As baseball hurtles toward the halfway point of the season, many of the projections, prognostications and predictions from the start of the season are in shambles. This is a typical occurrence of course, because predicting the future is a foggy endeavor. Projections should never stand still, and should always take into account new events.
So in that light, the midway marker is a good point at which to reconsider how we feel about players and teams. My colleague Jay Jaffe has already tackled the starting lineups, so I'm taking the challenge of ranking the 30 pitching staffs in terms of what the rest of the season will look like. Although I utilize the ZiPS projections to inform these predictions, these rankings aren't exclusively from the projections.
Tier 1: The elite
1. Even with Dellin Betances injured and Chad Green struggling, the Yankees' bullpen is second in the league in WAR thanks to the most impressive depth in baseball. The rotation is more serviceable than exciting, but the Yankees also have managed to keep things together without Luis Severino. That's enough to make them the best pitching staff in baseball; no MLB team has a perfect rotation or bullpen.
2. I'm still not convinced that Wade Miley is a legitimate No. 2 starter -- being from Baltimore I'm a little traumatized from his stint with the O's -- but he has been a more-than-adequate replacement for Charlie Morton. The bullpen doesn't have much in the way of big names, but Ryan Pressly is as unhittable as any pitcher in baseball right now and Roberto Osuna causes fewer ninth-inning heart attacks than Ken Giles ever did.
3. The Rays have a team ERA+ of 147 after nearly half of an entire season. Only three starting pitchers in modern baseball have a career number above 147 (I'm leaving out Jim Devlin, who played three seasons in the early NL): Clayton Kershaw (158), Pedro Martinez (154) and Lefty Grove (148). Walter Johnson is at 147, meaning the Rays have had an entire staff of Walter Johnsons for a half-season. They're probably not this good, but it's a dangerous group.
4. Clayton Kershaw is no longer CLAYTON KERSHAW, but the Dodgers have emphasized depth to the extent that they're not relying on The Claw pitching at an all-caps level. Walker Buehler has quickly wiped out the negative numbers from his cold start, and perhaps most surprisingly, a healthy Hyun-Jin Ryu is doing his own Kershaw impression as far as dominance on the mound. The Dodgers will likely pick up another bullpen arm at the deadline, but the relief corps has been fine.
Tier 2: The Very Good
5. Statistically, they haven't been great so far, but they largely haven't had their intended group healthy since the first week of the season. Mike Clevinger just returned to action, and Carlos Carrasco, Jefry Rodriguez, Corey Kluber and Danny Salazar are all expected back at various points of the season. Their recovery times could either bump the Indians to the top spot or tumble them out of the top 10.
6. The bullpen is not great, but having a top three of Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg and Patrick Corbin -- all threats to put up Cy Young-type seasons -- makes up for a lot of sins. OK, the bullpen not being great may be an understatement, but I think the relievers are probably better than the first-half dumpster fire that blazed in D.C. for a stretch, though not a top-tier unit.
7. Chicago Cubs
As with Washington's relief crew, there has been a bit of a trainwreck quality to the Cubs' bullpen, but they've added Craig Kimbrel and will eventually welcome back Brandon Morrow, who remains on the injured list. The Kyle Hendricks shoulder injury is not believed to be serious at this point -- which could hurt this ranking if it is -- and Yu Darvish is slowly starting to look like the pre-Cubs version.
8. The Mets feel worse than this position; there's a reason why their fans and their haters both call them the New York Mess. But the rotation has stayed generally healthy and I can't believe that Noah Syndergaard and Zack Wheeler will keep struggling for another half of a season. The bullpen has been ugly and the usage even worse, but I'm not yet at the point at which I think Jeurys Familia forgot how to play baseball last winter.
9. Boston doesn't feel like it has a championship bullpen, but it does rank sixth in baseball in ERA and WAR so far in 2019. The season got off to a scary start with Chris Sale missing velocity and struggling through a month of rather indifferent starts, but he hasn't had a truly awful start since mid-April and has double-digit strikeouts in eight of his past nine starts. Sale and David Price healthy is a pretty big deal.
10. Minnesota Twins
All of Jake Odorizzi's peripheral numbers have taken a huge leap forward in 2019, so there's a good shot that he really is now in ace territory (and a rare pitcher who is better since leaving the Rays). I was a skeptic about Martin Perez (and he's still not perfect), but his new cutter has made him a legitimate mid-rotation starter.
Tier 3: The Pretty Good
11. Cincinnati Reds
It seems kind of weird that it's Cincinnati's offense holding back the pitching staff and not the other way around. Luis Castillo is a true No. 1 starter at this point, and even without Alex Wood, every single starter on the team has been above league average (and it's not even close). The bullpen has been just as dangerous and some of the team's discarded starters succeeding in relief (like Amir Garrett or the currently injured Robert Stephenson) has been a fortunate development.
12. Colorado Rockies
There have been some brutal bullpen meltdowns, but there's still enough talent here that the Rockies should at least not be in the bottom 10. I remain a fan of Kyle Freeland -- though 2018 was probably a career year -- and a rotation of German Marquez, Jon Gray, Antonio Senzatela and Freeland ought to be valuable in the second half of the season. The team should definitely be looking for one more starter at the deadline.
13. Blake Treinen having a mortal season has made the bullpen a lot less flashy, but the team's relievers still rank fifth in MLB by WAR. The rotation is a middling unit at best with only a single starting pitcher with a FIP under 4.00. That pitcher is a doozy, however, as Frankie Montas 2.0 (now with Split-Fingered FastballTech©) has been absolutely marvelous.
14. People typically blame St. Louis' bullpen, but it's the rotation that has been the problem. The best FIP among starters belongs to Jack Flaherty at a pedestrian 4.36. That's good news in a sense in that these pitchers ought to be performing better, and while that's no guarantee that they'll turn anything around, it's at least a source of upside!
Tier 4: Meh
15. San Diego Padres
Kirby Yates! Who, five years ago, saw Kirby Yates becoming an elite reliever? Put your hands down, liars. It's nice to see the Padres get rewarded for not playing service-time games with Chris Paddack, and he has been refreshing at the top of the team's starting five (he's in the minors temporarily to keep his total innings workload down). It's still a thin group until San Diego gets another graduation or two from the minors.
16. Aaron Nola is coming around, but the rotation has generally underperformed in 2019 and the Phillies have a lot of quality relievers on the injured list at the moment. That gives them potential to move up in these rankings quickly, but as with the Indians or Cardinals, there's no guarantee. Philly ought to be active before the trade deadline this July.
17. Jameson Taillon should eventually return and Chris Archer can't possibly be this bad, right? Trevor Williams and Jordan Lyles are both near returning to the team and while neither is a top-end starter, it's enough to keep Pittsburgh pitching in baseball's middle class.
18. The bullpen isn't as crazy-good as it was in 2018 and the starting pitchers have regressed toward the mean. And way past the mean in some cases. Jimmy Nelson remains an interesting possible reinforcement -- though his initial return has been inauspicious -- but this is a middling pitching staff.
19. Atlanta Braves
Getting Dallas Keuchel is a significant bonus, but disappointing years from Kevin Gausman and Mike Foltynewicz have held the team back. The front end of the bullpen has been fine, but as with their rotation, the Braves haven't completed turning as many of their prospects into major league relievers in 2019 as they hoped. That future is still coming, though.
20. The loss of Patrick Corbin hurt, but Robbie Ray is healthy, Zack Greinke has fully adjusted to his finesse pitcher status and Merrill Kelly has been a sneaky-good signing that people haven't yet noticed. The fact remains, however, that the quality of both the rotation and bullpen drops off considerably after the front-end talent.
21. Having Mike Trout is a great thing for a baseball team, but has been a double-edged sword for the Angels, given that they generally have sat on their hands when assembling the other 24 non-Trout men on the roster. Nowhere has this hit harder than in the rotation, in which the team assembled a bunch of question marks, few becoming exclamation points. Maybe Trevor Cahill and Matt Harvey have been even worse than expected, but the team should have realized that Cahill is risky and Harvey wasn't even good in 2018.
Tier 5: Hard to win with this
22. Texas Rangers
Lance Lynn is better than his ERA says, but on the flip side, I don't expect Mike Minor to finish 2019 with an ERA under 3.00. The team's ERA is hovering just under 5.00, so the bright spots in the bullpen aren't enough to get the Rangers out of the bottom tier here.
23. There may have been minor reasons for optimism at the start of the season, but with Aaron Sanchez struggling and having both Matt Shoemaker and Clay Buchholz on the 60-day IL (with the former out for the year), there isn't anything Toronto can do in-house to compensate for those setbacks. Marcus Stroman's bounce-back season is for real, but he's not magical and even if he were, he probably wouldn't finish the season in Canada.
24. Seattle Mariners
Let's put it this way: Tommy Milone is third on the team in WAR and he's had three starts. The Mariners' pitching staff is the baseball equivalent of a direct-to-DVD sequel of a popular movie: It's not aggressively unwatchable, but nothing particularly memorable or good. Maybe Treat Williams will finish the season in the rotation.
25. Detroit Tigers
Matthew Boyd 's performance is for real: You don't fake 11 strikeouts and fewer than two walks per nine innings. Spencer Turnbull is also for real, at least in that he has established himself as a legitimate mid-rotation starter. The problem is, the performance of the rest of the staff is also for real. Detroit is a long way from competing, but the emergence of Boyd and Turnbull is at least promising.
26. The team's bullpen is, as usual, a solidly put-together group, something the Giants have proved highly proficient at assembling in the long term. The rotation, unfortunately, is not, and the team's best starting pitcher, Madison Bumgarner, is a likely trade candidate in the very near future.
Tier 6: Abandon all hope
27. Losing Carlos Rodon, Michael Kopech and Dane Dunning to Tommy John surgeries was a disaster-movie type of setback for the White Sox. Lucas Giolito's breakout bodes well for the future Sox and Dylan Cease is coming, but this is a 2019 list, not one for 2022.
28. Miami Marlins
Caleb Smith has been a nice find, but the Marlins have combined an underwhelming rotation with a bullpen in which the best pitcher has arguably been one walking six batters a game. The future is considerably brighter, but as with the White Sox, the future in terms of this ranking is now. At least I didn't have to think about their lineup, like poor Jay had to.
29. What did you expect from a team that started a season with Homer Bailey as one of the intended pitchers in the rotation? Ian Kennedy has been weirdly effective in relief, but the best thing you can say about Kansas City's pitching staff is that you won't have to watch it after September.
30. We're nearing the end of June and the Orioles are still allowing two home runs a game, easily enough to shatter the all-time record in a season, should it continue. It will continue. Outside of John Means' changeup, there has been little worth watching in Baltimore and there's no MacKenzie Gore or Casey Mize or Forrest Whitley to emerge in the next couple of months.