The Buccos and Stuff
The Pirates and Dodgers played a matinee inside of a mostly barren, occasionally damp, but always beautiful PNC Park today.
Paul Maholm started for the Pirates. He’s a nice enough pitcher. His FIP last season was sub-4 for the first time in his career. He’s not an ace by any means and his game is all about groundballs. His fastball averages a little under 90 miles per hour. I was talking with Marc Normandin during the game and raised this question: Has any team been more stuff averse than the Pirates over the last few seasons? The only mainstay Pirates’ arm since Oliver Perez left that had good stuff is Ian Snell.
Curious and having plenty of time to do some SQL fiddling, I punched a query into the Baseball Databank and found that, since 2000, the Pirates have had three seasons where a pitcher topped 100 innings and also had a K/9 over 8. The top non-Perez and Snell entrees on the query were Kris Benson (in the year 2000) and Kip Wells. That’s just no good for Pirates fans who double as tools whores.
I wanted to test my claim a little more though, and began punching through other teams, using that arbitrary 8 K/9 number as the baseline and 2000-2008 (I don’t have the latest release of the Databank yet) as the timeframe. Here’s what I found:
Team Total
STL 1
SEA 1
TEX 1
ATL 2
COL 2
OAK 2
BAL 3
PIT 3
DET 4
LAA 4
TBA 4
TOR 4
CHA 5
WSN 5
CIN 6
MIL 6
CLE 7
HOU 7
MIN 7
PHI 7
NYN 8
NYA 9
SFG 9
SDP 10
FLA 11
LAD 11
ARI 12
BOS 13
CHN 18
Close, but not quite. Of course, you could argue that strikeouts per nine is not the best way to judge stuff, and you’d have a point. Still, it seems that a team like the Pirates under previous management would’ve surrounded flame-throwing starters like moths around … well, flamethrowers. Evidently not so.
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Its shocking the Cardinals only have one.
I would guess that it has something to do with Dave Duncan’s preferences. He likes guys who throw a ton of strikes into big parts of the zone and who can sink their fastballs. Guys who try to gas it up or snap off tons of breaking balls, doing neither with command, usually don’t last with the Cardinals.
I would argue that cutting this off at 8 k/9, while perfectly understandable, hurts the Cardinals too because they have Chris Carpenter. His stuff is as nasty as anyone in baseball’s, but he’s kind of a sinkerballer and as such doesn’t whiff as many batters as one may expect, though often dominating all the same.
Now, look at the Red Sox and especially the Cubs. They have large numbers of stuff guys, as defined by this cut point. That Sox bullpen could be pretty scary w/ Papelbon, Okajima, Bard, and Delcarmen (if he can regain his ’08 form), which falls in behind that potentially excellent rotation.
Slightly fluky… Morris, Kile and Carpenter have had six seasons between 7.4 and 8 k/9 during that period. Plus Ankiel struck out 10/9 in 2000. I guess “since 2000″ doesn’t include 2000 (Wainwright 2009 also did it).
The Pirates are collecting mostly hard-throwing low-minors pitchers, though, so that could turn around eventually (although they’ve also grabbed Tim Alderson and a couple others like that without great stuff or upside).
What exactly is “stuff”? Peripherals? Alleged ability to post a certain peripheral set? Things that can be represented visually by PitchFX? Does the term vaguely refer to a pitcher’s perceived ceiling in general? I sort of doubt that last one, because pitchers can “have excellent command and passable stuff” and still be worthwhile prospects. Is the idea that Performance = Stuff + Command?
I really hasn’t a clue.
“Stuff” refers to the pitcher’s arsenal. The pitches that they throw, and how well they throw them. I figure you would appropriately analyze “stuff” by looking at the individual pitch stats.
The Littlefield administration was renowned for going after low-ceiling, soft-tossing control guys (Maholm, Sean Burnett, Zach Duke, the immortal Virgil Vasquez, just to name the most notable ones). The Huntington administration, in sharp contrast, absolutely loves hard throwers with control problems (Tyler Yates, Evan Meek, Donald Veal, granted they are all relievers; Charlie Morton supposedly has major league stuff that he hasn’t harnassed yet; their minors guys are mostly “stuff” guys, too; Colton Cain, Zach Von Rosenberg, Victor Black, etc.) So ideally (for Pirates fans), the stuff-less Pirates pitchers will soon cease to have the stuffing knocked out of them (sorry, couldn’t resist).
Appropriate punnage for comments on an R.J. piece.
Charlie Morton has some nasty looking stuff. Decent speed, great movement on all his pitches.
This list very simply illustrates clubs that perennially contend for leading the majors in strike outs. Is it really “stuff” or just an operational philosophy? Which plays a larger role in the amount of punchouts a team produces at the big league level: the draft, development in the farm system, or coaching in the majors? Or is it a combination of all three with varying levels of importance depending on the organization. The Cubs have or have come close to leading the NL in strike outs for the better part of the decade. After the Mark Prior/Kerry Wood/Matt Clement triumvirate the only mainstay in the rotation has been Zambrano. He, while a workhorse with an above average K rate hasn’t had a monster season to contribute to such consistently high totals.
Without looking back too far, 2009 was the first year in several in which the Cubs haven’t lead the league in strike outs, as well as the first time since before 2006 that they’ve posted negative team UZR totals.
Sucks to be the Rockies during that run, no wonder they have so many Ks
contrast to the 1 stl pitcher is the 13 Bosox. With the DH it would seem easier for NL pitchers to maintain 8 K/9 than AL pitchers.
It’s kind of funny that you include Ian Snell as one of these guys with good stuff and exclude his seasons with 8+ K/9, but he’s only had one season in his career with a K/9 slightly over 8. Last year he was under 6, and he’s been in the 7s the rest of his career.