Pittsburgh Pirates’ AJ Burnett has a knack for winning in bad starts

Pittsburgh Pirates starting pitcher A.J. Burnett has been great this year overall.

But there have been a few clunkers along the way during his self-proclaimed last ride. That idiom was on full display in last night’s 10-7 win over the Kansas City Royals. Burnett gutted through six innings to mask the fact that it was unquestionably his worst start of 2015. The Royals tagged Burnett for 11 hits producing six earned runs in the process.

Searching for a common denominator in Burnett’s bad starts is a frustrating process. We can easily identify those starts – Burnett has only allowed more than three earned runs in three starts this year.  Strangely, the Pittsburgh Pirates have won each of those games, with Burnett picking up the win in each. Is this the randomness of baseball at work? It sure seems that way.

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Consider this: looking at plate discipline metrics for Burnett over the 2015 season shows that he does an average job at making batters swing at pitches outside of the zone (28.9% against the MLB average of 30%). He also does a decent job of getting swinging strikes, with an 8.3% SwStr percentage vs the 9.5% MLB average. Taking his most recent dud against the Royals as an example, Burnett actually did better in this regard, with a 38.5% O-Swing percentage. The main difference here being an absolutely crazy 90% contact rate on pitches outside of the zone. Compare this to his season-long number of 60.1% and we begin to tell the tale of Burnett’s forgettable outing.

Yet when we take that inkling and compare it against the other two starts in which he struggled, we find no common theme. In the June 2nd win vs the San Francsico Giants, Burnett had a very low O-Swing $ of 18%. Although batters did not chase in that game, they still got to him for eight hits. In the May 28th win over the San Diego Padres, the friars got the Burnett for – again – eight hits and chased him after 5.2 IP. In that contest, Burnett actually showed up well with six strikeouts. For the game Burnett had a 23.9% O-Swing percentage but enjoyed a 11.7% swinging-strike percentage – a full 3.4% higher than his season average.

If you’re still with me, you can now hopefully understand how trying to understand what goes on during Burnett’s bad starts is a frustrating exercise. Perhaps the only common theme we can find is that A.J. Burnett can knuckle down and give you at least five innings of work on the days when he clearly does not have anything close to his best stuff.

Burnett has spoiled us with gems this year, which makes the dull outings even harder to understand. But what is easy to understand is Burnett’s fire, which is never in question.

The next time that Burnett comes out of the gate and labors, Pittsburgh Pirates fans will do well to remember that.

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