Throw strikes, work fast, change speeds

by Roberto on Jun 30, 2011 4:42 PM EDT

That was Ray Miller's mantra in the heyday of the Orioles. Notice he didn't mention anything about striking tons of people out. That seems to apply to most Pirate pitchers not named Hanrahan.

The Pirates pitching staff According to Harry Pavlidis over at Fangraphs,

This is a good pitching staff. Along with the Cardinals, the Bucs are one-two in the division in strike rate, SLGCON and groundball rate.

(I've never heard of SLGCON. You?)

The starters really fall into four groups. Maholm and Correia are performing almost exactly as you would hope, given their career numbers. For each, 2010 appears to be the anomaly.

		ERA	FIP	xFIP
Correia	2011	3.79	4.15	4.16
Correia	2009	3.91	3.81	4.14
Maholm	2009	4.44	3.83	4.18
Maholm	2011	3.17	3.79	4.10

Karstens is pitching a bit better than last year, and has been much more fortunate. It shouldn't be too surprising that a pitcher does better with a bit of experience.

		ERA	FIP	xFIP
Karstens	2010	4.92	4.82	4.26
Karstens	2011	2.66	4.55	3.76

Morton's turn-around needs no further explanation.

Now dtoddwin noted

On the mound they are 12th in FIP, 15 in xFIP, but 6th in ERA. As you might suspect from those numbers, the staff is dead last in K/9 because the starters can't strike anybody out, averaging only 5.4K/9.

But that's not the whole story. These guys throw strikes and don't walk many (6th in the NL). They also get a lot of ground balls (5th in the NL). Since they throw a lot more two-seam fastballs than the typical starter, that's no shock. They may have been a bit lucky. They are 10th in BABIP and home runs per fly ball. But then it's hard to hit a home run or a line drive on a two-seam fastball.

So, which is it: "Chicken wire, duct tape, and spit" or "Throw strikes, work fast, and change speeds?"

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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Comments

Interesting counter point to dtodd

I think the answer lies somewhere in between. Nobody would argue that we’ve had some luck with some of our pitchers, Paul Maholm’s HR rate is an example of this and we’ve had some really nice turn arounds by simply altering pitch selection, Ground Chuck fits into this.

The real question between both of the points is will there be a regression to the mean? A regression has been mentioned on here, on other boards, on the radio, etc. as a fact, but maybe we can go the entire year with this luck/skill.

by pantherboy on Jun 30, 2011 5:35 PM EDT reply actions

SLGCON

is ~~James Bond’s archenemy~~ slugging percentage on contact. Basically total bases given up divided by at-bats minus strikeouts, I think.

Not actually affiliated with whygavs.

by WHYG Zane Smith on Jun 30, 2011 10:07 PM EDT reply actions

so it probably correlates with LD% against and things like IF fly %? I guess those are good things

by Mr. E on Jul 1, 2011 2:07 AM EDT up reply actions

Basically an ISO for pitchers

by Wizard of Woz on Jul 1, 2011 11:08 AM EDT up reply actions

Thanks

Not attending Monday and Tuesday, so a new SABRmetric stat shows up.

Viva Clemente!

by Roberto on Jun 30, 2011 10:53 PM EDT reply actions

One interesting point made is how good our total pitching has been as a group of 5. Jeff Karstens was expected to be our 5th starter and instead is 6th in the league in ERA. We have no ace but every pitcher except maybe McDonald has been above average in every pitching numbers except strikeouts. So we might not have an ace but we don’t have any 5th starter either we have more like 2 (Maholm) 2 (Corriea) 2 (Karstens) 3 (Morton although it would been higher before his recent struggles with grounders and 4 (McDonald). That is significantly better than many teams dredges down at the bottom of the rotation (For example, toronto’s last starter who had a 5+ era in triple AAA before his call up or 2/3 of Houston’s rotation)

by Yung-Han on Jun 30, 2011 11:41 PM EDT reply actions

I’d say 6th in league ERA counts as an Ace, at least to this point.

But yeah, good point, this is what we’ve dreamed about for a while since we knew we had no true #1… a bunch of #3’s and maybe a 2 and a 4. Although we always pictured an above average offense to go with it.

by Mr. E on Jul 1, 2011 2:09 AM EDT up reply actions