The best rotation the Pittsburgh Pirates can have in the second half of the season

Marco Gonzales

The Pirates acquired Marco Gonzales from the Atlanta Braves to help solidify what was then a shallow rotation. While Gonzales has been effective when he's taken the mound, he also missed nearly the entire first half of the 2024 campaign. Gonzales will look to continue turning in quality starts for the Pirates as we head into the home stretch of the season.

The veteran lefty has only pitched 26.2 innings, but they have been a good 26.2 innings. Gonzales has just a 2.70 ERA, 2.45 FIP, and 1.28 WHIP. He is a strong control pitcher and has only allowed 5.5% of his opponents to reach via free pass. His 17.3% K% is also the best he’s put up since 2021. Gonzales has been great at limiting home runs, with an 0.34 HR/9 rate, which is currently a single-season career best. Hopefully, it survives the small sample size.

Gonzales has been atypically hit hard. He has a 90 MPH exit velocity and a 9.4% barrel rate. His career exit velo and barrel rate are 88 MPH and 7%, respectively. Still, this is still a small sample size, and we are looking at less than 30 innings pitched. Gonzales has typically been good at limiting hard contact throughout his career.

But can Gonzales continue to outperform his underlying numbers? We’ll see, but his history tells us he can. Since 2018, he has a 3.97 ERA, but a 4.30 FIP, 4.65 xFIP and 4.67 SIERA. It’s not like he’s over-performing for the first time in his career. He has the 12th-largest gap between his ERA and FIP since ‘18. With that, it shouldn’t be a huge concern if he continues to perform well despite mediocre ERA estimators.