Bronson Arroyo gets knocked around for nine runs in 3 1/3 innings Tuesday. (USATSI)
Bronson Arroyo gets knocked around for nine runs in 3 1/3 innings Tuesday. (USATSI)

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It's no secret the Diamondbacks have had some massive starting pitching problems this season. They lost ace Patrick Corbin to Tommy John surgery in spring training, and that was after they tried but failed to sign Masahiro Tanaka over the winter. They instead settled for Bronson Arroyo, who did this against the Mets on Tuesday night:

Egads. It would have been even worse had reliever Randall Delgado not stranded one of the two runners he inherited from Arroyo. That dud of an outing gives the team's starting rotation a 7.81 ERA in 86 1/3 innings so far this season.

Mid-carnage, esteemed D-Backs' beat writer Nick Piecoro (Arizona Republic) received this valid question:

It's a little too early in the season to start talking about "worst in the history of MLB" stuff, but we can take a quick look at where this current Arizona rotation ranks all-time. With some help from the indispensable Baseball-Reference.com Play Index, here are the highest rotation ERAs since 1914:

Rk YearGERAWLIPHRERHRBBSOHBPWHIPSO/BBHR
1 ARI 2014 16 7.16 3 10 83.0 104 67 66 15 33 58 2 1.651 1.76 15
2 DET 1996 162 6.64 29 80 865.2 1057 697 639 153 437 488 51 1.726 1.12 153
3 SLB 1939 156 6.34 33 93 946.0 1214 729 666 85 505 353 18 1.817 0.70 85
4 TEX 2003 162 6.24 47 65 832.0 977 610 577 147 344 533 35 1.588 1.55 147
5 COL 1999 162 6.19 49 65 935.1 1115 691 643 159 466 636 42 1.690 1.36 159
6 PHI 1930 156 6.15 42 85 991.1 1383 784 677 107 368 272 24 1.766 0.74 107
7 MIN 1995 144 6.11 35 69 813.1 963 605 552 135 303 440 25 1.557 1.45 135
8 PHI 1929 154 6.03 52 66 935.2 1223 696 627 90 412 229 17 1.747 0.56 90
9 SLB 1937 156 6.01 36 93 1020.1 1318 766 681 111 491 338 17 1.773 0.69 111
10 TEX 2001 162 6.00 51 58 926.2 1138 658 618 142 368 605 39 1.625 1.64 142
11 KCR 2005 162 6.00 33 73 861.1 1032 605 574 120 333 470 48 1.585 1.41 120
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 4/15/2014.

B-Ref has not yet updated to include Tuesday's game, which is why the D-Backs are still at a 7.16 ERA in the table. Otherwise that is every rotation in baseball history with a 6.00+ ERA. The current D-Backs' staff has a comfortable lead over the 1996 Tigers with another 145 games to go.

Let's do a little math. Five teams in the table played a 162-game season, and they averaged 884 2/3 innings from their rotation. If Arizona gets exactly that many innings out of their staff this year, they would need to pitch to a 6.49 ERA the rest of the way to get finish below the Tigers. They would need a 5.78 ERA the rest of the way to finish with sub-6.00 ERA (5.99, to be exact). Is it doable for this team? Sure, but they would need to turn it around in a hurry. This staff as the potential to be historically bad.