The Fab Five: Pirates Pitching Numbers Among Best in League

We went over to Fangraphs and looked at the numbers for the 2012 Pirates pitching stats.  If you click on the chart at the bottom of the post, it will embiggen.  It’s interesting to pull it up in a seperate windown and take a quick look at some of the basic statistics and who stands out on the staff.

Jason Grilli’s strikeouts per nine innings is insane. Want to have some fun with small sample sizes? Click here  Grilli is fourth, surrounded by some serious power pitchers.

STRIKEOUTS:  But even with the strong pitching numbers the staff has provided the team, the success has come without a lot of strikeouts.  The staff is near the bottom on the leaderboard with a 6.87K/9 so far this season.

WALKS:  The Pirates staff is in the middle of the pack with BB.9 at 3.12 so far this season.  It does scare me to see Charlie Morton as the only starter with less than three walks per nine.

BABIP:  The batting average on balls in play for the staff is .265 does show that some luck has been involved in shutting down some of the best teams in baseball over the first month.   Joel Hanrahan’s .083 is tops for relievers,  Kevin Correia with a .192 and James McDonald at .206 lead the way for starters.

LEFT ON BASE:  One of the keys to success despite having middle of the road strikeout and walk numbers has been the ability for the Bucs pitchers to strand baserunners.  Their mark of 77.5 percent is fourth highest in baseball behind the Cardinals, Blue Jays, and Rangers.

GROUND BALLS:  The staff has the ninth highest ground ball percentage in MLB.  Charlie Morton has a sparkling 71.4 percent groundball rate.

ERA, FIP, xFIP:    Add it all up and the Pirates have gave their team a chance to win in nearly every game this month.  The Pirates pitchers have the third best ERA, the sixth best FIP and 12th best xFIP.  If the Pirates offense had been a bit below league average, hell even lukewarm around the mid-twenties,  a couple more wins should have come from the effforts of the Buccos arms.

FanGraphs

CLICK ON THE CHART AND IT WILL GET BIGGER…