Jeff Suppan made his fifth start in his second stint as a Cardinal last night. As all the others, it didn’t go particularly well, even with additional time off; it had been 9 days since his last start. He didn’t get out of the fifth; he allowed 4 earned runs; he surrendered another home run. The Cardinals lost the fourth straight game he started, and he was saddled with his fifth consecutive loss this season.
Some of the raw numbers do not look good as well. Since re-joining the Cardinals, Suppan has pitched into the sixth inning only once, and not made it out of the fifth three times. He has allowed home runs in 4 of his 5 starts. But here’s the sad part: he’s actually pitched BETTER in St Louis than he was in Milwaukee. His strikeout numbers are up, and his ERA has improved by almost three runs (7.84 when he left Wisconsin; 4.88 in St Louis). Unfortunately Fangraphs doesn’t break Suppan’s numbers down between Milwaukee and St Louis – they lump them all together under the heading ’2 teams’, so I can’t tell if his FIP or xFIP is better now than it was before the trade (I suspect it is).
Even with that improvement, he really isn’t helping a team struggling to fill the back two slots in the rotation. At this point, one has to ask what Jeff Suppan is bringing the mound that’s different from one of the Memphis starters (Lance Lynn, anyone?).
Unfortunately, so long as the Cardinals must rely on Suppan and Hawksworth to make 40% of the starts, this is not a playoff team. The standings accurately reflect that.
