8 MLB pitchers that need to deliver for postseason hopefuls

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.

8 MLB pitchers that need to deliver for contenders

Maturity on the South Side

The Chicago White Sox enter 2020 flush with emerging talent, including on the mound where Lucas Giolito, Reynaldo Lopez and Dylan Cease finally broke through and where the hope is that Michael Kopech will follow.

What the Sox need in 2020 is mound maturity, and they want Gio Gonzalez to provide a healthy dose of it.

Gonzalez is a 34-year-old journeyman signed to a two-year, $11.5 million contract over the winter. The White Sox also signed Dallas Keuchel, but with a .542 career winning percentage he is the surer performance bet.

Gonzalez, three years older than Keuchel and coming off a season in which he barely averaged five innings per start, is the question mark.

A soft-tosser, Gonzalez went 3-2 in 17 starts for the 2019 Brewers, and he hasn’t recorded a seventh-inning out since 2018.  But facing him can be a frustrating experience for opposing batters. Gonzalez ran up a 127 ERA+ in 2019, and he improved with work. After making just six starts before July 1, he got the ball 13 times in the season’s second half, building to  a .193 opponents batting average in September.

If the White Sox want to fulfill their hopes of challenging for the AL Central title in 2020, they need Gonzalez to over-perform expectations and do so in pennant pressure.

8 MLB pitchers that need to deliver for contenders

Jake from Philly

The Phillies signed Jake Arrieta prior to the 2018 season to lead them to a divisional title…or three. Why else would you pay a guy $75 million over three seasons with $22.5 million options for two more seasons?

Over the first two seasons of that deal, the Phillies have gotten an 18-19 record and cumulative 4.18 ERA. That performance level is pretty much in line with what the Phillies usually get when they throw big money at a player, but likely less than they expected.

Entering 2020, Arrieta is the projected No. 3 starter behind Aaron Nola and free-agent acquisition Zack Wheeler. That staff is supposed to lift the Phillies to something better than the fourth-place status in the NL East that got manager Gabe Kapler fired.

Arrieta has a track record. He was the 2015 Cy Young Award winner for the Cubs and a key member of their 2016 World Series winning rotation. None of that, however, helps the Phillies. His two seasons in Philadelphia have produced truly ordinary results: ERA+s of 104 and 97 and a 1.35 average WHIP.

It’s too much to ask of Arrieta to return to his 2015-16 glory days. But the Phillies would settle for 2017, the season he went 14-10 with a 3.53 ERA in 30 starts and 168 innings before signing that sweet deal.

The NL East is perceived to be pitching-rich, with Atlanta, New York and Washington all viewed as serious contenders. If Arrieta isn’t something better than average, the Phillies probably don’t have the mound depth to win consistently in a pressure-packed race.

8 MLB pitchers that need to deliver for contenders

Speaking of Wheeler…

When Wheeler moved from the Mets to the Phillies, it created a gap in New York’s rotation as well. The Mets are strong at the top with Jacob DeGrom and Noah Syndergaard, but they need a veteran third arm to fill in the gap left by Wheeler’s departure.

That have one in Marcus Stroman, acquired in a mid-season trade last year. The question is whether Stroman can deliver.

A couple of seasons ago, that would have been a silly question: Stroman was viewed as a prodigy when he reigned as the staff ace for the Toronto Blue Jays. But recurring shoulder and finger problems made a hash of his 2018 season, and Stroman managed only a 10-13 record with the Jays and Mets last year.

He did do enough following his deadline trade to allow Mets fans to envision the return of the old Stroman, going 4-2 with a 3.77 ERA in 11 starts. If they can get that from him under pennant pressure in 2020, Mets fans would be thrilled.

They’ll need it because Wheeler’s departure leaves a legitimate gap in the rotation. In 31 starts, Wheeler went 11-8 with a 3.96 ERA covering 195 innings. Stroman, for the record, hasn’t delivered that many innings since 2017.

8 MLB pitchers that need to deliver for contenders

Yu guessed it

The Chicago Cubs did virtually nothing this off-season, preferring to ride with a team that went 84-78 and missed the playoffs in 2019. That means the Cubs are betting big time on their returnees, none more so than Yu Darvish.

To find the reason why you need to look no further than his contract, which will net him $22 million in its third of six seasons. To date Darvish has underwhelmed, spending much of 2018 sidelined by injuries before going 6-8 in 31 starts in 2019.

If you are a Cubs fan, you see those numbers and immediately go into rationalization mode. There is a basis for that reaction. Darvish was better over the season’s second half, delivering a .199 batting average against after May 31. In that pennant pressure, his control noticeably sharpened: He walked 41 batters prior to June 1, only 15 after June 1.

If the Cubs get the post-June 1 Yu Darvish, maybe there’s a reason to keep the band together. Based on his 56-42 pre-Cubs record, he’s obviously capable of being a staff leader.

At the same time, the Cubs have no valid backup plan. If he gets hurt again or can’t find the plate, the result could be a standings freefall the like of which Cubs fans haven’t seen in a decade.

Darvish, in other words, is the Cubs’ pitching linchpin.

8 MLB pitchers that need to deliver for contenders

Yo, Adrian!

Like the Cubs, the Milwaukee Brewers believe they can win the NL Central in 2020. Unlike the Cubs, the Brewers have few established mound stars around which they can build.

That’s going to intensify the pressure on ‘promise’ guys like Adrian Houser.

Houser is a 27-year-old with one full season under his belt who the Brewers have penciled in as their No. 2 starter behind Brandon Woodruff. If you think Woodruff’s credentials are unproven, get a look at Houser.

In his rookie 2019 season, Houser went 6-7 in 35 appearances, 18 of them starts. That means the first issue is workload. Houser has never exceeded the 132 innings he threw last season, 21 of which came at Triple-A.

So when the Brewers write him in as the No. 2 guy in their rotation, they are expressing something between a wish, a hope and a presumption regarding his ability to actually handle the job.

There’s no doubt about Houser’s stuff. He fanned 117 in 111 major league innings last season, so what we’re really talking about is his durability. Can he handle the demands of the added workload in what the Brewers expect to be pennant pressure circumstances? We will all find out together this spring.

8 MLB pitchers that need to deliver for contenders

The guy in the spotlight

Mike Fiers is a 35-year-old veteran of nine major league seasons. If any major league pitcher can stand the pressure and scrutiny that goes along with being the whistleblower in the Houston Astros sign-stealing scandal, Fiers should be that guy.

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The Oakland Athletics better hope so, because they are counting on Fiers big-time in 2020.

With Matt Chapman, Matt Olson and Marcus Semien, the A’s think they have the team that can take down the Astros. They also have a horde of pitching potential: Sean Manaea, Frankie Montas, Jesus Luzardo and A.J. Puk to name four.

But all through that rotation, there be demons in waiting. Manaea is coming off shoulder surgery, and although his September return went sensationally, that was only one month. Montas is coming off a PED suspension, and Luzardo and Puk are both youngsters.

The one reliable arm belongs to Fiers. That’s the A’s hope, anyway.

Fiers was 15-4 for Oakland last season, delivering 185 innings. So the only real question concerns his ability to handle any distractions created by his first-person role in the sign-stealing scandal. We should find out early. The Athletics host the Astros at the end of March. There’s no certainty that Fiers will square off against his old team, but of course, those will be only the first three of 19 such meetings in 2020.

It will also be interesting to see what kind of reception Fiers gets on his other road starts.