This is a pretty interesting article that shows how pitchers' velocity fluctuates throughout games.
One of the findings is that most starting pitchers don't throw at peak velocity until 15 or so pitches into a game. That's pretty intuitive, but I honestly never gave it much thought before. I wonder if this might have something to do with the Pirates' struggles in first innings this year. How many games have we seen like Saturday's, in which Tom Gorzelanny gave up three runs in the first, then didn't allow any more runs through seven innings? Here are some splits:
NAME
OVERALL
PITCHES 1-15
Zach Duke
.298 BAA
.317 BAA
Tom Gorzelanny
.280 BAA
.486 BAA
Paul Maholm
.285 BAA
.372 BAA
Ian Snell
.314 BAA
.349 BAA
Phil Dumatrait
.238 BAA
.314 BAA
Matt Morris
.388 BAA
.267 BAA
(Note: Dumatrait's numbers include ten relief appearances.)
Every starter this year except Morris has had a higher batting average against in their first fifteen pitches than overall. I don't know what this means -- I'm not sure the sample size is large enough to really conclude anything. But I bet there's something going on here.
I don't have the programming chops to go through the PitchF/X data myself, but I bet that if I did, I'd find that at least some of these pitchers (Gorzelanny in particular, probably) are throwing at substandard velocity early in games. The question is whether there's any way to fix this problem--maybe the Bucs could try having their starters do a different warmup routine?