Searage, Taillon, and the Pirates Upstairs

Jameson Taillon will be throwing a lot of two-seamers when he takes the mound tonight for the Pirates at Fenway Park. It’s become his main course of attack. According to the 25-year-old right-hander, 70% of his fastballs are now twos, and that’s the pitch he prefers to go with “in any action count.”

It fits his team’s recent philosophy. Pittsburgh pitchers have been baseball’s best ground-ball hunters, putting up MLB’s highest ground-ball rate over the past six seasons. With a modus operandi of down, down, down, they’ve lived at the bottom of the strike zone with almost religious fervor.

Expect that to change somewhat in 2017 — even for two-seam purveyors like Taillon. The Bucs aren’t suddenly all about up, up, up, but kneecaps and ankles are no longer exclusive territory. Per pitching coach Ray Searage, increased elevation is in the offing.

“We started doing it a little bit last year, and this year we’ll be incorporating it a lot, more,” Searage said on Monday. “We’re going to pitch to our strengths, but we also have options. We can go to the top of the zone, or even above it. With some of the vertical swings we’re seeing now, it only makes sense to do that.”

The tweaked philosophy, determined over the offseason, was predictably data driven. (This is the Pirates, after all.) Once spring training got under way, the implementation was immediate. Beginning with their initial bullpen sessions, Pittsburgh pitchers were working purposefully on what might best-described as as “altitude adjustment.”

Despite having morphed from four-seam heavy to sinker heavy since returning from Tommy John surgery, Taillon is falling in line with the new approach. In his final spring-training start — a game played north of the border — he visited the upstairs often.

“Last year I didn’t really do it much, but this year we’re working it into my bullpens,” explained Taillon. “We started in spring training, and against the Blue Jays, in Montreal, every time I got 0-2 on a lefty, it seemed like we were going up.

“It’s interesting. The game is constantly changing, evolving. Downhill used to be what everyone was preaching, and what everyone was doing. Our organization is still big on that, and I’m a ground-ball guy, but at the same time, you have to mix up looks. I’m learning how to climb the zone effectively.”

Effectively is the operative word. Missing upstairs and locating upstairs are two different things, and match-ups are always in play. Not all hitters have the same strengths and weaknesses, and it’s incumbent that a hurler doesn’t stray too far from his comfort zone. Taillon is a good example, as he sees his sinker as being superior to his four-seam.

Which doesn’t mean his pitching coach won’t want to see him to work above the belt against certain Boston batters in tonight’s game.

“Part of it is sequencing to change the hitter’s eye level, but it also has be individualized,” said Searage. “There are guys who are low-ball hitters, and we’ll stay at the top of the zone, or just over the zone, with them. In our meetings, we always include whether a guy is a candidate for an elevated fastball. It’s incorporated into our pitching philosophy now as a place we’ll go.”