The Struggling Erik Bedard

Erik Bedard started Opening Day for the Pirates this season and did a fantastic job, giving up just one run in seven innings but losing to Roy Halladay and the Phillies. After that start, he rolled through his next six starts and looked set to have a career year. In his first seven starts, he pitched 35 innings and gave up just 10 earned runs while striking out 37, walking 14, allowing one home run and posting a 2.57 ERA. Truly great numbers.

Then on May 9th, he pitched a scoreless inning and left the game with back spasms. The injury didn't seem to be too much of a big deal, and he missed just a couple of days before he was back out on the mound. Since then, the back has been fine, but his numbers have not.

Bedard has made seven starts since coming back from that minor injury, and hasn't been good in those starts. He has pitched 37 innings, allowed 23 earned runs on 36 hits, struck out 32 and walked 18. He has allowed four home runs and posted a 5.59 ERA. Hitters aren't hitting for a much better average against him since the injury (.258 compared to .250), but they are racking up the extras base hits.

There's a pretty good chance that the difference in the numbers have very little to do with the injury at all, but it's interesting that that seemed to be the turning point.

Looking at the pitch F/X for the two time spans, Bedard has been throwing a lot more two seam fastballs since the injury. In his first seven starts, he threw curveballs 27.8% of the time and two-seamers 27.3% of the time. In his last seven, those numbers have changed to 37.5% two-seamers and 26.9% curveballs. He's thrown his four seamer and changeup considerably less. His change went from 16.5% to 9.9%, which is interesting. Bedard was a four pitch pitcher before the injury, but since then he's been pretty much a three pitch guy (two-seam, curve, four-seam).

The whiff numbers show that he's getting around the same amount of swings and misses on the curve, but less on the two-seam and the four-seam. In fact, his whiff rate has decreased 6.3% on the four seamer since the injury.

It doesn't really make all that much sense that the four seamer has been getting a lot less whiffs, the velocity has been the same the whole time and he's throwing it at about the same rate, so there's probably not much to this besides just a factor of a small sample size.

Again, I'm not saying that the bad numbers are a result of the injury. I would guess that they're just kind of random and maybe a result of National League hitters having more tape on him (especially recent tape on him, since he just hasn't been pitched much in past years). Hitters tend to get better as we get deeper into summer, so that too could have something to do with it. Who knows, maybe Erik has started becoming more worried about staying healthy instead of just pitching.

I can't tell what's been happening with him. Don't bother asking him either, because he's gonna tell you less than I will. All I know is that the Pirates need Bedard to be more like the guy they had in the first seven starts and less like the guy they've seen in the last seven. His health is the most important thing, but he might as well be injured if he's going to post a 5.00+ ERA the rest of the way out.

Tonight's a big start for him, trying to help this team avoid a three game losing streak after playing some great baseball during the homestand. Keep a close eye on him.