Jeff Locke and the Pirates Way

Before you understand Jeff Locke, you should know that you probably won’t understand Jeff Locke. This will be a post without a real conclusion, but that doesn’t mean it can’t still be interesting!

A couple things we know to be true about Locke: Over the last two seasons, he’s made 51 starts, and has logged 292 innings. In that time, he’s posted a very respectable ERA of 3.69, which puts him in the same company as guys like Jeff Samardzija and Dallas Keuchel. Over that same time period, however, he’s also posted a less-respectable FIP of 4.18, which puts him in the same company as guys like Travis Wood and Edinson Volquez. Put another way: Locke has outperformed his peripherals like few others in baseball.

Now, some things we know to be true about the Pirates: They have, arguably, baseball’s most distinct organizational pitching philosophies, which include both pitching inside and pitching low at extreme rates. As a team, they’ve outperformed their peripherals like few others in baseball, and that’s likely at least partially a result of their organizational pitching philosophies. The last thing we know is that they recently chose Locke over Vance Worley for the final spot in the rotation, which came as a bit of a surprise considering Worley’s dominant comeback last season.

Worley still made the rotation, on account of Charlie Morton’s injury, but that’s beside the point. The Pirates chose Locke over Worley, and, to an extent, that’s telling. For these facts alone, we have reason to be interested in Locke. It’s not often one finds oneself saying that, so the time is now. Let’s investigate Jeff Locke.

I’ll begin by re-publishing a table created by Jeff Sullivan nearly a year ago to the day. Jeff was exploring who had been pitching where in the year 2013, and the table speaks to both Locke and the entire Pirates team:

There’s Locke in first with a sizable lead on the Pirate in second, then another big gap before the Pirate in third who has another gap that separates him from the rest of the non-Pirates. Also, there’s a Pirate there in 10th place.

The Pirates pitch inside a lot, and, when it comes to lefties, Locke is no stranger! That much we could have guessed. But where it gets interesting, for Locke, is when the hitter is standing on the other side of the plate. Again, I’m going to go ahead and pull from Sullivan here:

A lot of guys who don’t throw in to righties do throw in to lefties. A lot of guys who do throw in to righties don’t throw in to lefties. That’s not a surprise — guys have different pitches, and different pitches belong in different areas against different hitters.

This much is true, for most pitchers. This much was true, for Jeff Locke, until last year. What you’re about to see is a heatmap, simply comparing Locke’s pitching tendencies, from each of the last two seasons, against right-handed batters:

What you’re seeing is the biggest increase of inside pitches thrown to right-handed batters, by any left-handed starting pitcher, from 2013-14. What you’re seeing is the highest rate of inside pitches to righties, by a lefty, in all of baseball, save for Clayton Kershaw. A change this drastic isn’t something that happens on accident. No one changed the way they attack righties more than Jeff Locke last season. Locke used to be right in the middle of the pack when it came to pitching inside against righties. Then, suddenly, he had the second-highest rate of any lefty starter in the game.

Locke had always thrown inside to lefties. But, as Jeff alluded to, pitchers typically like to live on just one side of the plate, and so a guy who throws inside to lefties is usually a guy who, by default, throws outside to righties. That accurately described Locke in 2013. Last year, though, it seems like Locke entirely bought into the Pirates internal philosophies and began pitching every batter inside, no matter the handedness.

Which, on the surface, could help explain why the Pirates have shown more faith in Locke than many people might have been willing to show. On one hand, the fact that Locke has fully bought into the Pirates philosophy could give them hope that, with a couple more minor adjustments, the results could soon follow and Locke could become the ideal Pirates pitcher the organization has so successfully produced in recent years. On the other hand, Locke’s adjustments — while in line with the team’s philosophies — have been met with less than inspiring results.

This is the part where everything about Jeff Locke starts to make no sense. Locke ran some crazy reverse-platoon splits in 2013. That year — while pitching inside to left-handed batters more than any pitcher in baseball and pitching normally against righties — he got crushed by the lefties, allowing a .341 wOBA and 4.33 FIP. Meanwhile, he fared far better against righties, allowing a .297 wOBA, and 3.95 FIP.

Then, in 2014, he took his extreme-inside tendencies — which failed him against lefties the year prior — and applied them to righties, too. The results? That .297 wOBA allowed ballooned to .342. That 3.95 FIP jumped up to 4.42. And he still didn’t fare well particularly well against lefties, due largely to his apparent inability to generate strikeouts against same-handed hitters, for whatever reason.

So, in Locke, you’ve got a pitcher who’s throwing exactly the way his team wants him to. Against lefties, he’s always pitched the way the organization has taught — inside — but it hasn’t worked too well. Against righties, he made drastic changes in 2014, but they didn’t seem to work particularly well, either. In theory, Jeff Locke is the ideal Pirates pitcher, pitching inside, low, and outperforming his peripherals, and so it’s easy to see why they have faith in him. And maybe there’s something to be said for the way Locke pitches, and perhaps he has an ability to limit hard contact. He’s ran an identical .278 BABIP each of the last two seasons, after all, and he’s still the same guy with that respectable 3.69 ERA.

From the Pirates perspective, it’s hard to hate the results, but it’s hard to love them, either. And from the Pirates perspective, it’s hard not to like seeing Locke start pitching the way the organization prefers, but it also seems like those adjustments have been detrimental, if anything, so far. Maybe he just doesn’t have the stuff to go inside and get away with it. Or maybe he’s just another adjustment or two away from being the guy the Pirates want all their pitchers to be.