5 Starting Pitchers Quietly Having a Great Start to the Second Half

German Marquez, Colorado Rockies

When we think of the Colorado Rockies, we naturally think of offense. It's basically been their calling card for years -- until 2017, at least.

Believe it or not, the Rockies' team wRC+ of 83 is better than only the San Francisco Giants. That's right -- Colorado has one of the worst offenses in baseball despite their 65-49 record. Their pitching staff has carried the club, and their 12.0 fWAR as a group is among the 10 best staffs in the league.

One of the many rookies who have come out of nowhere to help the club is German Marquez, who didn't even make his 2017 debut until April 25th. After posting a 4.36 ERA and .333 wOBA against through 76.1 first-half innings, Marquez has turned it up since the midsummer classic, lowering those numbers to 2.76 and .251, respectively, over his most recent 32.2 frames.

He does depend on his fastball a lot, throwing it 65.8% of the time, and while his average velocity on the pitch this season is 94.9 miles per hour, he hasn't been a huge swing-and-miss guy. It's not as if his 22.3% strikeout rate and 9.3% swinging-strike rate this season are bad, but he just needs to depend on a solid batted-ball profile a little more.

Marquez has allowed less hard contact so far in the second half, but he's been a little fortunate based off the rest. The below chart compares his line-drive rate (LD%), ground-ball rate (GB%), fly-ball rate (FB%), hard-hit rate (Hard%), and BABIP allowed between the first half and second half.

The overall results have been good since the All-Star break, but there is a slight cause for concern because of some BABIP-related regression. However, if he keeps his strikeout rate (27.9%) and swinging-strike rate (11.9%) amped up like he has over the last month, then we can live with it a little more.