Analyzing the Pirates’ starting pitchers’ strikeout pitches

Major League Baseball is slowly becoming a two-outcome game. The Pittsburgh Pirates starters are doing their part, but not in the manner that their fans may wish.

Pittsburgh Pirates’ starting pitching has often been effective over the Clint Hurdle era, most notably during their 2013-2015 playoff runs. At times, however, they have had to ply their trade without striking many batters out.

The table below shows the Pirates’ MLB-wide rankings in starting pitcher strikeouts over the past five seasons:

Despite an elite ranking in 2015 — a season in which the club not-so-coincidentally won 98 games — This chart shows us that the Pittsburgh Pirates starters have been closer to a middle of the pack team in terms of swing and miss outs, with the 2014 season likely swinging the pendulum that way.

Regardless of how the team has ranked against the 29 other clubs, the Pirates now find themselves at an interesting inflection point. Bred for years to induce ground ball outs, Pittsburgh must now turn their attention to developing strikeout ability.

Really, they would be foolish not to, with the bonafide trend going on in baseball right now:

To this point, we have established that strikeouts are increasing right along with home runs, if not as swiftly.

Today we will look at the current Pittsburgh Pirates rotation, each of which seem to have inside tracks on 2018 rotation spots (sorry, Tyler Glasnow). What info can be gleaned from looking at where each starting pitcher got his strikeouts and how they racked them up.

First, a team look

The fun thing about strikeouts is that no two are created equal. This point is never more readily apparent than when looking at the strike zone plots for the teams with the top strikeout totals in baseball against the strikeouts the Pittsburgh Pirates have piled up:

Right off the bat — or maybe that term doesn’t even apply as we’re talking about strikeouts — some interesting takeaways are present.

• The Cleveland Windians starters have a varied mix of strikeouts, with no one pitch truly taking center stage. Of course, AL Cy Young favorite Corey Kluber and his label-adverse breaking ball account for 262 of these punchouts, helping to mix things up. The bottom line is that the Indians don’t have to rely on a four-seam fastball to generate strikeouts, unlike our next team
• The Washington Nationals have what some would call a traditional strikeout plot, with four-seam fastballs fluttering throughout the strike zone, with breaking balls and offspeed stuff more prevalent in the bottom half. They certainly have the horses to take this “standard” approach, with Stephen Strasburg, Gio Gonzalez and Max Scherzer, who some feel has reached a new level of dominance.
• The Boston Red Sox have ended more strikeouts with four-seam fastballs than any other team in baseball. They compliment that with a healthy does of sharp breaking stuff down low. And why wouldn’t they with someone like Chris Sale in tow.
• For their part, the Pittsburgh Pirates also flood the zone with four-seamers, though they tend to stay towards the top of the strike zone. That comes as no surprise to us, they also tend to favor harder breaking balls on one half of the plate as opposed to the other’, perhaps as a function against left-handed batters.

We highlight these examples and named some specific players for a reason. And that reason is a simple one.

The type of pitchers on your staff dictate the type of strikeouts a team can amass. Perhaps that is as simple as it comes, and that it was always understood. But, with their starting pitching especially, the Pittsburgh Pirates have been a team that employs an organizational approach to pitching during the Clint Hurdle era.

However, baseball has changed considerably in the six years since Hurdle took over along with the promotion of Ray Searage. The launch angle revolution is in effect and has been televised, resulting in more home runs than ever before.  The Pirates did a masterful counter punch against that particular trend  by pitching higher in the zone, but to survive the power wars to come, the club will need to maximize each starter’s (and, of course, relievers…but that’s for another day) strikeout ability.

Now we will take a look at each of the 2017 Pittsburgh Pirates starters with at least 100 IP (sorry, Tyler Glasnow) with a focus on where they got their strikeouts and how they got them.

Gerrit Cole – 189 K — 8.6 K/9

Cole leads the Pittsburgh Pirates in strikeouts with 189 as of this writing. He has an outside chance to eclipse his previous career high of 202 set in 2015, but that is unlikely. It has been a season of contradictions for Cole. He has maintained his health for the entire season, posting his second career 30-start-plus campaign. The strikeouts are there, but so is a slightly inflated FIP of 4.16. His 31 home runs loom large over his entire 2017 season. In many ways he is the Pirates’ embodiment of the boom or bust baseball-wide trend. Let’s check out his ability to bust hitters:

Cole has relied on his four-seamer in two-strike counts 42.3 percent of the time, which seems like a lot. In fact, Cole actually does a great job of varying his go-to strikeout pitches when compared to other Pittsburgh Pirates starters below.

It’s not pictured here, but Cole mixes it up much more against right-handed bats, where his four-seam strikeout pitch usage drops down to 37 percent. The slider’s use against right-handers jumps up to 27 percent while the rest of the remaining difference is split pretty evenly amongst his other pitches.

At this stage in his career, Cole’s strikeout ability is pretty well established and certainly well developed. There has always been a clamoring for Cole to use his slider more often, and it is entirely fair to wonder whether his home run total would be more manageable. That may be true, but it would have no bearing on his punch-out pitch selection, as only two of those 31 homers came on two-strike counts.

Jameson Taillon – 120 K — 8.65 K/9

Prior to the season’s beginning, second year Pittsburgh Pirates starter Jameson Taillon had his work cut for him:

Of course, no one could have expected Taillon’s bout with testicular cancer that took a month and change from his season. His 120 strikeouts across 24 starts in 2017 carries much more weight as a result, and perhaps shows a burgeoning strikeout pitcher in the Pirates’ ranks. Here’s a look at how he got there:

The lion’s share of Taillon’s punch-out pitches have been curveballs, with a 58.8 percent piece of the pie. The baseball mind in me — and you, by extension — instantly clamors for Taillon to mix it up more, else hitters start to wait on the curve and begin to tee off on it.

However, a closer look shows that Taillon and his curveball are still in the honeymoon phase:

There is an awful lot of swing and miss on pitches outside of the zone in Taillon’s two-strike benders, showing a nice amount of deception. The curves that fell for called strikes also are encouraging, as they are landing in very hittable spots in the zone, yet hitters were fooled enough to take them.

Even considering that, it would still behoove Taillon, his catchers, Searage, et al., to mix it up just a bit. The fact is, the book on Taillon is still being written, and the young hurler can greatly delay the writing process with more variety.

We will continue on with the rest of the Pittsburgh Pirates starting pitching after the jump.

CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING