Pitching Has Been Rough in July

You’re not imagining things, the pitching landscape has been a nightmare in July. Sometimes we get in the bubble of our team and project our struggles onto the league and I thought perhaps I was doing just that as I watched my ERA and WHIP just take a beating in league after league. So, I had to check into it.

Young arms showed their volatility, but established arms assumed to have high floors weren’t immune from the beatings. With just a day left in the month, we’ve already seen more 7+ earned run starts than in any other month with 33. The first three months yielded 27, 29, and 23, respectively.

Cole Hamels and Tyson Ross each served up a pair with one of Ross’s being a juicy 2 IP/8 ER nightmare. David Price, J.A. Happ, Tanner Roark, Rick Porcello, Nathan Eovaldi, Jon Lester, Zack Godley, and Julio Teheran (it was at Miami, he was in a lot lineups) all dropped standings-changing bombs on their teams. Meanwhile, Freddy Peralta, Shane Bieber, and Felix Pena reminded everyone that they’re not yet fully formed arms.

Perhaps the craziest thing about the high count of 7+ ER outings in July is that it comes in the month with the fewest games by far thanks to the All-Star break. The 7+ ER starts just underscore the awfulness of July. It’s admittedly an arbitrary cutoff for a bad start, but looking at the composite results by month shows just how bad it’s been:

Notable disaster ERAS in July (prepare to vomit):

• Cole Hamels – 11.12 ERA
• Dylan Bundy – 8.38 ERA
• Luis Severino – 6.58 ERA
• Lance McCullers – 6.53 ERA
• Jon Lester – 6.31 ERA
• Robbie Ray – 6.12 ERA
• Johnny Cueto – 6.86 ERA (now having TJ)
• J.A. Happ – 5.87 ERA
• Rick Porcello – 5.74 ERA
• Mike Foltynewicz – 5.72 ERA
• Nick Pivetta – 5.66 ERA
• Zach Eflin – 5.40 ERA
• Sean Newcomb – 5.06 ERA (that’s with a near no-hit bid)

There is a range of talent in this list, but these guys were consistently started in virtually all formats throughout the month.

I mentioned the volatility of youth and it wasn’t just the few guys I named above:

• Tyler Mahle – 8.62 ERA
• Reynaldo Lopez – 7.39 ERA
• Domingo German – 7.00 ERA
• Shane Bieber – 7.00 ERA
• Felix Pena – 6.89 ERA
• Walker Buehler – 6.52 ERA
• Nick Kingham – 6.20 ERA
• Eric Lauer – 5.84 ERA
• Freddy Peralta – 5.47 ERA
• Brad Keller – 5.46 ERA
• Joey Lucchesi – 5.21 ERA

There is more discretion used with young arms, but these guys were at least viewed as key spot starters in many leagues, if not full on rotation members for fantasy teams as trust was building from some worthy starts in previous months (or even from earlier in July).

We know pitching is volatile, but holy hell this was a bad month. If you saw your ERA and WHIP severely damaged in roto or had weeks completely ruined in H2H by disaster starts, you were not alone. I hope that August brings a reprieve from the pain. I’ll have new SP rankings out on Thursday once the trade deadline dust settles.