Pirates examples why you should take Spring Training stats with a grain of salt

There are plenty of examples in the Pittsburgh Pirates' recent history to show why you should take Spring Training stats with a grain of salt.

There are three certainties in life: death, taxes, and baseball fans overreacting to Spring Training.

One moment, a prospect is a bust because he had a bad Spring. The next moment, a career minor leaguer or bench player is a team’s next big thing because they did great in Spring. I’ve seen it all, and I’d be lying if I haven’t fallen for a good/bad Spring Training performance in my life before. Like every team in MLB, the Pittsburgh Pirates have had their fair share of strong or poor Spring Training performances followed by bad or good regular season performances.

Taking Spring Training stats beyond face value is not a smart way to identify who is good and who isn’t. It is a volatile time for all players. Players are tweaking their approach or working on new mechanics. Pitchers might be working on a new pitch, while batters might be working on a new swing. In some cases, pitchers might not even be worried about locating; they are just getting a feel for stuff again. Plus, you’re talking about some players shaking off rust for the first time since September or October. Overall, the level and effort of competition you see in the middle of March is so different from what you see in the middle of April.

There are reasons why when a player does great or bad in Spring, I do not take it super seriously. Today, I want to give you some examples from the Pirates’ recent history as to why this is the case.

Travis Ishikawa

The duality of Spring Training was on full display in 2014. As Edinson Volquez was having an awful preseason, you had Travis Ishikawa having a phenomenal year. Ishikawa was signed to a minor league contract in the 2013-2014 off-season to provide some depth at first base. Up to that point in his career, Ishikawa was a career .260/.324/.398 batter with a 92 wRC+, serving as a bench first baseman/pinch hitter.

Ishikawa wasn’t even close to competing for the first base job when Spring Training started. He had to surpass both Andrew Lambo and Gaby Sanchez. But he then went off in Spring, batting .290/.405/.581 with three home runs in just 13 games. He had struck out just ten times and combated that with six free passes. Meanwhile, Lambo batted below .100 with an OPS below .300.

Because of that strong Spring, Ishikawa would enter the 2014 season as the Pirates’ Opening Day first baseman. But he would appear in just 15 games with 38 plate appearances while having a .206 batting average, .646 OPS, and 80 OPS+ before the Pirates acquired Ike Davis and decided to move on from Ishikawa. He was then signed by the San Francisco Giants, where he would become a solid bench bat down the stretch.

Ishikawa would play Postseason hero, blasting a walk off home run in Game Five of the National League Championship Series and send the Giants to the World Series. While that was a career-defining moment for the first baseman, his Spring Training with the Pirates and his subsequent regular season is an example of why it’s hard to take Spring Training stats seriously.

Trevor Williams

Trevor Williams is an example of why both good and bad Spring Training numbers are not good indicators of future success. His 2017 season was solid, especially in the second half of the season. In 150.1 innings, the right-hander had a 4.07 ERA, 4.03 FIP, and 1.31 WHIP. Williams’ 18.1% K-rate was poor but had an above-average 8.1% walk rate and 0.84 HR/9. Williams was great at limiting hard contact with an 86.3 MPH exit velocity and 4.5% barrel rate. However, based on his 2018 Spring Training, this may have looked like a fluke.

He pitched 15.1 innings with a 5.87 ERA and 1.57 WHIP. Although he did strike out 18 batters, he also walked a half-dozen. Plus, he allowed two home runs. However, Williams would then go on to toss 170.1 innings for the Pirates, working to a 3.11 ERA, 3.86 FIP, and 1.18 WHIP. His 18% strikeout rate was about the same as in 2017, as was his 7.8% walk rate and 0.79 HR/9. Williams continued to excel at limiting hard contact with an 86.9 MPH exit velocity and 5.6% barrel rate.

He looked like he would follow that up with a strong encore in 2019 after he only allowed three earned runs and two walks in 11 innings during the following preseason. He still allowed two home runs and only struck out nine, but the bottom line looked great. But Williams pitched to a poor 5.38 ERA, 5.12 FIP, and 1.41 WHIP. His K% of 17.8% and 6.9% walk rate stayed relatively the same as in previous seasons but saw his HR/9 skyrocket to 1.67. That’s because his barrel rate jumped to 7.6%.

Matt Hague

Matt Hague is a fairly obscure Pirate in the franchise’s history. A former ninth-round pick, Hague made his way up through the minor leagues as a corner infielder. In total, he appeared in 43 big league games from 2012 through 2015 with the Bucs and Toronto Blue Jays, batting .226/.286/.262 with no home runs, five walks, and 19 strikeouts in 91 plate appearances. But in 2012, he would have an astounding Spring.

In 55 plate appearances, Hague had 22 hits, an impressive seven of which were home runs. Hague was tied with Freddie Freeman and Albert Pujols for the most home runs in Spring that year, two future Hall of Fame first basemen. He also only had five strikeouts for a K% of 9.1% in the small sample size. Overall, he had a 1.200 OPS in Spring Training.

Hague appeared in only 30 MLB games, where he registered a wRC+ of just 43 in 74 plate appearances. He also didn’t hit that well at Triple-A in 2012, batting .282/.332/.351 with a .313 wOBA and 91 wRC+. After going yard seven times in Spring, Hague hit just four home runs in 399 plate appearances at Indianapolis. He had an ISO of just .068.

After 2015, Hague would bounce around with the Minnesota Twins, Washington Nationals, and Seattle Mariners. Hague would have another promising Spring with the Twins in 2017 where he batted .347 with a .987 OPS, but would not appear in the Major Leagues.

A.J. Burnett

We’ll finish it off with my favorite player in Pirates history that I got to watch, A.J. Burnett.

Burnett had a poor 2014 season with the Philadelphia Phillies, where he had a 4.59 ERA, 4.14 FIP, and 1.41 WHIP in 213.2 innings. This was after two very successful seasons with the Pirates in 2012 and 2013. At age 38, it was reasonable to have some suspicions about how Burnett would play in 2015 after he resigned from the Pirates.

Some became even more worried about Burnett after his mediocre Spring Training. In 16.2 innings, he allowed nine earned runs while also walking nine batters. Burnett, who had led the league in K/9 rate in 2013, had struck out just 14 batters. The only silver lining of this was the fact he did not allow a home run.

But Burnett would then go on to have a 3.15 ERA, 3.36 FIP, and 1.36 WHIP in 164 innings pitched. While he saw his K% dip to 20.5%, his 7% walk rate was the second-best single-season mark of his career. Meanwhile, he had a HR/9 rate of 0.60. His 122 ERA+ was the best he had ever posted in his three seasons with the Pirates. On top of all that, he made his first All-Star game after an outstanding first half.