A look at how Jameson Taillon keeps the ball in the ballpark

In a homer-happy world, Pittsburgh Pirates starter Jameson Taillon excels at keeping the ball in the park. Here’s how.

Much has been made about the proliferation of the long-ball in today’s Major League Baseball. Countless column inches and word counts have been utilized to attempt to answer why. Whether it be juiced balls, a rethinking of the proper way to swing for the fences or perhaps something else, the home run is back in a big way. And that’s why it is important to have a pitcher like Pittsburgh Pirates hurler Jameson Taillon, who faces the adversity of the big fly with a grinch-like stinginess.

Should Taillon have thrown the qualifying amount of innings last year, his 0.74 HR/9 would have ranked as third best overall behind Stephen Strasburg (0.67) and Michael Fulmer (0.71). If he had been able to amass 29 more innings to hit the 162 IP qualifying mark, his HR/FB (home run per fly ball) percentage of 9.9 percent would have been fourth-best.

Yes, Taillon has shown an ease at something that is increasingly less easy to do: keep the ball in the park. How does he do it?

Today I’ll attempt to answer that question using Statcast’s new 3D Pitch Visualization tool. We will take a look at how Taillon approached several big-time home run threats last year and pick out some tendencies in his approach that lead to this ability to limit damage.

Follow the scouting reports

The first building block of Taillon’s ability to avoid homers is probably the simplest one of all: Follow the scouting report. The Pittsburgh Pirates — like most teams nowadays — spend considerable time crafting real-time scouting reports to take advantage of holes in opposing batters’ swings. As a young pitcher still learning his craft, Taillon understandably leans on these reports.

Take his approach versus Toronto Blue Jays’ 3B Josh Donaldson last season for example. Here is a look at two consecutive at-bats against the perennial MVP candidate from last August:

(Click to enlarge)

Donaldson is dangerous at any point in an at-bat, but pitchers might have have a path to at least start the battle off on the right foot by going after him on the first pitch of an at-bat. Over the past three seasons, Donaldson has “struggled” a little bit on first pitch, if you could call it that.

This graph represents Donaldson’s results on first pitch from 2015 through 2017. Though he takes a fair share of balls on first offerings, Donaldson falls to 0-1 in the count at a 46.7 percent clip. That is less than the MLB-wide rate of 49.5 percent, but there is a reason that Dondaldson and other hitters of his ability get paid. They are simply above-average hitters in many aspects.

And it is exactly that reason why pitchers such as Taillon should use everything in their power to grab an edge — as small as it may be — early in the at-bat. In the at-bats shown above, Taillon came inside to Donaldson on 0-0 and also changed locations slightly from at-bat to at-bat. Perhaps he and the Pittsburgh Pirates were looking to take advantage of Donaldson’s slight penchant to swing at first strikes more often than the MLB as a whole — Donaldson came in at 29.7 percent here versus the 28.3 percent MLB rate — to get to 0-1, or even have him make an out which is always a good thing. Or so I’ve heard.

Sometimes you just have to pound the zone

At the end of the day, sometimes you just have to pound the zone with strikes.

Surely the Pittsburgh Pirates have begun embracing that philosophy. Having famously preached a “pitch to contact” mantra over the Clint Hurdle era, the club would often dance around the zone with starting pitchers to try to induce bad contact. This resulted in a middle-of-the-pack 44.4 percent zone percentage (good for 16th in MLB) over 2011 through 2016 among starters. The club attacked a bit more in 2017 with a 46.5 zone percentage, good for fifth in all of baseball (third in the National League).

Rather than any underlying sea-change in philosophy, this needle-moving inflection point might simply a be a function of the Pittsburgh Pirates having more pitchers with more and better stuff. Chad Kuhl now carries a sublime curveball to go along with his velocity. Trevor William has gotten rave reviews for his ability to attack. Ivan Nova, well, does not have such stuff but Taillon sure does. And he had it on display against Bryce Harper late last year.

Here is a look at the first two at-bats Taillon had against the young phenom:

(Click to enlarge)

Here we see that Taillon did not mess around in this first at-bat versus Harper, and after he got to an 0-2 count he broke out the curveball, which many feel is his best “out pitch.” In the second at bat, Taillon got behind in the count and did not mess around, coming right back into the zone. Like many skilled hitters, Harper does not let a pitcher back into a count very often. Landing at 2-0 in the at-bat would be something of a death sentence for Taillon, as Harper had just 10 strikeouts after a 2-0 count over the entirety of the 2017 season. His OPS after that count was 1.180, and pitchers usually have a very bad time with any competent hitter after that count.

Mix it up when you see em again and again

In that same game, Taillon successfully avoided the third times through the order penalty with Harper by completely mixing things up.

Here, Taillon gave Harper a very different look, coming out with curveballs galore. He also did a fantastic job of mixing eye-levels, with a purposeful high fastball after two curveballs low in the zone. Locked on Pirates’ Nate Werner studied the importance of mixing eye levels for Pirates Breakdown and for our 2018 Pittsburgh Pirates season preview book, Piratesguide.

From that piece:

Upon further inspection, six of the eight playoff teams from this season had an average vertical difference of more than eight inches and all of the playoff teams, except Minnesota, had average vertical differences of more than 7.8 inches; Compare that to the Pittsburgh Pirates 7.38 inches of difference. If the Pirates moved to that 8 inch difference mark, all else equal, their team ERA would’ve dropped from 4.22 to 3.76, good for 5^th best in the league. There’s a similar result for FIP, which would have dropped to 3.91 from their 4.23 figure.

So, yeah, it would appear that changing eye levels within an at-bat really does mean something after all. It was also very telling to see Taillon attempt to get Harper to swing at the two curveballs that landed down in the dirt, as there is a bit of a hole in the youngster’s swing there:

See that strike percentage down in the bottom right? Those figures actually represent about an 11 percent increase, on the average, over the league rates down below the zone. While this may fall more in the “trust the scouting report” bucket, it is more exciting to realize that Taillon gave Harper a completely different look in his third plate appearance against him. This shows the trust that the Pittsburgh Pirates staff has in their young charge.

Trust your stuff, pick your battles and then, well, battle

Let’s look at one last example. Pittsburgh Pirates fans undoubtedly have felt the sting of Chicago Cubs hitters like Anthony Rizzo and Kyle Schwarber put a hurting on Pirates’ pitching. Let’s see how Taillon attacked Rizzo across four (!) plate appearances early last year.

Here are the first two:

(click to enlarge)

Here we see that Taillon kept the ball down against Rizzo in his first at-bat and then was determined not to give him anything to hit in the second, staying away-away-away until trying to bust him with a changeup. The pitch missed, but the approach was immaculate., especially considering that the count went to 3-0 before Taillon fout his way back in.

Let’s look at the next two at-bats from the same game:

(Click to enlarge)

Honestly, these at-bats are a little ho-hum, but is that not desirable of a starting pitcher? Once again we see Taillon able to pick a spot and attack, by hitting nearly the same location in alternating pitches in Rizzo’s third at bat. In the fourth trip to the plate, Rizzo fell victim to the eye-level change, and gave in to Taillon’s will.

By the way, the Pittsburgh Pirates won this game 6-1. Taillon went for seven strong innings, striking out six along the way.

Add it all up

Sometimes, it is hard to remember that Jameson Taillon will only be entering his second full year in the major leagues. He has a maturity about him that belies his experience, Part of that is how he approaches power hitters. As a young pitcher, Taillon takes all the tools available to him while possessing a sharp mental approach to his craft.

And that should have Pittsburgh Pirates fans very excited. Even if it seems like every hitter in MLB is capable of a slew of home runs, Taillon is nowhere near ready to give in to the trend just yet.

Featured image credit – Daniel Decker