At this time a year ago, Mitchell Parker and Jake Irvin looked like they could be reliable rotation pieces for years to come. Both of them broke through in 2024 and showed big time flashes. Irvin looked like an All-Star in the first half of 2024 and Parker came out of nowhere to provide solid production.
However, 2025 has been a different story for these two young arms. This season Parker and Irvin have been the two worst qualified starting pitchers in all of baseball. Their mediocre stuff has just
not been fooling hitters and it put the Nats in big holes early in games. Parker and Irvin are the only two pitchers to allow at least 100 earned runs this season.
There are going to be a lot of tough decisions for whoever the next GM will be, but moving off of Parker and Irvin will not be one of those tough choices. Fans now joke that Parker and Irvin’s starts are automatic losses, and that is not far from the truth sadly.
We have talked about how bad it is, but let’s dive into it to get a deeper understanding. To do that, we need to look at the numbers, both traditional and under the hood metrics. As you would expect, neither are pretty.
Jake Irvin’s ERA sits at 5.76 this season. That is way higher than the 4.41 mark he posted last season. However, this did not come out of nowhere. After putting up near All-Star numbers in the first half, Irvin collapsed. His 3.49 first half ERA ballooned to 5.90 after the break.
So Irvin has pretty much been the same guy he was in the second half, just across a full season. Just about every Jake Irvin stat you look at is a massive red flag. His strikeouts are down, his walks are up, his home runs allowed are way up and his velocity is way down from 2024. That trend started in the second half of last season and continued into this season.
With his velocity going from about 94 to 92, he does not have a way to consistently get guys out. The fastball, which was a tone setter at points last year is now a bad pitch. His secondary pitches are mediocre and his command has regressed.
The under the hood numbers are also ugly. His FIP of 5.62 and xERA of 5.65 both suggest that his 5.76 ERA is not very unlucky. It is just a reflection of who he is as a pitcher and you can’t have that kind of pitcher in your rotation.
With all that being said about Irvin, Mitchell Parker has been even worse. Parker did not reach the heights that Irvin did, but his 4.29 ERA over 151 innings was very solid. However, regression has hit Parker like a truck.
After a strong April, Parker has been lit up. His ERA is the worst among qualified starting pitchers at 5.85. That just edges out Irvin. His fringy stuff has been no match for MLB hitters, who are batting .277 against him. Parker’s 50.2% hard hit rate is in the bottom 1 percentile of pitchers. That is why his xERA of 6.04 is even higher than his actual ERA.
Parker is a contact oriented pitcher who gives up a ton of loud contact. That is just not a combination that is going to work at the MLB level. The thing that ties Irvin and Parker together besides their poor performance is the fact their stuff is just not that good.
In the modern MLB, you need to be nasty. It is tough to be a command artist in the modern game, and those guys aren’t exactly spotting it like Greg Maddux. You need a pitch or two that can reliably fool MLB hitters. Neither Parker or Irvin have that weapon in their locker.
When Irvin was throwing in the mid-90’s he could lean on his fastball, but his velocity has slipped and with that his fastball performance has regressed. It is critical for the next GM to find more interesting arms to put in this rotation.
A guy like Cade Cavalli is a good example. The actual results have been mixed, but you can see the vision. Cavalli has an upper 90’s heater with a wipeout curveball. Sure, there are things to work on, but he has a path to get guys out.
With Parker and Irvin, it is more about smoke and mirrors. Personally, I was never the biggest Parker guy even when he was doing decently. The stuff never really popped and a lot of the metrics suggested he was getting lucky.
With Irvin, I really liked his game in early 2024. He was really fun to watch with his good fastball and commanding mound presence. However, with the fastball losing steam, his game has been neutered. If he comes into Spring Training throwing 96, it would be worth giving him a look at some point, but the velocity has not been there for 18 months at this point.
While both of these guys have had their moments, they should not start next season in the rotation. They need to be replaced, either internally or through free agency. It just needs to happen. You can’t have the two worst qualified starters trotting out there every fifth day again.
It was fun seeing two homegrown guys have success in the Nats rotation. That was something fans had not seen for a long time. However, baseball is a what have you done for me lately business and these two guys have not produced. We need to let go of the sentimentality and make the smart decision here. Nationals fans cannot do another year of Parker and Irvin.
