The best pitches of each Pittsburgh Pirates starter

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

(45), pitcher

(34) and pitcher

(49) watch from the dugout during the fifth inning against the New York Yankees at a spring training baseball game at McKechnie Field. Mandatory Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

Much has been written and said about the Pittsburgh Pirates’ 2015 starting rotation.  With the return of A.J. Burnett and Francisco Liriano, the Bucs’ rotation can be seen as both formidable and promising.  As spring training winds on and pitchers get their work in, we can truly start to see just how their ‘stuff’ will play for the upcoming season.

Today we are going to look at each projected starter and attempt to identify their best pitch.  Picking apart Burnett’s velocity recently made me curious to take a look at the other hurlers’ stuff on the Pirates’ staff.  Oftentimes, we as fans can pigeonhole a pitcher.  We are overheard saying “Gerrit Cole‘s fastball is incredible,” or “Liriano’s slider is so nasty!”  Yet, statistically speaking, are those signature pitchers their best?  I aim to find out.

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The word “best” is, by its nature, both objective and subjective at the same time.  Despite the best efforts of many talented baseball minds, subjectivity can creep in when trying to determine the best of anything in baseball.  Even with the vast statistical data available at sites such as FanGraphs (where the data for this piece was culled), one can spin that data in any way they like, valuing certain data pieces over others.

For the purposes of this column, I am going to place considerable weight into a few factors, which I think are highly important to a pitcher’s performance.  Only data from 2014 was used, to give us a better snapshot of where these pitchers are right now.  Here they are, with a brief explanation:

O-Swing% –  Simply put, this is the percentage of pitches that a pitcher throws outside of the strike zone that batters swing at.

O-Contact % – This is the percentage of times that a batter made contact on those same pitches that he chased out of the strike zone.

SwStr% – Swings and misses / total pitches.  Basically said, the time that a batter swung and missed against a particular pitch

Ground ball rate % & fly ball rate % – The percentage of times that a batted ball against a certain pitch resulted in either a ground ball, or a fly ball, respectively.

These are the factors that I believe truly show the best pitch of any given pitcher.  Getting batters to chase at pitches is critical for any hurler, and when these pitches are hit, keeping them on the ground is crucial.

Let’s begin with everyone’s favorite young fireballer.

Next: Gerrit Cole's best pitch may not be what you think

Mar 4, 2015; Bradenton, FL, USA; Pittsburgh Pirates starting pitcher Gerrit Cole (45) pitches during the first inning of a spring training baseball game against the Toronto Blue Jays at McKechnie Field. Mandatory Credit: Tommy Gilligan-USA TODAY Sports

Gerrit Cole came into the league with flames at his back, rearing back and bringing the fastball to the plate with authority, at points even topping out at 101mph.  For 2014, Cole went back to his bag of tricks and developed what I believe will be his best pitch in 2015:  his slider.  Let’s take a quick look at Cole’s data on the slider:

From this data we can see that 40% of the time pitchers will chase at a slider outside of the zone from Cole, 10% above the league average of 30%.  Conversely, batters make contact on those pitches at a 37.80% clip, well below the league average of 66%.  Not only do batters chase on this pitch, but they often don’t even make contact.  When they do make contact, it’s usually a grounder and only gets in the air once out of every four times it is hit.  Oh, and let’s not gloss over the fact that batters miss it an astonishing 17.8% of the time, above the league average of 9.5%

I am incredibly bullish on Gerrit Cole for the slider alone.  The fact that he can add such a dominant pitch that is shown to fool batters consistently in only his second year speaks volumes for the young future Ace.  This is just another testament to Ray Searage, Clint Hurdle, and others who have seen the ability in Cole to be much more than just a straight fastball thrower.

Our next pitcher signed the richest free agent contract in Pirates’ history.  Does he have the stuff to warrant that kind of money?

Next: Papa Francisco's best trick

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?

Next: What's in your saddlebag, Batman?

Feb 19, 2015; Bradenton, FL, USA; Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher A.J. Burnett (34) talks with one of his teammates before Thursdays workout at Pirate City. Mandatory Credit: Jonathan Dyer-USA TODAY Sports

A.J. Burnett’s 2014 can only be summed up as disastrous.  An 8-18 record and an ERA over 4.50 can earn that label.  As we all know, Burnett was pitching with a sports hernia injury almost the entire year.  This had an interesting effect, as his velocity was only down a tick, but his approach changed wildly, throwing more sinkers than fastballs for the first time in his career.  With a fully healthy outlook, Burnett figures to re-establish his fastball, but he would do well not to ignore his knuckle-curve.

Burnett’s wicked knuckle-curve is above average in all of these crucial categories.  A mark of a good pitcher is how he changes his approach as the years progress.  Burnett came into the league in 1999, which almost seems like a different era as we sit in 2015.  (In fact, he outdates Fangraph’s pitchf/x data, which started being collected in 2007.)  Burnett so far has relied on his fastball, which has only gradually decreased in velocity through the years.  This has afforded him to be highly effective as the collective wisdom accrued in those years has given him insight into his own stuff.  Now, in his final year, perhaps he will continue to use the knuckle-curveball as an ‘out’ pitch and rear back and get the fastball when he really needs it.

Our next pitcher is a unique case who knows where his bread is buttered.

Next: They don't call him 'Ground Chuck' for no reason

Sep 8, 2014; Philadelphia, PA, USA; Pittsburgh Pirates starting pitcher

(49) pitches during the fourth inning of a game against the Philadelphia Phillies at Citizens Bank Park. The Pirates defeated the Phillies 6-4. Mandatory Credit: Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports

It almost seems like a foregone conclusion that Vance Worley will take the number five spot in the rotation.  I’ll talk about him in a second, but let’s see what Jeff Locke can bring to the position if he concentrates on using his changeup effectively:

Very good numbers across the board.  No one is going to confuse Jeff Locke for Greg Maddux, but without dominating velocity, it is vitally important for Locke to use pinpoint accuracy, and get batters to chase.  His changeup affords him this opportunity.  For Locke to have sustained success, he will need to keep his control at all costs.  Let’s contrast his numbers with Vance Worley.

Feb 19, 2015; Bradenton, FL, USA; Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Vance Worley (46) pitches during Thursday afternoon s workout at Pirate City. Mandatory Credit: Jonathan Dyer-USA TODAY Sports

Vance Worley is widely seen as another feather in the cap of the Searage Rejuvenation Engine, and rightfully so.  Worley’s career was on life support until the came to PNC Park and hooked up with arguably the best pitching coach in the majors.  His 2014 success (which includes one of only two shutouts by the Bucs’ staff) seemed to guarantee him a spot in the rotation for 2015.  But was it all smoke and mirrors?  I had a hard time finding a pitch of Worley’s that stood out above others but I eventually settled on his slider.

The Vanimal’s slider was chased at a good rate, but was also contacted a startling 70% of the time.  It’s quite unfortunate that when Worley did get batters to leave the zone, they ended up making good contact anyway, factoring in to hitters only missing at 2.9% of his sliders.  He does keep it on the ground fairly well, but there will always be a gamble involved here because he just does not make hitters miss with this pitch.  The other pitches in his arsenal show a similar profile, but this one is chased a bit more.  I personally have beaten the drum of Worley over Locke, but after seeing this data, I am not quite sure I can maintain that stance.

With Ray Searage leading the way, the Pittsburgh Pirates have slowly built one of the best rotations in the National League, if not all of baseball.  I have full faith that Ray and Clint will continue to put these guys in position to be highly effective, provided that they play to their strengths:  their best pitches.

Next week, we will dip into the Shark Tank and take a look at the best pitches from Mark Melancon, Tony Watson, John Holdzkom, and more.