Jameson Taillon is set to come off the disabled list today. We give you three keys for him to focus on in the second half of the season.
As the Milwaukee Brewers head into town for a three-game set, the biggest news for the Pittsburgh Pirates is that prized rookie Jameson Taillon will come off the disabled list on Tuesday and rejoin the starting rotation.
In five career starts before being shut down for a couple of weeks, Taillon immediately showed that he belonged at the big league level.
His poise separates him from a lot of the pitchers trying to make the jump from Triple-A to the major leagues and the early results showed that Taillon is likely here to stay.
The former No. 2 overall pick went 2-1 with a 3.86 ERA in his first five big league starts in 28 innings pitched.
As Taillon prepares to take the hill for the first time in the second half of the season, the Pirates are going to need him to be very good.
With that in mind, here are three things that Taillon needs to focus on to be a difference maker for the Pirates down the stretch.
Maintain his command
Perhaps the one thing that separates Taillon from the other Pirates young prospects, and most of the pitchers in the league for that matter, is his pinpoint control.
He’s only walked a total of five batters in his first five starts and his 4.4 percent walk rate is outstanding, especially for a young pitcher seeing the bigs for the first time.
For Taillon to continue to be effective, he can’t lose the command he has shown up to this point.
One encouraging sign came in his last start before heading to the DL.
After a pair of so-so outings against the Cubs and Dodgers, the rookie didn’t allow getting hit around for a couple of games to alter his approach. Taillon came back and fired six innings of one-run ball against the Mariners without walking a batter.
For Taillon the approach is simple and it needs to stay the same. Pound the strike zone and stay away from the walks.
Put batters away
One thing missing from Taillon’s big league resume in the early going has been decent strikeout numbers. While strikeouts aren’t the tell-all when evaluating a pitcher, you want to see a little bit better numbers than what Taillon has delivered.
The rookie has fanned only 21 batters in his 28 innings of work and his 18.4 percent strikeout rate is fairly low for a pitcher with his stuff. That especially rings true since he posted a 25.9 percent strike out rate while in Triple-A this season. Taillon averaged a 25.8 percent strikeout rate combined throughout all of his minor league stops and while he may not approach that number his first go around in the big leagues, if he gets that number up to around 22 or 23 percent, it will make a big difference.
The strikeout will also help out in a few other areas as well.
The league is hitting .286 through five games off of Taillon so far. If two or three less guys a game put the bat on the ball then those numbers will improve as well.
A couple less base-runners a game also means less pressure situations for Taillon to have to pitch in. It’s a small sample size, but teams have been able to get to Taillon a bit with runners on base.
There have been plenty of instances where Taillon has gotten ahead in the count and hasn’t learned to waste a pitch or been able to punch a guy out.
Adding a few more strikeouts will make his early success look that much better the rest of the way.
Get left-handers out
Opposing managers now have seen Taillon on tape and they are going to start stacking left-handed hitters against him.
That means Taillon will have to do a better job of getting left-handed hitters out.
So far in his young career Taillon has had great success against right-handed hitters as they are hitting just .200 against him.
The same can’t be said about left-handed hitters as they are hitting .329.
Of the 30 hits Taillon has allowed in his five big league starts, 23 of them have come from left-handed batters.
The ability to get left-handed hitters out with more success is going to play a major role in Taillon going deeper into ball games as well.
With him being on a strict innings and pitch count, you would love to see the young righty turn in at least six quality innings per start the rest of the way.
For that to happen he is going to have to get left-handers out a better rate. He’s going to see a ton of them the rest of the way.
If Jameson Taillon can focus on these the things the rest of the season, the sky in the limit for Taillon and the Pirates.
Image Credit – Daniel Decker Photography
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