Remembering April’s Pitching Standouts

Remember April?

How crazy was that month? It seems like ages ago at this point.

It was a month during which Chris Sale had a remarkably misleading 5.32 ERA. Sale was at 2.37 through the first three starts of the season’s opening month before the Twins rocked him for 8 ER in just 3 IP of work. That seemed especially preposterous at the time given the opposition, but now the Twins sit just a game out of the second wildcard spot and while it’s always jarring to see Sale rocked, the Twins being the ones who inflicted the damage isn’t as much of a shock as they’ve now done it multiple times to Sale.

There were also several guys pitching out of their minds in April and as we do in every April likely as a response to a winter without baseball, we got overly excited about some of the performances because they were all we had on the 2015 season. Sure, some guys post a mid-2.00s ERA in April and it’s a harbinger of a Cy Young-level season, but most are just having their best month – a month we wouldn’t notice if it had been June or August.

April gets us drunk on the potential of five more months at this new level. Today, we’re going to look back at five surprise pitching standouts from the month and see how things have gone since the fast start.

Nick Martinez, TEX

April: 0.35 ERA in 26 IP

Since: 5.08 ERA in 95.7 IP

OK, we’re starting with a softball. No one bought this. I mean, we know that no 0.35 ERA is “sustainable”, but when there is a skills surge to go with one of these runs, it becomes interesting (see also: Archer, Chris). There was no such surge for Martinez. He had a 3% K-BB%, eighth-worst in baseball for April (how were seven pitchers worse?!). Clayton Kershaw led at 28%. Mind you a 28% K rate is elite and that was his K-BB% rate.

Martinez softened to a 11% K rate and 8% BB rate. He allowed just a .221 AVG and stranded 94% of the batters who reached base. It couldn’t last. Weirdly, it kinda did. Not at that level, but he had a 3.25 ERA in May that he didn’t deserve, either. Martinez has a 6.25 ERA in 11 starts since the start of June. In fact, his June exemplifies why you don’t want this risk even when he’s running well: he had 3 QS in the middle of the month, but it was sandwiched by 3.3 IP/7 ER v. CWS and 6 IP/8 ER at TOR.

Anthony DeSclafani, CIN

April: 1.04 ERA in 26 IP

Since: 4.15 ERA in 143 IP

DeSclafani had some spring buzz, spurred in large part by Eno, in fact. He came out of the gates firing with a big first month and enough skill support to believe something was there even after the regression of his near-1.00 ERA. Walks became an issue in May and expedited his move back toward the middle as his ERA jumped nearly two and a half runs to 3.41 by the time we reached June 1st.

Since then he has stabilized into a fair NL-only option and streamable piece for deep mixed leagues. Three 6 ER outings are the only severe blemishes on his record since the start of June, yielding a 3.94 ERA and 1.36 WHIP in 105 innings. This was just the first full season for the 25-year old righty and it might be a situation where the buzz was just a year early. He has shown enough to believe there is another level to untap.

Trevor Bauer, CLE

April: 1.80 ERA in 25 IP

Since: 5.22 ERA in 143 IP

This is one I wanted to buy into, but the walks that have plagued Bauer forever were still very prominent in that April run (13% BB). He was immediately brought back to earth during his first two starts in May (11 ER in 9.3 IP) before a run of five more quality starts that might have been better than the April run. Here’s the frustrating thing about that 5.22 ERA since the start of May, it hasn’t just been consistently awful pitching that you can ignore.

He has 13 quality starts over his last 25 – all of which saw him allow two or fewer runs – good for a 1.72 ERA in 94.3 IP. The problem is that the other 12 starts have been an utter nightmare including 10 starts of 5+ ER during which he has a 14.53 ERA in 35.3 IP. When he’s bad, he’s really bad. It’s going to be hard to ever trust Bauer until he shows substantial growth with the walk rate. He doesn’t have to become one of the league’s stingiest, but getting under 4.0 per nine is a must. Maybe a Gio Gonzalez path for him?

Ubaldo Jimenez, BAL

April: 1.59 ERA in 22.7 IP

Since: 4.65 ERA in 137.3 IP

I refused to by this one, even as it carried on well past April. Jimenez followed up his big opening month with another 13 starts of 3.17 ERA leaving him with a 2.81 ERA through 99.3 innings on July 8th. It came unraveled all at once, or in three of four starts as he drew the Tigers twice and the Yankees in their park. A home start against Atlanta was his only reprieve and even with the 7 IP/2 ER from that start, he posted a 10.61 ERA in the four-start run (18.7 IP).

My biggest issue with Jimenez throughout was that when it goes, it goes quickly and without notice. It’s the same for when he’s running well. It can just come out of nowhere (well, nowhere from a statistical standpoint as it’s often mechanically-related) and last for a while. Think about that resurgent 2013 season with Cleveland that led to Baltimore signing him in the first place.

He had a 6.04 ERA through nine starts that year before reeling off a 2.41 ERA in his final 23 starts that season. His second half has actually shown that inconsistency in even shorter spurts. His ER totals since the break: 7, 7, 2, 6, 0, 4, 3, 7, 4, 1, and 3. It’s been five seasons since that electric 2010 season when he had a 2.88 ERA in 221.7 innings. He has a 4.46 ERA in 833 innings since then, if you buy in and get burned (and you always will), it’s on you.

Hector Santiago, LAA

April: 2.28 ERA in 23.7 IP

Since:  3.37 ERA in 141.7 IP

Hey, finally someone who followed up their April success with something other than soul-crushing destruction. In fact, his ERA was still a stunning 2.33 by the time we reached the All-Star break. It took a rotten stretch in August to finally send him north of 3.00. He had a 6.21 in 29 August innings, but it was the last three starts that really sank him. He had three straight starts of fewer than five innings (two of them didn’t even last four) allowed 12 ER in the 10.7 IP (10.13 ERA) pushing his ERA from 2.86 to 3.37.

It looked like he might sputter all the way to the finish line, but he has bounced back with two good outings against the top two teams in the AL West: 6 IP/0 ER v. TEX, 7 IP/2 ER v. HOU. Unfortunately there was nothing in that April run skills-wise that suggested he was poised for a big season. He had a 22% K rate, 12% BB rate, and allowed 1.1 HRs per nine. Those fell in line with the 21%, 11%, and 1.1 marks he brought into the season through 352 innings.

It started to get more believable by the month, though, as he consistently cut into his walk rate from May through July going from April’s 12% to 8% in May then 6% in June, and 5% in July. Guess what happened in August? Yeah, it spiked back up to 12%. The HR rate didn’t quite follow suit by lowering every month, but it dipped to 0.7 HR/9 in May and sat at 0.9 in July. It was at 2.0 in July, but he allowed so few base runners (1.05 WHIP) that he still had a 3.34 ERA that month.

All in all, it has been a fantastic season, but it’s hard to see it as a springboard for more in the future as his key issues – walks and homers – haven’t really gone away. He has subdued one or both for periods of time, but his 1.3 HR/9 is actually a career-worst and while his 9% BB rate is a career-best, it’s still pretty bad.

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This doesn’t mean that all April standouts are frauds. After all, this is a pretty tiny sample of hand-selected guys. But what it does help show is something that you probably hear often in the face of exemplary ERA and WHIP performances: skills still matter way more if you want any measure of sustainability.

Sure, it seems obvious now, but back in April I know many of you were convincing yourselves that you might just get the next great Ubaldo season. You were wrong. Stop doing that. Of course, I’d have told you to get Shane Greene instead, so we were both wrong. What’s wrong with us?!