Part 2: James McDonald - Click Here
Part 3: Ross Ohlendorf - Click Here
Part 4: Paul Maholm - Click Here
Part 5: Kevin Correia - Click Here
Part 6: Charlie Morton - Click Here
Part 7: Wrap-up - Click Here
The Pirates lost 105 games last year, and a lot of that falls on the pitching. Last year's Pittsburgh Pirates team put up a 5.00 ERA altogether. The starters put up a 5.28 ERA, which ranks at the bottom of the league. Here's how it looked when we look at all 162 starts the Pirates got last year:
Jeff Karstens, Brian Burres, Daniel McCutchen, Brad Lincoln, and Dana Eveland all made appearances for the Pirates out of the bullpen; those innings were not counted in the above data, only innings that came from a start were counted.
One thing we can see from this data is that the Pirates starters averaged about 5.2 innings per start. Now that would have to be slightly adjusted for all those road losses where the Pirates pitching staff only pitched 8 innings, but the point remains - the Pirates pitchers didn't go nearly deep enough into games last year.
Like pitching, luck is a huge part of baseball. When you just look at ERA, you can also be mislead as to how good the pitchers actually were. The Pirates had one of the worst defensive infields in the league in 2010, which undoubtably hurt the pitchers. Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) is a sabermetric statistic that leaves defense and park factors out of the equation. This lets us take more of a look at how exactly each pitcher performed, by himself. Here's the numbers:
As you can see, the Pirates pitchers were not helped by the defense much. Six of the nine pitchers listed (ignoring Eveland and Jakubauskas) had FIPs higher than their ERAs. The Pirates upgraded their defense at first base this offseason with the addition of Lyle Overbay, but they will still have Neil Walker, Ronny Cedeno, and Pedro Alvarez rounding out the rest of the infield, which will continue to be a well below average unit. Expect the Pirates pitchers to suffer from that and again post higher FIPs than ERAs next year.
Another big element of pitching is strikeouts. Once a ball is put into play, there is nothing the pitcher can do to control the outcome (unless it is hit at him). The biggest way a pitcher can control the outcome is to strike the batter out. If the ball is never put in play, the defense is not a factor. Strikeouts were no exception for this pitching staff, as they again ranked near the bottom of the league in the category. Strikeouts per 9 innings pitched is, in my opinion, the best way to judge a pitcher's strikeout ability. Let's take a look at how the pitchers faired in K/9:
The league leader in K/9 in 2010 was Tim Lincecum of the San Francisco Giants, with a ratio of 9.9. The National League average was 7.4. The Pirates had 1 pitcher over the league average, and that was James McDonald who made only 11 starts for us.
The Pirates signed Kevin Correia and Scott Olsen this offseason. Correia will be in the rotation at the beginning of the season and should be a pretty substantial upgrade from Zach Duke, whom the Pirates nontendered. It is also apparent that the Pirates are still trying to sign another starter. Rumored names have included Jeff Francis and Brandon Webb. We'll get more on those guys later on in this series.
That's it for part 1, but be sure to check back for part 2 in the next couple days, where we'll look at the expected improvement, or lack thereof, in the returning Pirates starters.