Nick Kingham: The Back-Up Generator for Pirates’ Rotation

If you pull up a stool at your favorite sports tavern on Opening Day 2015, don’t carve the Pittsburgh Pirates’ starting rotation into the wooden bar. Rather, jot it in pencil on the back of the napkin under your pint glass.

As the season progresses the rotation on the napkin may change as often as the beers on tap. Come October, names will have been scratched out, re-written in the margins, squeezed into corners, and supplanted by names either instantly recognizable or vaguely familiar. The tattered, beer-stained napkin can serve as a testament to the mixing-and-matching that occurred the six months prior within the Pirates’ starting rotation.

Somewhere on that napkin will likely be the name Nick Kingham.

The five names compromising the (initial) 2015 Pirates’ starting rotation is likely set, barring injury or other freak occurrences: Francisco Liriano, Gerrit Cole, A.J. Burnett, Vance Worley and Jeff Locke.

Concerning starting rotations, pitfalls and booby traps always lay along the April through October path. For instance, Francisco Liriano might get his fingers crushed in a closet door while he pretends to be the Boogey Man and scare his children at bedtime.

Joking aside, Liriano is not a durable pitcher. His career is rife with injuries. Sure, Papa Francisco can play Boogey Man to opposing batters, but he can also have the endurance of cray paper. Cole has yet to construct a strong season end-to-end. Several pundits project him as a dominant top-of-the-rotation starter. Hopefully he can be … but many pitchers forecast as such go on to become 29-year-old insurance salesmen.

Burnett struggled in 2014 – losing a league-leading 18 games – although he was backed by a putrid offense and pitched in a launching pad known as Citizens Bank Park. He’s 37  years old and last year may not have been an aberration. Both Worley and Locke are back-of-the-rotation, pitch-to-contact guys. Each performed largely effectively in 2014, although no one would be too aghast if one or both faltered in 2015. Charlie “five dominant and one meltdown inning” Morton says he’s ready to rejoin the rotation after another injury stint. We shall see.

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Kingham, meanwhile, was selected in the fourth-round of the 2010 First Year Player Draft as another Neil Huntington  prototypical high-risk, high reward prep arm.  He stands at 6’5” and weighs 200 pounds. Tyler Glasnow and Jameson Taillon – the only two pitchers in the system who rank higher on the prospect depth chart – fit a similar mold. However, Kingham is likely to reach The Show before his two peers.

The scouting report on Kingham is encouraging. His fastball sits at 92 to 95 mph, but hits 98 on occasion. He consistently throws the pitch with good command and movement. Kingham possesses a plus change-up in one holster, and a plus curve in the other. The curve induces both swings and misses, and weak grounders, due to late movement.

“You come up living with mom and dad and you’re thrown into a world where, yeah, it’s still a game, but (now) it’s your job.” –Nick Kingham, on life as a young professional pitcher

Although Kingham’s physical make-up compares favorably with that of Glasnow and Taillion, most scouts do not believe that he projects as the dominant ace-type pitcher his mates do. Kingham is forecast as a future solid middle-of-the-rotation starter who can toss 200-plus innings a season – a la A.J. Burnett. He still faces off-and-on issues with command, but more seasoning in the minors should help iron out the creases. Assuming he remains healthy, Kingham has the look of a multi-year stalwart in the Pirates’ starting rotation.

A mid-season promotion to Triple-A Indianapolis brought out the best and worst of Kingham in 2014. Th yo-yo effect was on full display. He started “up” in his first 39 innings, posting a 1.62 ERA. However, Kingham’s final 49 innings were a “down” as he logged a 5.14 ERA, and was hampered by control issues that dogged him at points in Double-A Altoona.

But when the kicked-up dirt settled back on the mound, the hard-tossing hurler boasted some legit statistics. According to IndyIndians.com, among International League pitchers, Kingham was first in average against (.213), fifth in strikeouts (65) and second in WHIP (1.10) while a member of the Indianapolis Indians.

A sturdy young pitcher of Kingham’s pedigree could help bolster a contending team’s starting rotation, or bullpen, when the steak really begins to sizzle.

Kingham may hang his cleats in the Pirates’ locker room at PNC Park come midseason due to a stellar half-season in Indy, or, more likely, due to injury or poor performance/lack of depth at the major league level. Perhaps, the towering righty joins a fatigued starting rotation amid a pennant race as a September call-up.

The likes of a spirited, if not crass, veteran like A.J. Burnett could ease him into the fire in which he’d been cast. Regardless, a sturdy young pitcher of Kingham’s pedigree could help bolster a contending team’s starting rotation, or bullpen, when the steak really begins to sizzle.

Come October, the bar napkin on which you attempted to keep track of the starting rotation throughout the season will resemble a hit man’s enemy list. Perhaps “Nick Kingham” will be one of the names not scribbled out. And, hopefully, he’ll be one of the first names on the still-readable napkin come Opening Day 2016.