The Toronto Blue Jays weren’t two times lucky as they continued their series in Cincinnati Saturday afternoon. Spotting the home side an eight-run lead might have worked Friday night, but it was asking too much for the Jays to overcome the same deficit for a second straight game.
There’s an old baseball saying: “Momentum is the next day’s starting pitcher.” Whether you believe in momentum in sports or not, it certainly didn’t help the Blue Jays build off a dramatic comeback win as J.A. Happ walked four Reds in a span of five batters in the bottom of the first inning.
Happ was abysmal, allowing eight runs — only seven earned thanks to an Erik Kratz passed ball — in four innings of work while throwing 99 pitches. The lefty’s ERA climbed almost a full run from 4.05 to 4.87 as he posted his fifth poor start out of 10.
Happ is a guy who seems to inspire a great deal of enmity among Blue Jays fandom. His wild swings in performance lead him to be seen as the weak link in the Jays’ starting rotation. Though he’s a more experienced big leaguer than either Drew Hutchison or Marcus Stroman, that designation is probably correct. Happ is the fifth starter in the Jays’ rotation; as fifth starters go, he fits the norm.
It is exceedingly rare for a team – any team – to have five good starting pitchers. In fact, the fifth starter for most teams is usually pretty crummy. The truth is, Happ’s current 4.87 ERA and 1.640 WHIP stands up well against the fifth starters the Blue Jays rolled out back in the good old days.
The 1993 Blue Jays gave Jack Morris the opening day start, but it was clear he was fifth best in the rotation as the year progressed. Morris made 27 starts for that championship ball club, posting a 6.19 ERA and WHIP of 1.664 and the team won 95 games anyway.
In 1992, Dave Stieb and David Wells, who combined to make 28 starts, shared the fifth starter’s role. Between them, they posted a 6.04 ERA in those starts with a WHIP of 1.503. That team won 96 games.
This year’s Blue Jays have won six out of Happ’s 10 starts, while the ’92 team won only 11 of Stieb and Wells’ 28 starts. The ’93 team went 11-16 in games started by Morris.
That’s not to say that the Blue Jays should be pleased with Happ’s inconsistency or satisfied with the job that he’s doing at the bottom of the rotation, but it’s important to note that his results are, in fact, pretty consistent with those of fifth starters on some pretty good teams.
For some more recent examples, we can look at the last three World Series champions. Last year’s Boston Red Sox had the best of the bunch in Canadian Ryan Dempster. He posted a 4.57 ERA and a WHIP of 1.453. The 2012 San Francisco Giants ran Tim Lincecum and his 5.18 ERA out there every fifth day. He had a WHIP of 1.468. Finally, the 2011 St. Louis Cardinals’ fifth starter was Jake Westbrook, who had a 4.66 ERA and 1.533 WHIP.
Blowups like the one Happ had in Cincinnati Saturday are going to happen, and they’re going to happen more often when the least effective of your starting pitchers is on the mound. It should be noted, though, that Happ would not have been allowed to stick around to give up all eight runs had the Blue Jays bullpen not been bled dry the night before.
The upshot of it all is, no one has a good fifth starter, and the problem that has seen the Blue Jays drop 10 of their last 14 games has a lot more to do with the silence of the big bats than any issues on the pitching staff. Even though, of course, they could stand to improve the starting pitching and are looking to do so with the trade deadline just six weeks away.