It's not exactly breaking news that our starting rotation has performed well lately. When Yovani Gallardo went down, Jeff Suppan suddenly appeared to be our #2 starter; now, with the emergence of Manny Parra, the acquisition of CC Sabathia, and the surprising goodness of Dave Bush and Seth McClung, Suppan could be considered #5.
But even beyond that, the pitching staff as a whole has gotten steadily better. (Lots of innings from CC isn't hurting anything.)
Courtesy of baseball-reference's team splits, here are some numbers for the entire staff:
- Season to date: 4.03 ERA
- Last 28 days: 3.81 ERA
- Last 14 days: 3.56 ERA (including 93 K's in 91 innings!)
- Last 7 days: 2.74 ERA
What makes the "last 7" split kind of cool is that at the moment, it represents one complete turn through the rotation. In that sequence, we've gotten three quality starts--all of which were better than the 6 IP, 3 ER threshold. The other two starts were only 5 innings, but Sheets and McClung each only gave up 2 runs. Three relievers have given up runs, but one of them (Stetter) is gone now. And Torres's run on Monday night wasn't exactly due to bad pitching.
I'll admit that some superior performances are to be expected when 3 out of 5 games are against the Giants. But the back of the rotation has handled itself well against the Cardinals, too, one of the top half of NL offenses, including the league's best hitter as well as one of its hottest (Glaus).
Now, if we can manage to get 12 more turns through the rotation just like this one...