The 2013 Pittsburgh Pirates: Valuing Advanced Metrics Over Traditional Stats

Pitching

The Pittsburgh Pirates found some of their most reliable pitching through the use of SIERA, but mainly xFIP or expected FIP. Gone were the days of wins and losses, saves totals, and ERA. Each is extremely flawed in their own way, especially a pitcher’s wins and loss record which is totally swayed by run support. Basically, win/loss record is a dependent variable to runs scored per game, and the team’s overall defense.

But let’s look at three pitchers nobody thought would be as good as they were when the Pittsburgh Pirates acquired them: Mark Melancon, A.J. Burnett, and Francisco Liriano. Three of the best and most important pitchers for the Bucs 2013 playoff run.

Melancon was acquired by the Pirates from the Boston Red Sox for Joel Hanrahan, and Brock Holt. Why would anyone give up an All-Star level closer and a utility prospect for a guy who posted a 6.20 ERA, and gave up eight home runs in only 45 innings? Well look past those numbers for just a second.

Melancon was very, very unlucky. He may have had a 4.54 FIP, but his xFIP was 3.45. That would have put him in the top 50 of relief pitchers in baseball had he kept that up through an entire season. His 3.15 SIERA also would have put him in the top 50 relief pitchers in 2012. This value was what the Pirates were looking at when they acquired Melancon. We all know how he did in 2013. His ERA and FIP fell all the way below to at 1.39/1.64 through 71 innings of work. His xFIP took another step down, to 2.05 and his SIERA was 1.73. Overall, his 2.5 fWAR was the third highest in baseball, pacing Koji Ueraha and Greg Holland who tied for the first place spot at 3.1, and the highest in the National League.

Burnett was coming off a rough 2011 season before being acquired by the Pirates in 2012. On paper, nobody would want a pitcher who had a 10-15 record, ERA above 5 (5.26), and 1.51 WHIP. Especially one that was being paid $16.5 million. Well, Burnett had a solid 3.86 xFIP and 3.89 SIERA. He was a 3.80 ERA pitcher that got unlucky and had an ERA above 5.

Almost like clockwork, his ERA in 2012 closely represented his xFIP and SIERA from 2011, at 3.51. His xFIP and SIERA also barely budged in 2012, going down to 3.40 and 3.48. Then in 2013, Burnett had one of the best seasons from a Pirate pitcher in the decade. He clocked in with a 3.30 ERA, 2.80 FIP, 209 strikeouts in 191 innings, gave up just 11 home runs, and had a 3.03 SIERA and 2.92 xFIP.

Liriano was considered one of the worst pitchers in baseball in 2012. A 5.34 ERA is not good. Although, his ERA predictors weren’t projecting him to be an ace, they projected him to be much better than he was. Liriano’s 2012 xFIP was 4.14 and SIERA of 4.19. That’s over an entire run difference between that and his ERA. Those numbers were roughly league average in 2012 with a 100 xFIP-. It doesn’t look like a good idea to sign a pitcher who had an ERA above 5 to be one of your starters, let alone a two-year deal. Well turns out that two-year deal was extremely valuable for the Pirates. In 2013 and 2014, Liriano posted a 3.20 ERA, 3.26 FIP, and 1.26 WHIP.

Scoring Runs

How do you determine who the most clutch hitters are on your team? Well I’ll tell you how you don’t – by using RBIs. That’s also how the Pittsburgh Pirates viewed that stat.

RBIs are like pitcher wins but for batters; a dependent variable of many things outside of the player’s control. In this case, it’s runners on base, how often the runners in front of you get on base or how many chances you get to have multiple RBI opportunities, and where you’re batting in the line up. A player who hits in the middle of the order and has a .270 batting average/.800 OPS with men on will likely have more RBIs than someone who bats lead off and bats .300 with a .880 OPS with men on base simply because the guy in the middle of the order will get way more chances to drive in multiple runs at a time than a lead off man.

Russell Martin was acquired for his defense, but he was a clutch bat when the Pirates needed him to be. Martin only had 53 RBIs in 2012, but to see how good he was when it came time to clutch up, you have to look at his splits. Martin stepped to the plate 98 times in high leverage situations according to Baseball Refernce. In those 98 chances, Martin racked up 23 hits where over half of them went for extra bases (six doubles, six home runs). He also walked eight times and struck out 19 times. In 2013, Martin carried over that kind of clutch batting hitting .282/.392/.409 in 131 plate appearances in high leverage situations. However, he only had 55 RBIs in 2013.

One of the under the radar Pirates during 2013 was middle infielder Jordy Mercer. But. I mean, how clutch was he really? 27 RBIs? Well remember this – many of his plate appearances came out of the two hole, or down at number eight.

But when he stepped to the plate with an opportunity to drive in runs, he took full advantage of it. With runners in scoring position Mercer had a .308/.418/.418 batting line. But he only got 80 plate appearances with RISP and 147 plate appearances when a man was on base, explaining his low RBI total.

One of the Pittsburgh Pirates best bench pieces in high leverage moments was Travis Snider. Acquired by the Pirates at the 2012 trade deadline, he may have only had a RBI total of 25 in 111 games and 285 plate appearances, but he was who you wanted at the plate when you needed a big hit off the bench.

In terms of FanGraphs’ high leverage situations, Snider had 36 plate appearances. He posted a .364/.417/.758 line. That comes out to a 222 wRC+. Snider, a 4th outfielder by 2013 whose  former top prospect status had all but faded, was 122% better than the MLB average when it came into high leverage situations. Only six other players had a higher wRC+ than Snider, and only seven had a higher OPS than him in those situations.

But overall, the Pirates’ pinch hitters also were clutch. Coming off the bench usually means you’re coming into a situation where you have an opportunity to advance a base runner, or drive in a run or two. When coming off the bench with at least one man on base, the Bucs’ pinch hitters had a 101 wRC+. That was the 6th highest mark of 2013 among National League teams. Pinch hitters also made loud contact 28.4% of the time, which was 3rd highest in the NL.

The 2013 Pittsburgh Pirates had the 20th highest RBI total and 9th highest in the NL. But that doesn’t mean they were far from being a team that could clutch up when they needed to. They had seven players with a wRC+ of 100 or better when they stepped to the plate with men on base. Their 96 wRC+ with men on base was 7th in the NL. They clocked in with a 30.8% hard hit rate as a team with men on, the 4th highest in all of baseball, and 2nd highest in the NL.

Fielding

Fielding is more than just errors and flashy plays. It’s easy to see a low error count and think that guy is a good fielder when in most cases that might not be true. Sometimes it can mean quite the opposite as better fielders are more prone to make more errors because they’re usually the ones to make the more difficult plays. Ozzie Smith, the all time dWAR leader, had double digits in errors in 15 of the 16 seasons where he played at least 100 games. So how did the 2013 Pirates value fielding?

One of the biggest and most valuable ways a catcher can help their team is through pitch framing. This is something the Bucs took advantage of as much as they could in 2013. In previous seasons, the Pirates had awful farmers. No catcher in the history of baseball was worse at framing than Ryan Doumit, the Pirates primary catcher from 2007 to 2011. He had -127.6 total framing runs in his entire career according to FanGraphs. In 2012, the Pirates brought in Rod Barajas to take the reins for Doumit’s departure. He posted -13.5 framing runs according to Baseball Prospectus.

From Martin’s rookie season in 2006 up through 2012, Martin had 60.4 framing runs. That kind of value was being overlooked at the time, and that’s where the Pirates took advantage of making their pitching better as a whole. In Martin’s first season with the Pirates, the former All-Star had racked up 12.3 framing runs.

But catcher isn’t the only position that saw massive improvements defensively. In 2012, Neil Walker, Andrew McCutchen, and Pedro Alvarez all had negative defensive marks in terms of DRS, or defensive runs saved. In 2012, all of them were average or above average marks in the stat. Walker went from -4 to 0. Alvarez went from -5 to +2, and McCutchen went from -6 top +3. They also saw improvements from Garrett Jones (-9 to -2) and Josh Harrison (-4 to 0). Essentially, the Pirates in total from these five players saved 27 runs through their defense.

How did they do it? Well it was through the shift and studying batted ball data. According to Travis Sawchik in his book, “Big Data Baseball” (which I highly suggest you read since it is a very good book), in 2012 the Pirates shifted only 105 times. That number rose to nearly 500 at 494 in 2013. Sawchik also states that in April, the Pirates defenders were involved in 71 more defensive plays than they were in April 2012, and resulting in a handful of more outs.