Not everyone liked Dave Parker. Certainly the fans who threw things at him in the Pittsburgh outfield, slashed the roof of his convertible and even threatened his life could be counted in this camp. Pundits who may have poured cold water on Parker’s Hall of Fame candidacy thanks to his involvement in the Pittsburgh Drug Trials might also find themselves in this camp. But whether you loved him or hated him, Parker was always one of the game’s most entertaining and best players, and his recent diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease shouldn’t overshadow that fact.

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At the end of May, I wrote a post noting that it was time to take the Pittsburgh Pirates seriously. At that point, they were 33-20, and I spent the first few paragraphs of the piece explaining why the Pirates were probably playing over their heads and were due for some regression. After all, the Pirates weren’t going to keep winning games at a .622 pace. They were interesting, but they weren’t that good.

Well, on the one hand, the prediction of coming regression has been correct. After going 33-20 in their first 53 games, they’ve gone 32-22 in the 54 since that piece was published. 32-22 is worse than 33-20. They’ve regressed, technically.

On the other hand, we could actually say that the Pirates have gotten even better.

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The last time I wrote about Edge% it was in the context of the Tampa Bay Rays using it to get their pitchers into more favorable counts on 1-1. But now I want to take that topic and drill a little deeper to understand how often edge pitches are taken for called strikes.

Overall, pitches taken on the edge are called strikes 69% of the time. But that aggregate measure hides some pretty substantial differences. Going further on that idea, I wanted to see how the count impacts the likelihood of a pitch on the edge being called a strike.

Here are the results:

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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.

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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.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 37 min play time.)

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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