Gorzelanny Almost Pulls a Burnett

In the comments thread on my post about obscure pitching lines, colleague Dave Cameron pointed out AJ Burnett’s quite memorable no-hitter as evidence of a pitching line very unlikely to ever repeat itself. Burnett gave up no hits in nine innings, but walked nine batters. While his bid ultimately proved unsuccessful, Tom Gorzelanny threw his hat in the ring, name in the sand, or any other phrase suggestive of the Pirates pitcher having a legitimate shot at Burnett-dom last night. Through four innings his line looked like this: 4 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 4 BB, 4 K. The Pirates also led 1-0.

He started the fifth inning by inducing a groundout off the bat of Aaron Miles. With one out he walked opposing pitcher Joel Pineiro to give him 5 BB. He followed that up with a walk to Brendan Ryan (6) and a walk to leadoff man Skip Schumaker (7). At this juncture he had gone: 4.1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 7 BB, 4 K. Extrapolated over the course of a nine-inning game this would shatter the Burnett line. Things went downhill from there. After an inexperienced Brian Barton swung at the first pitch–I can only imagine what must have been going through LaRussa’s head–he roped a 2-run single to rightfield. Albert Pujols then followed with an RBI single of his own before Gorzelanny “settled down,” retiring Ryan Ludwick and Troy Glaus to end the inning. His end line: 5 IP, 2 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 7 BB, 4 K. Here is a graph of the game:

Though his line began as something along the lines of comical, in approaching Burnett, it ended up just looking bad. Gorzelanny was not squeezed, either, as most of his pitches that missed were nowhere near the realm of causing a batter to chase. 2008 has been very rough on Gorzelanny in the early going as, even before last night’s accuracy debacle, he had given up 15 BB with just 9 K; now he has 22 BB and just 13 K.

According to the gameday and Pitch F/X data, Gorzelanny’s pitch breakdown and accuracy looked like this last night:

• Fastball: 68 total, 29 K, 29 B, 10 BIP
• Changeup: 19 total, 5 K, 12 B, 2 BIP
• Curveball: 6 total, 3 K, 3 B, 0 BIP
• Slider: 1 total, 0 K, 1 B, 0 BIP

He has gone from throwing 11% sliders in 2007 to 5.8% this year, while his curveball has jumped from 11% to 14%. Last night, he could not locate anything and his changeup, a potential out pitch, definitely suffered from being out of the zone. He has increased his groundballs this year from 42% to 50% which has apparently resulted in some luck issues, represented by his FIP being over two full points lower than his ERA.

Looking at release points from last night, Gorzelanny’s fastball was pretty inconsistent, and his changeup, though consistent, was consistently different than the fastball. He’s had to answer questions regarding injuries all month and last night did nothing to ease the minds of those worried. A few more starts will provide us more of a sample size with which to examine but, based on accuracy and release points, it seems his mechanics were out of whack last night.