July Starting Pitching NL Overachievers

The National League has its own crop of surface-stat darlings whose earned run averages are drifting further from what the peripherals say they deserve. Using SIERA and xERA as the anchor rather than ERA, these four have posted the widest gaps in the league and profile as fade candidates heading into August.

Eduardo Rodriguez – Arizona Diamondbacks

Nobody in baseball has outpitched his skill set more dramatically than Rodriguez this season. He's carrying a 2.29 ERA against a 4.81 SIERA, for a gap of nearly two and a half runs, the largest of any qualified starter in the league. His strikeout rate (17.1%) is mid-teens, the walk rate (8.4%) is unremarkable, and yet he's posted a .247 BABIP and an 87.8% strand rate, both well outside sustainable territory. What makes this one especially concerning for anyone fading him is that his xERA, which accounts for actual contact quality, sits at 5.06, worse than his SIERA. That's not a pitcher generating soft, harmless contact; that's a pitcher who hasn't allowed an ERA north of 3.03 in any month this year despite the underlying numbers screaming regression the entire time. At some point the .247 BABIP normalizes, and when it does, the correction could be severe.

Michael McGreevy – St. Louis Cardinals

McGreevy has quietly become a folk hero in St. Louis, sitting on a 3.01 ERA and a tidy 1.10 WHIP through 101.2 innings, with the Cardinals winning at an eye-popping rate in his starts. The problem is the skill set underneath: a 16.5% strikeout rate and one of the worst Stuff+ grades among qualified starters. His SIERA sits at 4.45, and his xERA (5.33) is worse than his SIERA, confirming this isn't a case of well-managed weak contact, hitters are squaring him up, they're just not converting at a normal rate. An 83.2% strand rate is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, and pitchers without bat-missing stuff who rely that heavily on stranding runners tend to see one bad two-inning, seven-run outing wreck the aggregate numbers before the season is out.

Tyler Phillips – Miami Marlins

Phillips has emerged as a nice story for a surprising Marlins club, working to a 3.48 ERA that ranks well ahead of his 4.80 SIERA. A 17.3% strikeout rate paired with a 10.8% walk rate is a shaky foundation for sustained run prevention, and his 10.5% HR/FB rate suggests he's gotten a bit of home-run luck to go with a .274 BABIP that, while closer to average than some names on this list, still sits on the fortunate side of the ledger. The command profile isn't disastrous, but a starter walking over 10% of the batters he faces needs either elite strikeout stuff or elite contact management to sustain a mid-3.00s ERA, and Phillips currently has neither in the kind of quantity his results would suggest.

Justin Wrobleski – Los Angeles Dodgers

Wrobleski has been one of the best stories on a stacked Dodgers staff, working to a 2.69 ERA against a SIERA of 4.27. His calling card is elite command with a 5.0% walk rate that ranks among the best in baseball. A 18.3% strikeout rate and 5.52 K/9 give him almost no margin against contact-quality regression. A .251 BABIP and 80.0% strand rate have propped up the ERA, and his exit-velocity profile (89.7 mph average, 42.5% hard-hit rate) produces an expected wOBA more than 50 points higher than his actual mark allowed. To his credit, his SIERA has trended toward 3.32 over his last several starts as his fastball velocity has ticked up, so this is a somewhat less urgent fade than it was earlier in the year. The full-season gap remains one of the widest in the league, and a soft-tossing lefty without bat-missing stuff is always one bad week away from the numbers catching up to him