Archive for Pirates

Earlier today I wrote about Tom Gorzelanny’s interesting and less-than-accurate game last night, when at one point he had a line of 4.1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 7 BB, 4 K. What I did not realize is that Blue Jays righty Dustin McGowan had a very similar game against the Rays. While discussing some of our favorite young pitchers, Fangraphs reader and Tampa Bay Rays blogger Tommy Rancel said, “…if you thought the Gorzelanny game was weird, you should have seen McGowan against the Rays. He struck the first two batters out on six pitches and ended up walking 7 in just four innings.”

Facing 22 batters in 4+ innings, McGowan gave up 4 hits and 4 runs, striking out 6 and walking 7; this topsy-turvy performance in part led to quite the streaky game graph:

He threw 88 pitches with a perfect split of 44 strikes and 44 balls. As Tommy mentioned, his first inning was strong: He struck out Akinori Iwamura and Carl Crawford on six pitches and induced a groundout from BJ Upton with another three pitches, ending the frame with eight strikes out of nine pitches. In the second inning, McGowan’s accuracy took a hit, throwing just nine strikes out of 17 pitches. Despite this, he still managed to strike out Carlos Pena, Evan Longoria, and newcomer Gabe Gross; a walk to Eric Hinske was his only blemish.

The Blue Jays scored two runs off of Andy Sonnanstine in the top of the third, but McGowan could not shut the Rays down in the bottom half of the inning. After walking Dioner Navarro and surrendering a single to Jason Bartlett, Iwamura sacrificed the runners to second and third. Crawford knocked in Navarro on a groundout, to get one of the runs back, before Upton went down swinging. Again, McGowan’s accuracy was subpar, throwing just 11 strikes out of 20 pitches. Through three innings, he had a 2-1 lead and had compiled the following line: 3 IP, 1 H, 1 R, 2 BB, 6 K. Of his 46 pitches 28 were strikes.

He fell apart in the fourth inning but managed to limit the damage. With one out, Evan Longoria tripled and promptly scored on an Eric Hinske single. After Hinske unsuccessfully attempted a steal of second base, McGowan proceeded to walk Gross, Navarro, and Bartlett to load the bases. Luckily, Iwamura flew out to leftfield to end the threat. The inning saw him throw 32 pitches, just 11 of which were strikes. The game was tied 2-2, but McGowan’s line now stood at: 4 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 5 BB, 6 K.

The Blue Jays jumped back on top, 3-2, in the fifth but McGowan again went walk-crazy in the bottom of the inning. After Carl Crawford singled and stole second, he walked Upton and Pena to load the bases. John Gibbons had seen enough and brought in Brian Tallet to potentially record a “Houdini.” Things did not go well for Tallet as all three inherited runners scored; the Rays went onto win 5-3.

From 2000-2007, there have been 200 games in which a pitcher walked 7+ batters; this averages out to 25 games per season. With 30 teams and 162 games per team there are 4860 games in a year (give or take). On average, a miniscule .005 percent of the games this decade, or 0.83 games per team, have seen pitchers walk this many batters. Last night there were two games going on at the same time that accomplished this statistical rarity.

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.

In a mock fantasy draft a few weeks prior to the season I drafted Nate McLouth of the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 23rd round. Numerous competitors laughed at the selection and, honestly, it was made with little conviction from my end. I needed to fill my outfielder quota and his numbers from a year ago made him look better than, say, Dave Roberts. Judging by the reactions upon making my selection it is safe to say that next to nobody thought McLouth would be the answer to the question: Who is the only player in the major leagues to have a hit in all of his team’s games?

Some might answer Hanley Ramirez, a statistical wunderkind quickly developing into a super-duper-star. Or, perhaps, Chipper Jones, who currently boasts a .453 batting average. Maybe even Chase Utley, who has an impressive home run streak, let alone a hitting streak. But Nate McLouth? Really? A guy who admitted in an FSN interview prior to the season opener that he was told he had very little job security coming into spring training?

Coming into tonight’s game against the Marlins, McLouth is riding the waves of a 19-game hitting streak. His slash line currently rests at .375/.444/.639, resulting in an OPS of 1.082 and an OPS+ of 184. After creating 91 runs in 243 games (0.37/gm), over the last two seasons, he has already created 23 (1.21/gm). His streak is the longest to open a season since 2006, when Edgar Renteria opened with a 23-gamer. Renteria’s streak came to an end against a Marlins combination of Josh Johnson, Ricky Nolasco, and Randy Messenger.

As chance would have it, not only does McLouth face the pesky fish tonight, but he faces Ricky Nolasco! Ah, baseball.

How has McLouth, a guy with a pre-2008 slash line of .249/.319/.429, been so stellar? A quick look at a few graphs will help illustrate this answer:

McLouth has drastically cut down on his strikeouts, from 23.4% in 2007 to just 12.5% this year. His BABIP has gone from .274, .275, and .301 in prior seasons all the way up to .403 at this juncture. The final graph, detailing his groundball, flyball, and line drive rates, shows that McLouth has increased his frequency of putting the ball on the ground while decreasing his percentage of balls in the air.

It is not very likely that he, even with his speed, will maintain anything in the vicinity of a .403 BABIP all season but his performance thus far has been nothing short of remarkable.