Pirate Pitching in 2010: A few average arms could really help us, seriously!

by houksyndrome on Oct 7, 2009 3:33 AM EDT

I noticed that our ERA at the end of the year was 14th in the national league. This was surprising because Duke and Ohlendorf both pitched pretty well this year, while Maholm and Morton were both OK (Morton was pretty good, sub-4 ERA when you omit that disastrous 10ER performance at Wrigley). If 4 of our starters were OK, why is our team ERA still ranked 14th in the NL? I looked at our team pitching statistics after 159 games (so the last couple games are missing).

The first thing that jumped out at me is the number of innings pitched by guys who stink. When I sort our pitchers according to ERA and break them down into guys with ERAs above 5 and ERAs lower than 5. I find that guys with high ERAs pitched 421 innings for us this year; 30% of our innings were pitched by guys who stink. I compared these numbers with teams that have league average pitching staffs (like Colorado) and found that decent pitching staffs tend to have way less than 421 innings pitched by guys who stink - they tend to be around 200.

IP ER ERA

Innings by pitchers with ERA over 5: 421 282 6.06017192

Innings by pitchers with ERA under 5: 977 428 3.942681679

Totals: 1398 710 4.578019774

The biggest offenders were:

Karstens 105.2 IP, 5.37 ERA

Snell 80.2 IP, 5.36 ERA

Capps 54.1 IP, 5.8 ERA *These were especially costly, Capps cost us several games this season*

Hart 53.1 IP, 6.9 ERA

Vasquez 43.2 IP, 5.98 ERA

The unholy tetrad of Karstens, Snell, Hart and Vasques pitched 280 innings for us last year!

Let's look at the bright side, this means that we will probably be better next year. For example, I expect Dan McCutchen and Brad Lincoln to collectively eat up most of those 280 innings. Suppose McCutchen and Lincoln take up all 280 of those innings and have a 4.5 ERA (nothing spectacular, mind you, a very reasonable expectation). Suppose also, that Capps can get it together and put up a 3.8 ERA (again something he has done before). If all these highly plausible things happen then our collective staff ERA would be 4.24. This is also assuming that the collective production for the other members of the staff remains constant. A 4.24 ERA would be middle of the pack in the NL. A few other points are worth mentioning: 1. Morton could very well have a sub-4 ERA next season (if you omit that nightmare at Wrigley, then he had a sub-4 ERA this season). 2. Lincoln and McCutchen could do better than a 4.5 ERA. 3. Our defense was dramatically worse after the trades and if we don't do something to improve defensively at 2B then Maholm and Duke may give up a lot more runs next year, due to their tendencies to pitch to contact. I think our pitching staff can take a big step forward next year but we need to ensure that they have a competent defense working behind them and we may need to sign a reliever or two. One thing is clear, our collective ERA will improve dramatically if we cut out some of this deadwood (Karstens, Vasquez and Hart) and replace it with guys who are serviceable. The replacements don't have to be great, just serviceable. I think McCutchen and Lincoln can be serviceable next year. What are your thoughts?

This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of the managing editor (Charlie) or SB Nation. FanPosts are written by Bucs Dugout readers.

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I agree with the diagnosis that we need average arms, but my questions is about the prescription. Dan McCutchen, from what I’ve seen, is very Karstens-like with the soft stuff, no strikeouts, lots of HR allowed, not very much ceiling. (It’s also revealing that Bucs management thought much more of Karstens that he made his Pirates debut over a year earlier).

Lincoln was great in AA but hit a wall at Indianapolis, where he still had great control but without Ks and opponents hit .300 against him. Ideally, he has to show more for a period of time in AAA before we can project what he’ll do this year.

I’m in the minority on this, but from here Hart is the key to the final piece of the 2010 rotation puzzle. He has the most upside for next year, even if it’s Ohlendorf at best. If the Kerigan off-season training program works and his stuff is crisp in that 94-95 range as it used to be for him, the Bucs will have a good 1-5 rotation. If he flops again, the pitching will probably be just like 09 unless Lincoln makes large strides.

by Adam Reynolds on Oct 7, 2009 5:11 AM EDT reply actions

I think McCutchen is a bit better than Karstens.

For a finesse pitcher, Karstens sure does walk a lot of guys. McCutchen doesn’t walk as many guys. McCutchen also has better stuff than Karstens, although it still isn’t dominant by any stretch of the imagination.

The Lincoln projection was a wild guess.

The main point to my post is that we don’t need a guy like Sabathia or Lincecum to have a solid pitching staff. Rather, we just need a few more solid arms so that we don’t have to constantly give the ball to guys who suck.

by houksyndrome on Oct 7, 2009 10:40 PM EDT up reply actions

That's been

my point all along: You might not really need a staff “ace” to contend in this division/league if you collect 3-4 fair to good pitchers and just avoid a black hole at No. 5, a guy (or guys) who go like 5-15 with a 6.00+ ERA. Even 8-10, 4.90 in that spot is a pretty big improvement, and there are lots of guys like that on the scrap heap every year, and they cost a hell of a lot less than aces. 14-10, 14-10, 14-10, 14-10, 8-10 and a decent pen … you do the math.

by bucdaddy on Oct 8, 2009 10:02 AM EDT up reply actions

This was actually the core of my argument about 2009 – that the Pirates had, with the Nady trade alone, ditched a tremendous number of awful, awful innings, and therefore could have been expected to improve significantly.

People brought up defense to me, and you’re right to focus on it here – Duke and Maholm could both look very mediocre if our non-Andy IF is subpar (which it figures to be, frankly).

by JRoth95 on Oct 8, 2009 2:27 PM EDT up reply actions

I'm with you on Hart

I’m not ready to give up on a guy who can throw mid-90s effortlessly. I would be more than satisfied if the Kerrigan effect benefits Hart like it did Ohlendorf. You need more arms like that in your rotation, and I think Hart’s development definitely helps in that direction.

In the converse, Ascanio’s labrum injury definitely is a step backward. Even with an encouraging recovery, he will be probably at best a bullpen arm from here on out.

I also agree with starting Lincoln out at Indy and giving him 5-10 starts to see how he fares, then re-evaluate. We know he has an average-above average fastball with a plus curve. If he can develop his changeup to average-above average status, then he’ll be ready for the leap.

I can live a rotation of Duke, Ohlendorf, Maholm, and a hopefully improved Morton and Hart for the time being, with a developing Lincoln waiting in the wings.

"Straight ball I hit very much, but curveball, bats are afraid." - Pedro Cerrano

by silencerdu on Oct 9, 2009 5:00 PM EDT up reply actions

The thing that worries me with Hart...

…is that he looks like he just doesn’t have good body control throughout his motion. If so, that’s much harder to fix than any one specific mechanical flaw, and it often can’t be corrected at all.

That said, I never thought Ohlendorf would have a season as good as his 2009, so who knows?

by Vlad on Oct 9, 2009 5:33 PM EDT up reply actions

Where's Josh Fogg when you need him?

by bucdaddy on Oct 7, 2009 9:53 AM EDT reply actions

Swapping out bad innings for average ones is always good...

…but the trick is knowing in advance which guys are going to be bad. As with Capps, it’s not always so easy to tell until it happens.

by Vlad on Oct 7, 2009 4:08 PM EDT reply actions

True

But Step One is identifying likely culprits – as DK said (over and over) it was never clear why the FO was so sold on VV and, indeed, he was pretty crummy – an adequate 6th or 7th starter, hopefully getting no more than a handful of starts, but disastrous when he’s run out there 7-8 times.

Clearing out the bums in the pen and having 3-4 credible 5th starter types* should do most of the work; then you just need to hope that the guys you’re counting on will at least be adequate (it was never plausible that the Pirates had more than 3 good relievers this season – Chavez was a lucky find, but Capps crapped out, the lefties were traded, and we were left with nothing but Hanrahan and Chavez. How about giving us 5 legit ML relievers, Neal?).

Not that every one is a real ML 5th starter, but enough so that you don’t need to run, say, Karstens out there for a dozen or more bad starts before you pull the plug.

by JRoth95 on Oct 8, 2009 2:33 PM EDT up reply actions

I think you overestimate...

…the accuracy with which it’s possible to forecast pitching performances. VV threw a total of 44 2/3 innings for us this year. At that level of granularity, each earned run added or removed from his line makes a difference of about 0.20 on his ERA.

The same is true for relievers. If you have guys who are true-talent performers in the high 4s, then one good week moves them into the 3s, and one bad game pushes them into the 5s. That is to say that in any group of decent relievers in any year, you’re going to have a certain number who end up sucking through simple performance variance and the miracle of small samples. A ton of luck is the only way to totally remove your team’s “bad” innings.

Check out a ranking of our relievers in order of relief IP this year, plus their ERAs in relief:

Chavez: 67.1, 4.01
Capps: 54.1, 5.80
Grabow: 47.1, 3.42
Meek: 47.0, 3.45
Jackson: 43.0, 3.14
Karstens: 41.2, 5.83
Burnett: 32.1, 3.06
Hanrahan: 31.1, 1.72
…and then a bunch of guys with fewer than 20 IP (who all got fewer relief innings than our lightly-used Rule 5 pick).

Thus, to make a substantial gain on the team’s bullpen performance for 2009, you would’ve had to preemptively cut Capps (the team’s closer) and Karstens (who came into the year as the 5th starter, and had a 4.03 ERA in 2008). Can you honestly say that you would’ve known to do that in spring training?

Similarly, if VV was adequate as the team’s 6th/7th starter, as you state, then I’m not sure what should’ve been done there. He was held in the minors until Snell demoted himself – were we in error to assume at the start of the year that Snell would not do so?

There are always going to be a certain number of bad innings at the bottom of your pen/rotation. Look at the Yankees this year: $200M+ in payroll, and yet they’ve still got six different pitchers on staff with 20+ IP and a 5+ ERA (Mitre, Wang, Albaladejo, Veras, Ramirez, and Tomko). Look at the Dodgers this year: First place, lowest RA in baseball, and they’ve still got guys like Cory Wade and Scott Elbert and Jason Schmidt and Will Ohman mucking up their stat line. It’s unavoidable.

by Vlad on Oct 8, 2009 3:37 PM EDT up reply actions

I should clarify a bit.

There were a few unforced errors made when constructing our pitching staff this season. We shouldn’t have ever been in a position where we needed to use Bautista, for instance, and a better crop of NRIs this offseason would help address that.

I don’t think that there’s the potential for any truly significant gain, but some small incremental improvements might be possible.

by Vlad on Oct 8, 2009 4:40 PM EDT up reply actions