We did previously highlight how well the D-backs’ bullpen is pitching this month. While their ERA has crept up a little from the sub-two figure, it’s still a thoroughly respectable 2.08. That’s fourth-best in the majors, and they are also the only bullpen to have a WHIP below one. Over 47.2 innings, they have allowed only thirty hits (that’s a minuscule .181 average against) and fifteen walks, for 0.944 WHIP in May. However, a league-low BABIP of just .227 is clearly a factor there. They also haven’t
allowed a home-run this month: the last reliever to do so was Brandon Pfaadt on April 30th. Let’s hope I’m not tempting fate by mentioning this. It’s why their xFIP – FIP with a normal home-run rate – is a much less impressive 4.30.
But it’s worth nothing that the rotation have been getting on board the performance train of late. As noted the other day, they have been working hard, having thrown 119 innings across nineteen starts. That’s an average of 6.26 IP per start. The next-highest figure for May is the Phillies, down at 5.84 IP/GS. At the other end? The Tigers, barely at four. They have one win in nineteen efforts this year. But it’s not just length, it’s quality length. A 3.18 ERA by the rotation this month is fourth-best, and certainly deserving of more than the eight wins, also in nineteen starts.
It’s when we combine the two that we get the really startling number. Because it’s not often that the D-backs have had both the rotation and bullpen firing on all cylinders. Combined, through 19 games in May, Arizona has an ERA of just 2.86. It has been almost twenty-four years since the Diamondbacks have posted a figure that low over the course of a calendar month. You need to go back to August 2002 to find a lower figure of 2.63. [Kinda fun to look at the contributors – not just the obvious!] There hasn’t even been an ERA for a month under 3.20 since August of 2018. Hopefully that can continue tonight against the cellar-dwelling Rockies.
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