Six weeks ago, I sat in the bleachers on WHYGAVS Night with a bunch of other huge Pirate fans and we all noticed something surprising was happening. Ross Ohlendorf, who had been struggling mightily with his control after coming off of the disabled list with back spasms, was striking people out left and right.
“Are you guys seeing this?”
“Yeah, what’s gotten into Ohlendorf?”
“No idea. How hard is he throwing? I don’t think I’ve seen a pitch top 92.”
“I’m not sure I have either.”
“Did the Kennametal girl just hang a seventh K up there?”
“Holy crap.”
What’s been even more surprising is how well Ohlendorf has pitched since then. Counting that July 2nd start against the Phillies, Ohlendorf’s struck out 37 hitters in his last eight starts (just 39 2/3 innings thanks to one bad start that only lasted an inning and another one in which he took a line drive off of his extremely hard melon) with just 12 walks. He’s only allowed four homers. That places his FIP under 4.00 (roughly 3.80), which means that he’s actually pitching much better now than he did down the stretch in 2009 when everyone was talking about how well he was pitching (remember that for as good as his ERA was, his FIP in the second half was actually better than it was in the first half.
Last year we talked a lot about Ohlendorf’s velocity and how an uptick in velocity coincided with what at least seemed like better pitching (he was more consistent, his strikeouts went up, and his high FIP in the second part of the season was partially due to home runs, which could be a result of several things). If you need a refresher, his average fastball went from 89-90ish with occasional games in which he averaged 92 to a 91-92 mph average with a few games where he average 93 or so. That’s pretty much exactly what Ohlendorf has done since the July 2 start against Philadelphia. He averaged below 91 that night, but since then he’s been right around 91.5 on his average fastball except his start against Milwaukee and his last start against Houston, where he put a little more gas on the ball (you can get easy access to all of the PitchFX charts from his Baseball-Reference game log, but since they’re individual I won’t post individual links — the data is, as usual, from Brooks Baseball’s PitchFX database).
This is all a long and slightly wonky way of saying that it appears to me that Ohlendorf is more or less pitching about the same now as he was in the second half of last season: he’s got a good ERA, his strikeouts are good, and his peripherals are good but not great. It’s encouraging, if not as impressive as the very low ERA (it’s 2.50) since July 2 suggests. What’s a bit discouraging is this: his home runs are down, but his fly balls are way up. Consider this: last year Ohlendorf’s full-season ERA was 3.92, his FIP was 4.72, and his xFIP was 4.63 (if you’re new here check either the glossary or this post from last year for explainers on FIP and xFIP). This year to date, his full-season ERA is 3.95, his FIP is down to 4.44, but his xFIP is way up to 5.00
There are a bunch of moving parts here to try and put the whole picture together, but Ohlendorf has essentially abandoned being a groundball pitcher, which was what he tried to be early in 2009, for strikeouts and as a result has become a flyball pitcher. The flyballs resulted in a high home run rate last year that has gone down this year even though hitters are hitting more flyballs off of him (last year 11.1% of Ohlendorf’s flyballs were home runs, this year it’s just 7.5%). His line drive rate isn’t changing much (it’s actually up), so we can’t say that he’s not getting hit as hard. On top of it all, he’s had two prolonged stretches in the last two seasons where he hasn’t given up nearly as many runs as his peripheral stats suggest he should.
So what gives? One thing that’s certainly true is that we’re dealing with awfully small sample sizes by looking at only the second halves of his seasons. And if we’re using velocity as the indicator for the shift in performance last year, then picking the start against the Phillies as a jumping off point for this year is cherry-picking because while we might say he was recovering from his back spasms before then, his velocity wasn’t really down before that Phillies start. Does the Pirate outfield help keep his ERA down when he gives up a lot of flyballs? It might. Neither UZR nor John Dewan’s +/- have been terribly friendly to Andrew McCutchen in his short career, but Nyjer Morgan, Lastings Milledge, and now Jose Tabata have all graded out somewhere between good and mind-bogglingly awesome in left field. I understand that the sample sizes are very small for each of them, but combined we’ve got more than a season and a half now and it’s an interesting quirk that McCutchen doesn’t score well (obviously to the naked eye he appears to cover a ton of ground in center) but the left fielder does.
Anyways, the answer on Ohlendorf is the same as the one that I feel like I always give; I don’t think he’s as good as he’s been pitching recently, but it sure seems like there’s still something there that could make him better than the typical starter we’re used to in Pittsburgh and a pretty solid mid-rotation guy. I still feel like the sample size is small thanks to his transformation last year and his back injury this year, but maybe the answer is just that Ohlendorf is capable of pitching well for stretches and capable of pitching poorly for stretches and we (well, specifically me, but I’m not the only one that notices when he pitches well) end up making more of the good stretches than we should because the Pirates are so starved for good pitching. Either way, Ohlendorf’s certainly worth keeping an eye on in the second half.
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