It seems like Ricky Nolasco's expected maturation into a star pitcher for the Florida Marlins has been a baseball meme going on a few seasons now. A stout right-hander with good stuff, Nolasco has shown plenty of promise along the way. In particular, his 124 ERA+ in his breakout year of 2008 and his 16-strikeout performance against Atlanta at the end of 2009 rank as his most memorable teases.
But with Nolasco, there are too many nights like Wednesday, when you figure he's no longer worth getting frustrated over.
Really, what else can you conclude after the 28-year-old took the Coors Field mound and allowed 11 earned runs over three innings in a 12-5 loss to the Rockies? Not only was it the worst start of his career, it was also one of the worst in history. Nolasco is only the 22nd pitcher in history to allow 11 or more earned runs in three or less innings of work.
Somewhere, Vin Mazzaro is saying he knows how Nolasco feels.
"I was making pitches. I can't believe how many balls just somehow turned into hits, with the bloopers and groundballs," Nolasco said. "The home run was coming when you have a day like that. I felt good, there's no excuses there. There's not much you can do when those days come like that. Obviously, nothing really worked."
There is some basis for Nolasco's claims of bad luck, as the Palm Beach Post's Joe Capozzi documents. Nolasco has also historically been a good pitcher at Coors, entering the game with a 3-0 record and 1.64 ERA while pitching in Denver.
Giving up that many runs in that short of a time isn't the ultimate sign of failure, either. Roy Halladay, David Wells and Yovani Gallardo also appear on that list linked above.
But while some may also want to blame Nolasco's uneven performance on bad luck or the knee injury that ended his 2010 season, there was no evidence that it was bothering him to start 2011. His velocity hasn't dropped at all and, over his first 10 starts, he went 4-0 with a 3.04 ERA. But then he gave up eight earned runs against the Dodgers on May 29 and it's been mostly downhill since. He's 5-9 with a 5.10 ERA in his last 16 starts, a mark that gets maddening when you stop to see that he dropped two complete-game victories into that streak.
As he heads toward a third straight season with an ERA over 4 and a ERA+ under 100, it seems like we have a pretty good idea of Nolasco as a pitcher.
But it's nowhere near what we thought he might turn out to be.
Are you done expecting Nolasco to post another season like 2008?
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