Pirates spring training stats mean...

Everyone says that spring training don't matter in baseball. What's funny about that is that most of the time that's said to make people feel better about a guy playing poorly in spring. If some guy is having a monster spring, you never see people being rational saying that the stats don't matter, they automatically plan for that guy to have a huge regular season as well. But when a guy is having a bad spring, they'll just sit there and shrug it off. That's how we are in a lot of facets of life - we're very selective in what we hear and what we choose to believe. Without getting too philosophical, let's talk about all this.

The reasoning behind the limited stock taken in spring training stats makes sense. First of all, everybody is getting back up to speed, it's the first time in a number of months that any of them see big league level pitching, and you can't just expect them to be back where they normally are. The same goes for the pitchers throwing to them, they aren't at the top of their game or even necessarily trying to get batters out as a main priority. In that sense, yeah, the stats aren't really going to tell you much. Also, it is a fairly small sample. Spring goes for about a month, and the main guys don't play every day either, so you basically three weeks of games worth of data which will never tell you very much no matter when you take them from. I'm sure if you went and did a huge study on the correlation of spring numbers against regular season numbers you wouldn't see much connection.

THAT SAID, what Andrew Lambo and Edinson Volquez are doing this spring is telling. If you're telling me that Lambo's approach is different because it's spring I'd say you're crazy. The guy is up there trying to do what he always does, he's trying to hit the ball hard, and he isn't doing it. Here's the stats for Mr. Lambo:

42 AB (most on the team), 4H (all singles), 4BB, 6K

Yeah looks good dude. If you want a silver lining, Lambo has stolen two bases in his six trips to the basepaths, but I'm guessing that doesn't make you feel any better. Lambo showed some power potential in the minors last year, didn't bring it with him to the majors when he was finally promoted, and has shown no signs of being able to handle pitching this spring. Once again, it's only spring, but for a guy with such a poor track record, it's very discouraging. The worst part is how much the Pirates are relying on Lambo this year. He's going to get a lot of at-bats in the bigs this year early on. They do have Gaby Sanchez who can spell him against lefties, but that's less than half the time in the National League.

And then there's Edinson Volquez. I will say this first, pitching is a lot different than hitting in spring. The hitters goal is always to hit the ball hard, a pitchers goal isn't always so set in stone. Volquez has been making adjustments to his delivery this offseason, which probably means that he's been more focused on figuring that out rather than getting batters out, so he very well could be a different pitcher once the games matter. That said, there's always some focus on getting guys out, and Volquez hasn't been real good at that this spring.

Volquez has 14 innings pitched and he's given up 15 earned runs in that time frame. I don't care if his new delivery was throwing underhand, those numbers are pretty alarming. He's given up 19 hits, 3 home runs, and walked seven guys in those 14 innings. He does have 12 strikeouts, which is pretty decent, but hitters are hitting .317 off of him when they do make contact, which isn't going to keep a big league job for very long. Unfortunately for the Pirates, they really don't have anyone challenging him until Jameson Taillon is ready to come up, which won't be til June at the absolute earliest, and probably not until much later. Brandon Cumpton's had a nice spring training with a 2.93 ERA but he's not a guy you look at as a real solution to the hole at the fifth spot.

Nobody is expecting much from Volquez, but you do have to give him the credit for some of the ability he has. Nobody would be super surprised if Volquez had a good year for the Pirates this year, but at this point nobody would surprised if he bombs out either. The thing you can rest easy in is that this problem is at the #5 spot and not at the #3 spot. You don't have to have a stellar fifth starter, not many teams do. You shouldn't be too concerned about Volquez, what you should be concerned about is guys like Francisco Liriano and Charlie Morton returning to how they pitched last year, and then Gerrit Cole and Wandy Rodriguez staying healthy.

With all this negative talk, the roster is in good shape. Nobody said you can't have a competitive season without having all stars at every position. But don't be surprised if Lambo and Volquez aren't in Pirate uniforms come summer time.