of injuries. He’s pitched close to a full season just twice in his career (29 starts in 2011 and 26 in 2014). His career ERA sits at 4.47, but he’s posted a very respectable 3.57 mark since becoming a rotation staple in 2013. The graph is mainly fluky and you can’t take much from it. Morton is going to have good and bad starts, but if the last three years are any indication, he’s going to keep the Pirates in the majority of the games he starts.

As for Gerrit Cole, he’s only pitched one full major league season and his 55 career starts just aren’t enough to show me any kind of progressional statistics, so I’m leaving out the graph. He missed time in the second half of last year (making just three starts in July & August combined) and posted a 3.66 ERA in September. The first year-and-a-half of his career have to be looked at as developmental and there’s no way to really take much away from that. He seems to be developed and focused this year, and there have been no concerns about his arm strength as the year goes on. Everyone expects Gerrit Cole to keep his ERA amongst the league leaders. His ERA sits at 1.78 right now which seems impossible to keep up, but personally I wouldn’t be shocked to see him finish the season with a sub-2 ERA. More realistically you’ll see him finish in the 2.25-2.50 range which would still make him a front runner for the NL Cy Young. There’s nothing to be concerned about with Cole; when he has the ball, you expect the Pirates to win.

Jeff Locke is a league average number five starter and is becoming less and less relevant as the year goes on. He’ll be called upon if the Pirates see an injury to one of the four above, but chances are Locke won’t be making many starts down the stretch. Maybe we can come back to him when his second half job becomes more clear.

The bottom line is that the Pittsburgh Pirates’ staff is going to regress as a unit, but that’s mainly just because of how spectacular they have been up to this point. They will remain one of the top rotations in the National League, but the offense is going to have to have a better second half if the team wants a real chance at winning the division.

Next: Cincinnati Reds jump out early but Pittsburgh Pirates win 7-6