The best pitches of each Pittsburgh Pirates starter

Mar 5, 2015; Bradenton, FL, USA; Pittsburgh Pirates starting pitcher

(47) walks back to the dugout after he pitched the first inning against the New York Yankees at a spring training baseball game at McKechnie Field. Mandatory Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

Francisco Liriano presents an interesting case.  Going into this post, I was pretty much convinced I would find that his slider would be his best pitch.  Imagine my surprise when I found that it was his changeup.  Let’s go to the numbers:

We can see that batters chase this pitch almost half of the time, a number made slightly less effective by the fact that they make contact with it just as much.  The swinging strike percentage comes in at 23.2%, indicating a contact-or-nothing scenario when Liriano lets this one fly.  The ground ball rate and fly ball rates are very solid.

Frankie had 175 Ks in 2014, and the changeup was a big part of that.  The not-pictured-here slider is still effective, with a 20% swinging strike rate and a 40.8 O-swing percentage.  The fact that these two pitches are so close to each other is great for Liriano, as he can mix and match them to keep hitters off-balance without losing any effectiveness

Our next highlighted starter is saddling up for one more year.  But what type of firepower does he have left?

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