Pirates Starters in August (Updated Monday Morning)

The Pirates are 9-14 in August and are making Pittsburgh very frustrated as they see their playoff chances seem to drift away. Obviously the Pirates are still very much in the Wild Card race, but they need to start playing better baseball to stay in the race.

Your Bucs are scoring 4.4 runs per game this month, so the offense really hasn't been a big problem. The starting pitching has been the issue. Here's a breakdown of the Pirates six starting pitchers and what they've done in August:

Jeff Karstens: 32 IP, 2.81 ERA, 27 H, 10 ER, 3 BB, 20 K
Kevin Correia: 18.1 IP, 4.91 ERA, 22 H, 10 ER, 5 BB, 10 K
Wandy Rodriguez: 27.1 IP, 4.94 ERA, 31 H, 15 ER, 8 BB, 13 K
A.J. Burnett: 27.1 IP, 5.27 ERA, 31 H, 16 ER, 11 BB, 31 K
James McDonald: 21.1 IP, 5.91 ERA, 21 H, 14 ER, 10 BB, 20 K
Erik Bedard: 21.1 IP, 5.91 ERA, 22 H, 14 ER, 9 BB, 18 K

Karstens is the only one with good numbers there. Burnett was in the Cy Young conversation before August started, but he's made three bad starts in a row now. Correia is no longer in the rotation, so that's not much to talk about, but Rodriguez, Bedard, and McDonald have also all struggled this month. The staff has a 4.81 ERA for the month.

We got a scare last night when Karstens left the game with a groin injury. It doesn't look like it's a very serious injury, but it would be really tough for the Pirates for Karstens to miss even a single start. He's the only guy going good right now, and the team could really feed off him going forward. You can't win baseball games unless you have a solid starting rotation, and right now the Pirates don't have that.

The good news is that these names still look good on paper. They all have good stuff and experience in the big leagues, so you can expect them to pitch better down the stretch. Fatigue might be a problem, but I'm not sure you can chalk all of this up to that. Who knows what's going on with the Pirates right now, but we do know that if the Pirates are going to make a playoff push, these pitching numbers better improve in a hurry.