Coming into 2020, the question around the pitching was wondering if Rick Porcello, Marcus Stroman and Michael Wacha could combine to give the Mets roughly 200 innings of league average pitching, to replace what the Mets got last year from starters no longer on the team. Turns out they needed even more replacement innings when Noah Syndergaard was lost for the season and the early injury to Stroman eliminated any chance to meet even the original goal. And then Porcello and Wacha were lousy and, well, you can see how the team is six games below .500 with six games to play.
But is it fair to lump Porcello and Wacha in the same boat? For the season, Porcello has a 5.46 ERA and Wacha has a 6.75 mark. Neither one of those are anything to write home about but it seems more accurate to say that Porcello’s been bad while Wacha has been horrific. And then we have to consider that Wacha’s ERA as a SP is even worse, as his ERA has been helped by a nice bullpen appearance. As a starter this year, Wacha has a 7.50 ERA in six starts, which produced just 24 IP.
Furthermore, Porcello has been pretty much what we were hoping to get in his last nine starts of the season.
His first two starts were dreadful, as he allowed 9 ER in 6 IP. But since then, Porcello has a 4.50 ERA with peripherals much better than that. He’s got 8 BB, 45 Ks and 4 HR in 50 IP, which translates to a 3.03 FIP. There have been a couple of clunkers in his last nine starts – 3 IP, 4 ER against the Marlins and 4 IP and 5 ER against the Orioles – but there have also been four Quality Starts, including two games where he went seven innings.
There have been 1,614 games played so far this season and only 178 times has a pitcher completed at least seven innings in a start. That works out to 11% of the time. There have been only 85 pitchers this season to go seven innings in a start and Porcello has done it twice, making him one of 46 hurlers to have multiple 7-inning starts in 2020.
Does that make him one of the top 50 pitchers in the game? No, it doesn’t, not even close. But Porcello gives you the potential for a Quality Start each time out and that’s … something. Sure, it’s an indication of how low the bar has been set for pitcher expectations here in 2020. We can scoff and poke fun at this or we can recognize the reality of the situation.
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