Burnett is a #1 pick that had a very very good season last year. He's Rizzo's #1 guy and was even when he faltered and no one else believed. Silly Hat is solid. Balester is a #1 pick too, and no one ever questioned the talent.
As for Stammen, he was a college closer. I'm still not worried about him either. We'll have to see how it plays out.
I invite you to examine Burnett's FIP last year: 4.57. Now examine it this year: 2.70. That's an extraordinarily dramatic difference for a guy who didn't apparently learn any new pitches and
lost velocity on the fastball (and gained it on the changeup, which is never good). Burnett is getting more swinging strikes this year, but it's not at all clear why, and his 9.20 K/9 is
well above his career rate of 6.45. His GB%, BB/9, etc. all look very reasonable, and I wouldn't expect those to regress, but as it stands I suspect that this season is basically him performing as usual except that (in the relatively few innings that relievers are wont to pitch) he has struck out tremendously more people than usual. Like I said: either this is his breakout season or he's in for some serious regression.
The #1 pick thing? That means nothing to me. It means someone, somewhere, at some point, thought he had a really high ceiling. Other than Storen, almost no number one picks are drafted as relievers, so these are pitchers who have already failed to live up to their prior expectations. Stammen may have been a college closer, but so was Strasburg at one point: that, too, means very little in the grander scheme of things.
