{"id":892245,"date":"2019-04-01T14:56:38","date_gmt":"2019-04-01T19:56:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesportsdaily.com\/?p=892245"},"modified":"2019-04-01T15:09:44","modified_gmt":"2019-04-01T20:09:44","slug":"archer-delivers-sparkling-start-in-pirates-home-opener","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesportsdaily.com\/news\/archer-delivers-sparkling-start-in-pirates-home-opener\/","title":{"rendered":"Archer delivers sparkling start in Pirates&#8217; home opener"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The buildup to the Pirates&#8217; home opener Monday afternoon against the St. Louis Cardinals was palpable, mainly due to the Pirates returning home to the most beautiful ballpark in baseball for another season.<\/p>\n<p>However, with Chris Archer on the mound to open the 2019 regular season at home, anticipation and expectations were high. Archer delivered in a big, big way.<\/p>\n<p>In 5 innings of work against the Cardinals, Archer held the Cardinals without a run, allowing just 2 hits while striking out 8 hitters. Archer did walk 3 batters and struggled with efficiency overall with 98 pitches (19.6 pitchers per inning), but last season&#8217;s trade deadline acquisition was masterful while relying heavily on his slider.<\/p>\n<p>According to <a href=\"https:\/\/baseballsavant.mlb.com\/gamefeed?game_pk=566180&amp;game_date=2019-4-1&amp;type=home_pitchers&amp;chart_view=release&amp;chart_type=sbp&amp;inning=&amp;count=&amp;batter_hand=&amp;pitcher_hand=&amp;filter=&amp;player=home-pitchers_502042&amp;view=Umpire&amp;coloring=Pitch%20Type\">Baseball Savant<\/a>, Archer threw 37 sliders on the day (38 percent) and recorded an astounding 15 swings-and-misses and 8 called strikes on the sliders, while allowing contact on just 6 of the sliders as Cardinal hitters went 1-for-3 on the day against the pitch with 3 foul balls.<\/p>\n<p>Last season Archer relied heavily on his slider, throwing it nearly 42 percent of the time so it shouldn&#8217;t come as a surprise that Archer leaned on the sharp breaking ball to keep the Cardinals off balance all game long.<\/p>\n<p>Aside from Archer&#8217;s dominance with the slider, the veteran righty needs to become more efficient with his pitches, which would allow him to work deeper into games. A clean sheet after 5 innings of work is always good to see, but Archer&#8217;s stuff is good enough to go an inning or two deep into the game, helping save the Pirates&#8217; bullpen.<\/p>\n<p>That being said, it&#8217;s hard to find anything &#8211; and I do mean anything, including his body language &#8211; to complain about after Archer&#8217;s first start, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/timwilliamsP2\/status\/1112793976539680769\">Rick Sutcliffe<\/a> be damned. If this is a sign of things to come from Archer, it&#8217;s going to be an exciting summer for the Pirates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The buildup to the Pirates&#8217; home opener Monday afternoon against the St. Louis Cardinals was palpable, mainly due to the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":892247,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[610258686],"tags":[15283049,140059,109041],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v22.2 (Yoast SEO v22.2) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Archer delivers sparkling start in Pirates&#039; home opener - The Sports Daily<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/thesportsdaily.com\/news\/archer-delivers-sparkling-start-in-pirates-home-opener\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Archer delivers sparkling start in Pirates&#8217; 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