Ah, relievers. Can’t predict them, can’t live without them. Between the changing demands of a modern game and the fact that bullpen arms seem to fluctuate randomly between unhittable and unreliable, everyone always needs more relievers. Both New York teams, set at many other positions, made moves to bolster their bullpens yesterday. The Yankees are signing Darren O’Day, while the Mets are adding Aaron Loup (pending a physical).
Let’s address O’Day first. Only two days ago, the Yankees traded Adam Ottavino to the Red Sox for a bag of baseballs. Actually, it was worse than that: they traded Ottavino and a prospect and $850,000 to the Red Sox for future considerations. As Dan Szymborski detailed, the Yankees made that trade to dodge the Competitive Balance Tax, but doing so left a right-handed hole in their bullpen.
One thing that no one can dispute is that Darren O’Day is right-handed. That has, in fact, been his calling card for 13 major league seasons: O’Day breaks right-handed batters down, end of story. Over his lengthy career, he’s held them to a .248 wOBA, with a 27.5% strikeout rate doing most of the heavy lifting. His sidearm delivery is a rarity these days, and it turns righties into… well, into whatever you want to call Bobby Dalbec on this swing:
That goofy (though not in a skateboarding sense) arm angle turns an 86 mph fastball into a devastating weapon, a pitch that batters think will hit them in the leg before it explodes up and away. He complements it with a sweeping slider he commands well to his glove side, a useful counter when hitters start to adjust to the unexpected release point.
The last time O’Day allowed even league average production to opposing righties was in 2011, when he faced only 43 of them. ROOGY is an overused term — at this point, even LOOGYs hardly exist — but O’Day might be the rare pitcher who fits the bill.
By using O’Day strategically against righty-heavy patches of the opposing lineup, the Yankees hope to get a steady diet of strikeouts and weak fly balls. Unlike most sidearmers, O’Day works up in the zone, something which surely adds to batters’ confusion. It’s not so much the velocity, the location, or the delivery; the combination of everything is simply too strange to deal with.
You might think that a sidearmer throwing high in the zone to lefties — three batter minimum and all — would undo all the good that O’Day does against righties. You’d be right — O’Day has been brutal against lefties as his career has worn on. Since the beginning of the new lively ball era in 2015, he’s allowed 1.5 HR/9 against lefties, good for a 4.67 FIP (ERA isn’t really compatible with splits like these). For comparison, his FIP against righties over the same window is a stellar 2.61.
The onus is on the Yankees to find good spots to use such a situational reliever, but the opportunities will certainly be there. Consider the rosters of the Yankees’ three division rivals (sorry, Orioles). The Blue Jays signed righties George Springer and Marcus Semien to join righties Bo Bichette, Teoscar Hernández, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr., while the Red Sox have only three lefty batters on their roster. The Rays — well, yeah, the Rays will be a problem. Even then, though, sending O’Day out to face a dangerous righty with two outs will often be worth the gamble — he’s bad against lefties, but not enough to offset his mastery of righties.
At $2.45 million, O’Day doesn’t need to set the league on fire to meet expectations. The Yankee bullpen is strong at the top — Aroldis Chapman, Zack Britton, and Chad Green provide quantity and quality, and two of them are even lefties. If O’Day can contribute 40 to 50 innings of right-handed filth, the Yankees will be pleased — that’s Ottavino production at a quarter of the price.
Speaking of New York teams signing situational relievers, the Mets signed Aaron Loup, who will become the only left-hander in an already-excellent bullpen. Calling him reverse O’Day misses the mark — he throws harder and doesn’t display such extreme platoon splits. Still, though, bringing in a southpaw in an all-right-handed bullpen tells you what the Mets want from Loup: come in against opposing leftys, sit them down, and tread water against the righties.
Okay, fine, there’s one major similarity between Loup and O’Day:
Like his new borough neighbor, Loup comes at hitters from a novel angle. Unlike O’Day, he lives in the bottom of the zone with a sinker. He complements his fastball, which sits around 92 mph, with a cutter, curve, and changeup that he uses almost exclusively against righties — the last time he threw a changeup to a lefty was in 2017.
The terms of Loup’s deal haven’t yet been disclosed, but they’ll likely closely mirror O’Day’s contract. So, too, will his role, though this time I mean mirror in the sense of the same thing in reverse. Loup will face dangerous lefties and then try to survive against the righties who follow them, shielding the Mets’ top relievers from the slings and arrows of outrageous Juan Soto highlights.
Neither of these deals are going to turn into wild, runaway success stories. Neither player is going to garner Cy Young votes. But teams need innings out of the bullpen, and both the Mets and Yankees are in competitive divisions. Filling those innings with quiet competence might be the difference in a game or two, and a game or two might be the difference in the playoff race.
How might these signings backfire? It all depends on what you mean by “backfire.” The most obvious downside is that O’Day and Loup might simply not be very good. O’Day throws a mid-80’s fastball and Loup is a 33-year-old reliever who struck out only 22.9% of opponents last year. It would hardly be shocking for one of these pitchers to be a roster casualty within the year — a few bad weeks, a pressing need for 40-man space, and that might be that.
Short of that, the downsides are all opportunity cost. If you’re out of the Loup market, you might be in the market for an exciting call-up from Triple-A. Giving innings to known and medium quantities is all well and good, but it lowers your odds of making exciting discoveries with that roster spot. The odds of O’Day turning into the next hot reliever du jour are essentially nonexistent.
For two presumptive playoff teams, however, that’s a negligible downside. It’s fun to discover new young relievers, but the downside is no joke: they might be bad! For teams far from contention, volatility is good. If you’re right in the thick of things, though, reliever volatility is definitely not where you want to be. By lowering their odds of failure, the Yankees and Mets are increasing their chances of success. Not bad for two sidearmers.
In a rare swap between rivals, the Yankees sent reliever Adam Ottavino to Boston on Monday, along with pitcher Frank German, in return for future considerations. Also heading to Boston was $850,000 to defray part of Ottavino’s $8 million salary for the 2020 season, the final year of the three-year contract he signed to leave the Rockies after 2018.
Ottavino, one of the Yankees’ top relievers in 2019, had decidedly mixed results last year, putting up a 3.52 FIP but an ERA of nearly six. While Ottavino’s .375 BABIP is almost certainly a bit of bad luck — historically, non-pitchers dragooned into throwing innings have a BABIP in the .330 range — there are a few negative indicators to send us the opposite direction in evaluating him. His contact numbers were down, with nearly career-worsts in contact rate and swinging strikes, and when he was hit in 2020, he was walloped, with a five-mph bump in the average exit velocity. Yes, we’re only talking 50 batted ball events, but a 50% hard-hit rate, even in such a small sample, is a significant deviation from the 29% rate from the previous two seasons.
Pittsburgh’s sell-off continued over the weekend, with the Pirates sending starting pitcher Jameson Taillon to the New York Yankees in return for four prospects. The 29-year-old didn’t pitch in 2020, his season lost due to rehabilitation from Tommy John surgery in late 2019, the second such surgery of his career. Taillon, a former 2010 first-round pick, has suffered more than his share of setbacks, missing three years of his career and most of a fourth due to his elbow injuries and a sports hernia; he also missed time in 2017 due to testicular cancer. He heads to a Yankees rotation with a lot of interesting upside talent and a surplus of question marks.
Taillon’s departure to join former teammate Gerrit Cole in the Bronx represents the end of an era in Pittsburgh. Taken in consecutive drafts in 2010 and ’11, Taillon and Cole were frequently imagined together as the two aces at the top of a future Pirates rotation. For a team that had had recent first-round busts in the quickly injured Brad Lincoln and the bafflingly selected Daniel Moskos, this pair was the cornerstone of the rebuilding efforts of the then-new Frank Coonelly/Neal Huntington regime. Both pitchers were consensus elite choices in the draft and were selected without any of the team’s trademark cynical calculations about whether a player would sign on the cheap.
Taillon and Cole met their lofty expectations as they quickly worked their way through the minors. Cole, a college draftee, made his 2011 major league debut just two years after draft day, and if not for injury, Taillon would have likely followed him early in 2014. Missing two years is an enormous setback for any prospect, but the Pirates averaged 93 wins per season over 2013-15 and could afford to be patient. As the holes the team had to fill in order to continue winning increased, ownership’s commitment to investing in the roster did not, and the Pirates needed Taillon in 2016 more than they did in ’14 or ’15. And he succeeded, requiring only a 10-game tuneup at Triple-A before debuting in the majors and pitching well enough where he would have gotten some Rookie of the Year votes if he had been up for the entire year. Read the rest of this entry »
Sunday, the Pirates traded starter Jameson Taillon to the Yankees for a package of four prospects. Dan Szymborksi will provide in-depth analysis of the deal as it pertains to the Yankees soon, though I’ll note to start that with the return of Luis Severino and Domingo Germán and the additions of Corey Kluber and now Taillon, the Yankees rotation will be reliant on several high-risk, high-reward starters this season.
Of course, nobody likes trading away good big leaguers, especially those who the club and city care about for reasons beyond their on-field performance. Taillon has persevered through a lot, including testicular cancer and an August 2019 Tommy John, the second such surgery of his career. When he next steps on a big league mound, it will have been nearly two years since he last did so. That layoff (he has been throwing live BP to hitters since late last summer and has been throwing bullpens during the offseason) creates volatility that mirrors the added volatility of this particular prospect package. Taillon could be an anchor of the Yankees rotation next year or might be a shell of himself. Regardless of which he would have been in Pittsburgh, the Pirates are not ready to compete and so I think they did well to trade him for four good prospects today, acquiring upside but also mitigating risk by getting several players in return.
The Yankees’ big free agent signing last week came when the team brought back DJ LeMahieu for six years and $90 million. That deal raises both the floor and the ceiling in the Bronx next season. LeMahieu is a dependable player who should be average at a minimum, ensuring the infield doesn’t have a black hole, while a repeat of his performance since the beginning of 2019 would elevate the Yankees’ chances of a great season. The Yankees’ other signing last week came late Friday in the form of Corey Kluber. Kluber does less to shore up the Yankees’ floor given his recent injury history; indeed, there’s a non-zero chance Kluber doesn’t contribute much to the Yankees at all this year. What Kluber and his two Cy Young awards do manage to do is substantially raise the Yankees’ ceiling, as the team should face a tough battle in the AL East.
Jeff Passan was first with the news that Kluber would be signing with the Yankees for one year and $11 million. Kluber’s contract sits between my $9 million prediction and the $12 million median crowdsource estimate from our top 50 free agent ranking. Despite making just eight starts over the past two seasons, including just a single inning last year, a couple factors worked in Kluber’s favor in securing a decent pillow contract. The first is that Kluber threw for scouts and impressed. The second relates more specifically to the Yankees.
1/When it comes to Kluber, no team will have a better understanding of his physical condition than the #Yankees. The mound session today was at Cressey Sports Performance. The rehab is being done by Eric Cressey, who also is the NYY’s director of health and performance.
Chris Perez didn’t get many opportunities to swing the bat during his seven big-league seasons. As a short reliever who played primarily in the American League, that was to be expected. Somewhat less expected was what happened when he did have a chance to dig into the batters box.
“I had two [plate appearances], and I’m bitter about one of them,” Perez told me recently. “In 2008, my rookie year with St. Louis, we were in Florida at the old stadium, playing the Marlins. I came into the game in the eighth inning with one out, and got a double play with the bases loaded. When I went back to the dugout, Tony La Russa told me, ‘Hey, Chris, you’re still in there. Stay focused, because you’ve got the ninth.’”
The Cardinals were up by a run at the time, and Perez was due up sixth in the top half. Three hits and two outs later — an insurance run having crossed the plate — La Russa approached Perez again. This time the message was less welcome: “Go up to the plate and look dangerous, but don’t swing. I want you to take every pitch.”
La Russa was a veteran manager on his way to the Hall of Fame. Perez was a fresh-faced rookie. He took every pitch. Read the rest of this entry »
The staredown is over, and the first of this winter’s top-tier free agents has signed. Per ESPN’s Jeff Passan, the Yankees are finalizing a six-year, $90 million deal to bring back DJ LeMahieu, who over the past two seasons has been one of the game’s top hitters and most valuable players.
That outcome — a surprise given his latter-day performances with the Rockies — has a whole lot to do with the way the now-32-year-old infielder adapted to the Bronx, to such an extent that “The Machine” likely has more value to the Yankees than to any other team. Even so, this is a comparatively reasonable deal that fits the Yankees well, as its lower average annual value will aid the team when it comes to the Competitive Balance Tax. At the same time, from a dollars-and-wins standpoint, it may not bode tremendously well for this winter’s other top free agents.
When the Yankees signed LeMahieu to a two-year, $24 million deal, he was coming off a tepid 91 wRC+ over the final two seasons of his seven-year run in Colorado. Even so, his glovework had boosted his value to 4.1 WAR in that span, giving him a reasonable floor, and our own Jeff Sullivan saw his high contact rate, right-handedness, ability to hit to the opposite field, and modest pop as reminiscent of one Derek Jeter. Due to a slew of injuries, the Yankees leaned upon LeMahieu more than most observers expected, and between his defensive versatility and indeed, his ability to go oppo with his fly balls — thereby taking advantage of Yankee Stadium’s short right field porch — he emerged as one of the toughest outs in the league.
LeMahieu, who had reached double digits in home runs just twice with the Rockies and topped out at 15 in 2018, hit a major league-high 16 opposite field homers at home in 2019-20 (out of 36 total) while continuing to pull enough groundballs hard enough to put up eye-opening numbers. After batting .327/.375/.518 (136 wRC+) with 5.4 WAR in 2019, he hit a sizzling .364/.421/.590 in ’20. His batting average in the latter season made him the first modern player to win batting titles in both leagues; Ed Delahanty won the NL in 1899, and the AL in 1902, his last full season before going over Niagara Falls. Read the rest of this entry »
Clarke Schmidt is more than a talented, 24-year-old right-hander who made his major league debut with the New York Yankees in 2020. He’s also a bona fide pitching nerd. Selected 18th overall in the 2017 draft out of the University of South Carolina, Schmidt leans heavily on analytics as he strives to further develop an already formidable four-pitch arsenal.
His top two offerings — per Eric Longenhagen, “a power-sweeping, mid-80s breaking ball” and a two-seamer with “nasty tailing action” — have each been honed with the help of data. A third pitch, his four-seamer, is currently on that same path, while his changeup has likewise been undergoing nuanced tweaks. Big-league hitters have barely gotten a glimpse of Schmidt’s smart weaponry — last year’s cup of coffee comprised just six-and-a-third innings — but they can expect to see a lot more of him in the future. Clarke heads into the 2021 season as a strong candidate to capture a spot in New York’s starting rotation.
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David Laurila: You have a plus breaking ball. What is the story behind it?
Clarke Schmidt: “In college, I was a slider and curveball guy — mainly a slider guy — and my sophomore year, I think I led the SEC in strikeouts. I had [129] strikeouts, and if I had to guess, I got 90 of them on sliders. That was like my go-to pitch. It wasn’t very hard, but it was hard for hitters to see the spin. It was an interesting-spinning slider, and it had a good movement profile, but it wasn’t a sharp-breaking slider.”
Laurila: What made the spin interesting?
Schmidt: “It was very depth-y. Normally, when you see sliders from guys who throw mid-90s [fastballs], it’s like a Gerrit Cole slider, or more of a sharpness with it staying on the plate longer. Mine was more of a sweepy slider, kind of like Chris Sale has. It was a low-80s slider. Read the rest of this entry »
The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2021 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.
2021 BBWAA Candidate: A.J. Burnett
Player
Pos
Career WAR
Peak WAR
JAWS
W-L
IP
SO
ERA
ERA+
A.J. Burnett
SP
28.8
21.7
25.3
164-157
2731.1
2513
3.99
104
SOURCE: Baseball-Reference
A.J. Burnett’s stuff was never in doubt. The owner of a mid-90s fastball and a devastating knuckle curve that he threw from multiple arm slots, he could make batters look foolish and miss bats aplenty, but his command and control were another matter. When Burnett no-hit the Padres as a member of the Marlins on May 12, 2001, he walked nine batters — the most by a pitcher ever in a nine-inning no-no — and hit another.
Burnett spent parts of 17 seasons (1999–2015) in the majors with the Marlins, Blue Jays, Yankees, Pirates, and Phillies. He struck out at least 190 hitters in a season half a dozen times, led his league in strikeouts per nine twice, played a key role in helping New York win a World Series and in ending an epic postseason drought in Pittsburgh, and went through an impressive late-career reinvention there that culminated with his only All-Star berth in the final year of his career. Yet he also ranked among the league’s top 10 in walk rate nine times, leading once and placing second twice. Three times he led his league in wild pitches and once in hit batsmen. From his tattoos and nipple rings to his penchant for self-immolation on the mound, he earned an unenviable reputation by the middle of his career.
“When his head’s not right, then his body won’t follow. But his head goes first. Then his body gets all out of whack,” Yankees pitching coach Dave Eiland bluntly told ESPN’s Johnette Howard in 2010, as Burnett suddenly devolved into yet another pitcher who couldn’t handle the Bronx. It took a change of scenery and mastery of a two-seam fastball to get his career back on track. Once he did, he became a favorite of teammates and fans — an outcome that at one point appeared so remote.
Allan James Burnett was born on January 3, 1977 in North Little Rock, Arkansas. He played mostly third base at Central Arkansas Christian High School, and when he pitched a bit during his junior year, “more of his pitches ended up at the backstop than in the strike zone,” wroteESPN Magazine’s Eric Adelson in 2001. Filling in for a teammate in a key game as a senior, he broke through, and the Mets chose him in the eighth round of the 1995 draft; he signed for a $60,000 bonus. By FanGraphs’ version of WAR — which at 42.5 is well beyond the value estimate of Baseball-Reference’s version (28.8) — he’s the most valuable eight-round pick ever, though Paul Goldschmidt will soon surpass him.
Burnett struggled with his control and his temper from the outset of his professional carer, walking 77 batters (but striking out 94) in 91.2 innings in his first two seasons. He began harnessing his stuff after coming under the tutelage of Pittsfield Mets pitching coach Bob Stanley (the former Red Sox reliever) in 1997. Via Adelson, Stanley once sent Burnett back to the mound with bloody knuckles after Burnett had repeatedly punched a dugout ceiling in anger; he struck out the side.
In February 1998, Burnett was traded to the Marlins — who were in the process of tearing apart their World Series-winning roster — as part of the Al Leiter deal. Despite missing the first seven weeks of the season due to a broken right hand suffered while playing catch (he was protecting himself from an errant throw), he made an indelible impression with his performance at A-level Kane County, posting a 1.97 ERA with 14.1 strikeouts per nine in 119 innings. The performance rocketed him to No. 21 on Baseball America’s Top 100 Prospects list; the publication lauded his stuff (mid-90s fastball that touched 97, two other average or better pitches) and his makeup (“not afraid to make a mistake, loves to challenge hitters and won’t back down… willingness to make adjustments and correct mistakes on his own”).
Promoted to Double-A Portland, Burnett struggled, with high walk and homer rates pushing his ERA to 5.52, but he responded well to a detour to the bullpen, and the Marlins called him up to debut on August 17, 1999. He threw 5.2 innings and allowed one run in beating the Dodgers, the first of seven starts over which he posted a 3.84 ERA but walked 5.4 per nine.
Expected to make the Marlins out of spring training in 2000, Burnett ruptured a ligament in his right thumb and was sidelined until July 20. He pitched quite well initially but faded in September, finishing with a 4.79 ERA in 82.2 innings. He continued to develop over the next two seasons, throwing that ugly 129-pitch no-hitter against the Padres in just his second start off the disabled list following a right foot fracture (suffered after he stepped in a gutter while bowling, naturally).
Burnett enjoyed a significant breakout in 2002, when he posted a 3.30 ERA and struck out 203 in 204.1 innings while leading the NL in shutouts (five), hit and homer rates (6.7 and 0.5 per nine, respectively) and wild pitches (14). His usage was heavy even in the context of the time; his 12 outings with at least 120 pitches over the 2001–02 seasons tied for fourth in the majors, and at 24 and 25 years old, he was the youngest pitcher among the top eight in that category. Thus it wasn’t much of a shock when the elbow trouble he developed in early 2003 led to Tommy John surgery. He missed the Marlins’ championship run, but given how awash the team was with young pitching — Josh Beckett, Dontrelle Willis (his rotation replacement), Brad Penny, Carl Pavano — the team barely missed him.
Even so, Burnett made a strong return in June 2004, highlighted by a 14-strikeout effort against the Rockies on August 29. Despite posting solid numbers in 2005 (3.44 ERA, 116 ERA+, 198 strikeouts in 209 innings), he lost his final six decisions amid a race for a playoff spot and was sent home during the final week of the season after a clubhouse outburst regarding the negative attitude surrounding the team. “We play scared. We manage scared. We coach scared and I’m sick of it,” he told reporters. “It’s depressing around here. It’s like they expect us to mess up, and when we do they chew us out. There’s no positive nothing around here for anybody.”
Though Burnett apologized, and manager Jack McKeon was replaced, the skids were greased for his exit via free agency, not that the Marlins were going to pay market rate for his services. As one of the top starting pitchers in a weak field, he signed a five-year, $55 million deal with the Blue Jays, reuniting with pitching coach Brad Arnsberg, with whom he’d worked well in Florida. He pitched reasonably well in Toronto and benefited from the guidance of teammate Roy Halladay, who helped him evolve from a thrower to a pitcher. Asked about his approach by the future Hall of Famer, a flummoxed Burnett couldn’t come up with more than, “Umm… I just try to throw heaters by guys. And if I get ahead, I throw my curveball as hard as I can.”
“Roy just started laughing. Like for a while. And I’m just shaking my head, like, What? What! Dude, what’s so funny?” a sheepish Burnett recalled in 2018.
Elbow inflammation (2006) and a shoulder strain (’07) limited Burnett to 46 starts and 301.1 innings in his first two seasons as a Blue Jay, the latter amid some high pitch counts. Though his 4.07 ERA (104 ERA+) in 2008 was the highest mark of his Toronto tenure, he went 18–10 while leading the AL with 231 strikeouts (and 9.4 per nine) in a career-high 221.1 innings, then exercised an opt-out clause and hit free agency again.
The Yankees, smarting from missing the playoffs for the first time since the 1994–95 strike, signed the going-on-32-year-old Burnett to a five-year, $82.5 million deal on December 12, kicking off a spending spree that would also include even more lucrative deals for CC Sabathia and Mark Teixeira. They won 103 games and the AL East in 2009 while Burnett pitched to a 4.04 ERA, struck out 195, and livened up a staid clubhouse with at least 10 celebratory pies-in-the-face of teammates who collected walk-off hits. In the postseason, he made three strong starts and two lousy ones, most notably sparkling in a seven-inning, nine-strikeout, one-run effort against the Phillies — and opposite Pedro Martinez — in Game 2 of the World Series, but getting roughed up for six runs in two-plus innings when starting Game 5 on three days of rest. Still, he did a lot more for his World Series ring than he’d done in 2003.
After cruising through the first two months of 2010, Burnett began spiraling downwards during an 0–5, 11.35 ERA June, his inability to self-correct on the mound apparent to teammates, opponents, media, and fans; the boos rained down. Even after turning things around, he cut both of his hands hitting a clubhouse door in anger after a July start, prompting Eiland’s unflattering assessment. While he held opponents scoreless in six of his 33 starts, he allowed six or more runs 10 times and finished 10–15 with a 5.26 ERA. He was similarly bad in 2011 and clashed with manager Joe Girardi when he was pulled early from games. Even so, the Yankees gave him playoff turns in both years, and he notably beat the Tigers in a must-win Game 4 of the 2011 Division Series.
That turned out to be Burnett’s final start as a Yankee. On February 19, 2012 he was traded to the Pirates for two minor league non-prospects, with the Yankees sending along $20 million to cover his remaining salary. Before he could make his first official appearance for Pittsburgh, he fractured his right orbital during a spring training bunting drill and needed surgery, delaying his debut until April 21. Nonetheless, he quickly took to his new surroundings and was embraced as a clubhouse leader and mentor as well as a fierce competitor. A clip of him telling the Dodgers’ Hanley Ramirez to “Sit the fuck down” after a strikeout still circulates on the internet:
This day in #PGHistory: A.J. Burnett strikes out Hanley Ramirez, before telling him to “Sit The F*** Down” at PNC Park. (2012) pic.twitter.com/F1VoHqScO8
“He wanted to impact an organization,” manager Clint Hurdletold the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in 2016. “He was going to be our ace. I don’t know if he had been ‘the guy’ before, but he was going to be our guy.”
With his average fastball velocity having dipped from 95.0 mph in 2008 to 93.4 in ’11, Burnett became more reliant upon his two-seam fastball, which helped him keep the ball in the park. His ground-ball rate jumped from 49.2% to 56.9%, his home-run rate dropped from 1.47 per nine to 0.8, and he turned in a 3.51 ERA while helping the Pirates to 79 wins. He was similarly strong in 2013: Despite missing four weeks due to a calf strain, he struck out 209 hitters in 191 innings for an NL-high 9.8 K/9. More importantly, he helped the Pirates clinch their first postseason berth since 1992. Alas, his lone postseason start was a disaster; after two scoreless innings in the Division Series opener against the Cardinals, he allowed seven straight batters to reach base in the third, all of whom scored before he could retire a hitter. He didn’t get another turn, bypassed in favor of Game 2 starter Gerrit Cole as the series went five games.
Having completed his five-year deal — during which he made at least 30 starts annually, something he had done just twice prior — the going-on-37-year-old Burnett was mulling retirement. The Pirates didn’t issue him a $14.1 million qualifying offer, and by the time he decided to return in January, the team somehow wasn’t interested despite making no significant additions to its roster. Burnett instead signed a one-year, $16 million deal with the Phillies, but things went poorly for both him and the 89-loss team. While he made an NL-high 34 starts and pitched 213.1 innings, his highest total since 2008, he was lit for a 4.59 ERA and took a league-leading 18 losses. Pitching the entire season with a hernia that required offseason surgery couldn’t have helped.
Not wanting to end on such a sour note, Burnett returned to the Pirates via a one-year, $8.5 million deal ($4.25 million less than the Phillies offered). He was stellar in the season’s first half, posting a 2.11 ERA while allowing two or fewer runs in 15 of 18 starts. For the first time in his career, he made an All-Star team, though manager Bruce Bochy somehow couldn’t shoehorn him into the game. After struggling in his first three starts of the second half, he missed six weeks due to elbow inflammation. He returned and helped the Pirates secure their third straight Wild Card berth, collecting his 2,500th strikeout (the Cubs’ Jorge Soler) on September 27, and his 2,507th (the Reds’ Todd Frazier) on October 3, tying Christy Mathewson for 31st on the all-time list; he surpassed Mathewson an inning later by striking out Tucker Barnhart.
That turned out to be Burnett’s final outing, as he didn’t appear in the Wild Card Game, where the team was eliminated at the hands of the Cubs. Though he believed he could still pitch — and the numbers clearly say so, with 3,000 strikeouts an outside possibility — his desire to spend time with his wife and children won out. In his retirement, his Pirates teammates lauded him for his effect on his teammates. Said pitcher Jeff Locke, “There’s just nothing that any one of us in this clubhouse are going through, or are going to go through, that he really hasn’t been through.”
Of the thousands of pitchers who have reached the majors, fewer than a hundred mastered the knuckleball — that maddeningly erratic, spin-free butterfly — well enough to rely upon it as their primary pitch. None of them succeeded to the extent that Phil Niekro did. “Knucksie” learned the pitch from his father, a coal miner and semiprofessional hurler, at the age of eight, and while he didn’t establish himself as a big league starter for another 20 years, he carved out a 24-year-career in the majors, winning 318 games, striking out 3,342 batters, starting more games than all but four pitchers, and earning a spot in the Hall of Fame.
Alas, in the final days of 2020, Niekro joined an all-too-inclusive subset of Hall of Famers, passing away on Saturday at the age of 81 after a long bout with cancer. He is the seventh Hall of Fame member to die this year, after Al Kaline, Tom Seaver, Lou Brock, Bob Gibson, Whitey Ford, and Joe Morgan. That’s a record, either surpassing the total from 1972 or tying it, depending upon whether one counts the posthumous induction of Roberto Clemente via a special election in 1973.
Niekro spent the first 20 years of his major league career (1964-83) with the Milwaukee and Atlanta Braves before moving on to the Yankees (1984-85), Indians (’86-87) and Blue Jays (’87). He was nearly six months past his 48th birthday when he returned to make one final start for Atlanta on September 27, 1987. A five-time All-Star and five-time Gold Glove winner, he never won a Cy Young award, but he started more games (716) than all but Young, Nolan Ryan, Don Sutton, and Greg Maddux, taking more turns than any starter who never pitched in a World Series. He’s one of 10 pitchers to attain the dual milestones of 300 wins and 3,000 strikeouts — six of them cohorts from “That Seventies Group“— and ranks 16th overall on the all-time list for the former and 11th for the latter. He’s also 11th in the Baseball-Reference version of WAR, fifth in losses (274), fourth in innings (5,404), hits allowed (5,044), and home runs allowed (483), third in walks (1,809) and second in earned runs allowed (2,012) behind only Young. With his death, three of the top 15 pitchers in JAWS have died this year, with Niekro one spot below Gibson (14th) and seven below Seaver (eighth). He and his brother, Joe Niekro, who was born in 1944 and spent 22 years in the majors (’67-88) with eight teams, combined for more wins (539) than any other brotherly combination.
As you’d guess from those numbers, Niekro’s knuckler baffled hitters, making even All-Stars look foolish.
“Trying to hit against Phil Niekro is like trying to eat Jell-O with chopsticks,” outfielder Bobby Murcer once said. “Sometimes you get a piece, but most of the time you get hungry.”
“It actually giggles at you as it goes by,” outfielder Rick MondaytoldSports Illustrated in 1983.
“I work for three weeks to get my swing down pat and Phil messes it up in one night,” said Pete Rose. “Trying to hit that thing is a miserable way to make a living.” Read the rest of this entry »
