Entering play yesterday, there were four catchers among the top 30 position players in WAR. Three of them should come as no surprise: Buster Posey, Joe Mauer and Yadier Molina. The fourth might be a bit of a surprise, though. Well, at least it might be if you hadn’t read the title of this article. Which, I’m guessing you did. That’s right, it’s Russell Martin.
Episode 355
Dave Cameron is both (a) the managing editor of FanGraphs and (b) the guest on this particular edition of FanGraphs Audio — during which edition he analyzes mostly the Pittsburgh Baseball Pirates.
Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.
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A month ago, I wrote that it was time to take the Pirates seriously, as their 33-20 record was a strong enough start to put them squarely in the playoff mix, even if we didn’t think they were going to keep playing like a .622 team going forward. Well, since that post was published, the Pirates have gone 18-10, which translates into a .642 winning percentage. Rather than beginning their regression to the mean, they’ve gotten better.
So, now, it’s July 1st and the Pittsburgh Pirates have the best record in baseball. They have a two game in the NL Central and a 10 game lead over the Washington Nationals for the second wild card. By pretty much any objective measure you want to use, it is now likely that the Pirates are going to make the postseason this year. At this point, wondering whether or not they’ll stay in contention is something of an outdated question; now, the real query now is just how good is this Pirates team?
Everyone agrees that there are good stories in baseball. When it comes to deciding what counts as a good story, though, there are as many definitions as there are people who care to have one. Yet as far as the 2013 Pittsburgh Pirates are concerned, the majority are on the same page. The last time the Pirates finished at least .500 was 1992, and they were eliminated from the playoffs on October 14. Two days later, Bryce Harper was born. Now, the Pirates are tied with the Cardinals for the best record in baseball right around the midpoint, and though the Pirates might not be baseball’s best team, they’re well on their way to finishing .500 and then some. One of the keys to enjoying baseball is freshness, and the Pirates’ success feels fresh. They’re a fun team to support and an easy team to bandwagon.
However, while on the surface everything’s peaches, the team success has hidden a team weakness of historical significance. And this doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that Clint Barmes just can’t hit, even though, yeah, he can’t hit. There’s something the Pirates have done worse than anyone else. And I don’t just mean anyone else this season. I mean anyone else at least since Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier. There’s something at which the Pirates have been historically dreadful.
The nation will remember Stephen Strasburg’s major-league debut. Strasburg started his first game on June 8, 2010. That’s not the part people will remember. People will remember the overwhelming dominance, the standing ovations, the 14 strikeouts in seven innings with not one single walk. Gerrit Cole, as Strasburg was, is a top flame-throwing pitching prospect, and Cole just made his own major-league debut in the month of June. Cole’s not as hyped, and his outing didn’t match up to Strasburg’s, in terms of baseball-y sex appeal. But Cole needed just 81 pitches to pitch to 27 batters, and the Giants had only one run on the board when Cole walked off the mound to an ovation of his own. With the lofty expectations placed on top prospects, it’s easy for them to disappoint, but one start in, Gerrit Cole hasn’t disappointed.
I thought we might take a quick look at Cole’s Tuesday night command. Or, at his command over a selection of pitches, like I’ve done with Mariano Rivera and with Carlos Marmol in the past. This isn’t for any diagnostic purposes; this is just for fun, and so we can look at Cole in a way that maybe you didn’t, yesterday, if you were watching. As a prospect, Cole had a few question marks, those being his command and his secondary stuff behind the impressive heater. In Triple-A he threw 63% strikes, pretty much right on the league average. Tuesday, he threw 59 strikes out of 81 pitches, with 19 first-pitch strikes to 27 batters. In that regard it was a surprising outing. In that Cole was effective, it was not.
The Pittsburgh Pirates starting rotation will receive an infusion of talent on Tuesday night.
The Pirates No. 1 prospect, Gerrit Cole, will make his major-league debut when he takes the mound against the defending World Series champion San Francisco Giants and two-time Cy Young award winner Tim Lincecum. Prior to the 2013 season, I ranked the 22-year-old pitcher as the No. 1 prospect in the Pirates’ system and the sixth-best prospect in all of baseball. The California native has been on the prospect landscape a long time. He was selected by the New York Yankees in the first round of the 2008 draft (28th overall) but spurned them for a career at UCLA. After his junior year, in 2011, the prospect’s value was at an all-time high and Cole was taken first overall by the Pirates.
As I write this, the Pittsburgh Pirates are tied for the second best record in baseball. They also happen to be tied for second place in their own division, because the Cardinals are the only team with a better record while the Reds have matched Pittsburgh’s 33-20 start, making the NL Central the most competitive and most interesting division in the sport right now. The Cardinals are Reds are both excellent teams, and we should expect both to continue to win at a good clip over the rest of the year, but what about the Pirates? Is this another first half mirage that will lead to a second half collapse, or do Pittsburgh fans finally have a contender to root for?
I think the answer to both of those questions is probably yes; the Pirates are playing over their heds and will likely regress over the next four months, but their strong start and their overall talent level should keep them in the race to the very end.
Perhaps the Pirates are just doing their thing. You know, the thing from the last couple of years where they start out hot despite no one having them as contenders. The thing were they inspire writers to start writing about them. The thing where they might even make some sort of minor trade near the break to push them over the top. The thing where they collapse in the second half and everyone ends up wonder if the Pirates are ever going to be good again.
But we are not to the collapse point yet. At the moment, the Pirates are 29-15 and tied with the Reds for second in the National League Central, 1.5 games back from the Cardinals. They are managing this despite giving Jonathan Sanchez four starts. A.J. Burnett, of all people, has carried the pitching staff (although Jeff Locke has also been good, ERA-wise). On offense, Starling Marte, Russell Martin, and Gaby Sanchez have been off to surprisingly hot starts, which has helped, too. The Pirates are outplaying their run differential at the moment, but those wins are in the bank, and they are currently projected to finish with 87 wins. That might very well end up looking silly at the end of the year, but for now, I’m sure Pirates fans will take it.
What is striking about the Pirates hanging in there so far this season is that they have done it without Andrew McCutchen repeating his MVP-level performance from last year, when he hit .327/.400/.553 (158 wRC+) with 31 home runs. McCutchen has hardly been bad in 2013 — .291/.353/.477 (128 wRC+) with his usual good base running is plenty from a center fielder. It is a bit surprising, as someone mentioned to me, to see the Pirates in the mix for the division without McCutchen carrying the team.
It would be worth looking at the other players mentioned above to see what is going on with them, and perhaps that is for another post. Today I simply want to see what is going on with McCutchen — what has and has not changed, in terms of his rate stats, from last year, and what it might indicate about his performance going forward.
Vic Black is the heir apparent to the closer’s job in Pittsburgh. The 24-year-old right-hander won’t be replacing Jason Grilli in the near future, but he may be joining Grilli in the Pirates’ bullpen. Four years after being drafted 49th overall out of Dallas Baptist University, Black looks close to big-league ready.
Black cooks with gas: His fastball sits in the mid-to-high 90s and touches triple digits. His slider can be overpowering. Last season, at Double-A Altoona, he logged an Eastern League-best 12.8 strikeouts per nine innings. This year, with Triple-A Indianapolis, his K-rate is 12.5 — and he has almost as many saves [11] as hits allowed [14].
Black talked about his power repertoire this past weekend on a visit to McCoy Stadium in Pawtucket, R.I.
When it comes to minor league and amateur baseball, scouting box scores tells only a piece of the story. In mid-April, I had the opportunity to travel to Greenville, S.C., to see West Virginia Pirates right-hander Clay Holmes. Five days later, North Carolina State ace Carlos Rodon pitched the Saturday night game at Georgia Tech. As of today, Rodon is the top prospect in the 2014 draft.
Admittedly, my last NCAA baseball game was in 2011, when now-Mariners prospect Danny Hultzen faced off against now-Padres prospect Mark Pope. Carson Cistulli would shame me in public for my general lack of interest in the college game, but that lack of familiarity is a driving factor for this piece.
