Correia has 5 quality starts, which is tied for the third most in all of baseball. Justin Verlander and Jered Weaver are leading the way with 7, and there is a handful of guys at 6 including Dan Haren, Josh Johnson, and Justin Masterson, along with some others. Correia also has the 14th best ERA in the National League amongst starters, and his 5 road wins are the most of anybody in either league.
Correia's success has been largely attributed to how he's been mixing up his pitches. He throws 4 pretty solid pitches for strikes. Let's take a look at them.
,br> His primary pitch in 2011 has been the 4-seam fastball. He throws is 26.8% of the time and the average velocity on it is 89.5, which is pretty unimpressive for a guy that's hung with the best pitchers in the league through the first month. The fastball hasn't been a strikeout pitch by any means, he's getting whiffs on it only 1.7% of the time. He is locating it well however, which is the absolute most important thing for a guy like Correia. He has been throwing the fastball for a strike 69.7% of the time, which is well above the league average. The fastball has been his get ahead pitch and he's had success with it just by locating it well.
Correia's second pitch is the slider, which he's thrown 22.9% of the time. He has pretty good velocity on it at 86.6 miles per hour on average, which is about 3 miles faster than the league average slider. The location on the pitch has been good, but not great. He throws the slider for a strike 61.2% of the time. He doesn't get a lot of swings and misses on it, with a 6.6% whiff rate. While it hasn't been anything more than an average pitch, he has used it at the right times and it has certainly helped Correia have the success he's had early on.
The 2-seam fastball is also part of Correia's repertoire. He throws the pitch 16.9% of the time and has thrown it 90.2 miler per hour on average. It has a good amount of horizontal break on it, which has helped the pitch earn a better whiff rate than the league average 2-seamer. He's thrown it for a strike 63.4% of the time, another very good number. This has been a good compliment to his 4-seamer and has kept hitters off balance even in favorable counts.
The fourth pitch Correia has thrown this year is the curveball, which he's thrown 14.8% of the time. He gets the most swings and misses on the hook, with a 13.3% whiff rate, which is above the league average. A good amount of his strikeouts have come on the curve, but Correia has done a really good job locating it in order to get groundballs. You can see from the following location graph that he's thrown the curve down in the zone and has stayed out of trouble because of it.
Correia also has a changeup that he throws just about as much as he throws the curveball. The average velocity on it is 86.4 miles per hour, which is only 3 miles slower than his fastball. It is far from a dominating pitch, and probably one of Correia's least effective pitches. He gets batters to whiff on it only 4.4% of the time, when the league average is 12%. It rarely fools anybody, and batters can still make contact on it even when they are expecting a fastball, which helps explain why it's Correia's least thrown pitch.
The story with Correia so far has been location and pitch selection. He's mixed in 5 different pitches and located them all pretty well. It really doesn't matter what kind of stuff you have, if you can locate 5 different pitches you're going to have success.
The question now becomes if Correia can sustain this success.
The Pirates 2011 Opening Day starter has averaged 6.5 K/9 in his career, this year he has only 4.1 K/9. He has never anywhere near a rate of 4 K/9 in his career, so it would seem like eventually Correia will start striking some more batters out, which will only help his numbers. On the flipside of that, Correia's BB/9 is also substantially smaller than his career average. He's walking only 2.1 batters per nine this year and has a career average of 3.5 in that category. It's not too far off, and he did post a 2.9 rate in 2009, but chances are he won't be this efficient all year long. Also, Correia's ground ball percentage is a lot higher than it has been in the past. He's getting groundballs 51% of the time this year with a career average of 42.8%. He has always been more of a flyball pitcher, which hasn't hurt him as much pitching in Petco Park in his time with the Padres, but he has definitely madea conscious effort to keep more balls on the ground this year, and he's had an incredible amount of success at it. If he can keep the ball on the ground at the rate he has been, there's no reason that he can't be this good for the long haul.
If you ask me, I don't think Correia is going to finish the year with a sub-3.00 ERA, but I do think he'll be a very good pitcher. It really all depends on if his location stays as good as it has been. I don't really think that's possible, but I don't see it getting much worse, which should allow him to continue to be one of the better pitchers in the National League.
The Pirates haven't had a pitcher win 15 games since Todd Ritchie in 1999. Kevin Correia looks like he wants to change that, winning 5 of his first 8 starts in 2011.