These teams hope to contend in 2020, but it can’t happen unless these MLB pitchers, all of whom have questions, deliver under pressure.
Pitchers and catchers have been in camp for a week now. A few will soon find themselves under more pressure than they have ever been.
Those are the MLB pitchers slated for prominent rotation roles for teams that harbor playoff hopes, but who either have not yet established their capability to fill those roles or who may be questioned for other reasons. With spring training games about to begin, there are a lot of those starters on a lot of hot seats.
Just to pick one out of the crowd, imagine being the guy tasked with picking up the starts taken last year by Houston Astros ace Gerrit Cole? In 2020, that job will fall to rookie Jose Urquidy, who made nine regular-season starts in 2019.
Urquidy debuted in July after going 7-5 with a 4.46 ERA in 18 minor league starts at Round Rock and Corpus Christi. He begins 2020 as the fourth starter in the Astros rotation, joining veterans Justin Verlander, Zack Greinke, Lance McCullers, and Brad Peacock.
Nobody questions Urquidy’s stuff. He showed enough during the 2019 post-season to merit a chance, making three appearances including a World Series start against the Nationals. He lasted into the 6th inning, pitched three-hit shutout ball and got the win.
The question is whether Urquidy can approximate that level of performance over the course of a full season. Since signing his first professional contract in 2015, he has never thrown more than 125 innings…and that came against Class A competition.
The Astros need Urquidy to deliver under pressure because Verlander and Greinke are both aging and McCullers is coming off surgery that forced him to miss all of 2019.
The pressure on Urquidy to deliver is common around baseball this spring; many teams have a pitcher thrust into a similar situation. The success or failure of those teams is likely to hinge on the performance of these MLB pitchers.