STATE COLLEGE, Pa. -- How much stock do you put into small sample size?
The Pirates are a mere eight games into the 2019 season. Without question, this is not enough data for us to accurately project the next 154 games.
So what do we do here, exactly? Do we wait for an adequate number of data points to make any definitive declarations regarding the club's prowess? Shall we add considerable qualifiers to every bit of analysis we put forth? How do we properly discuss the PBC when less than five percent -- 4.9% to be exact -- of its games have been played?
That question has vexed analysts much better than I for years on end. It certainly does not help my cause that the Pirates have played against just two teams thus far. Still, we can point to a trend in the early-going that could have a lasting impact on the club's 2019 fortune.
Pittsburgh hitters, perhaps more than any other team, need to see fastballs in order to sustain success.
SMOKE 'EM IF YOU GET 'EM
Through Saturday's contest against the Reds, the Pirates have seen the third fewest raw amount of fastballs with 620. By percentage, the club fares a bit better. 56.1 percent of all pitches seen have been fastballs, good for eighth fewest in the majors.
Perhaps of more interesting note is that Pittsburgh's bats have seen the seventh most pitches by percentage -- 29.8 percent -- when ahead in the count. It's a common axiom that "fastball counts" come most often when pitchers need to get back into an at-bat, but I'll quantify it anyway: pitchers have thrown 65.6 percent fastballs when behind through the season's first week and change. That's actually a drop from the 2018 rate of 68.5 percent -- more on that in this week's second item below.
However, much like everything else with these Pittsburgh Pirates, things are not that simple and tidy. In terms of raw fastballs, the club's hitters have seen only the 22nd-highest amount of total fastballs when behind in the count.
Here's the good news: those same hitters currently rank fifth in all of baseball as a team in the percentage of pitches seen while behind in a count that end up being called/taken for balls. That's a good thing, because the gulf between between the club's quality of contact (xwOBA) on fastballs and non-fastballs is worth taking note of:
Though there are a few surprises -- who would have guessed that Starling Marte and Josh Bell would have reverse "splits" here -- the picture painted before us is of a club that must feast on the fastballs it sees.
It's an easy enough proposition. Get to a fastball count. See fastball. Club fastball.
It worked for Colin Moran:
Though this pitch was middle-middle enough that any legitimate major league hitter could have done something with it, Mr. Home Opener did a nice job of making St. Louis' Mike Mayers weep for this pitch right before the solo shot:
They won't all come in the form of gifts like this one, but if the Pirates can keep doing what they seemingly do well, they should get a few more fastballs to hit.
If the club can make pitchers pay more often, the run production might just come close to sharing the load with the pitching staff.
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OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN
I spent considerable space here last week talking about Chris Archer's four-seam fastball, specifically the need for him to throw it less. He did just that in his first start of the season, favoring the slider at 37.4 percent against four-seam usage of 30.3 percent.
The call for Archer to offer less heat led me to revisit recent thinking across MLB that leans towards pitchers throwing fastballs less often. The rationale, as most suggest, centers around breaking balls and a corresponding rising rate of swing and miss.
But there is one expert who still thinks fastballs have a place in today's game.
I'm talking of course about Rob Friedman, aka Twitter's Pitching Ninja. A lawyer by trade, Friedman has been capturing the filthiest pitches in baseball into GIF-form for several years now. Such has his esteem grown that MLB itself has sanctioned his work as an official partner. If there's a pitch that's worth a replay, or a particular sequence of note, Rob has seen it.
I recently asked Rob about the fastball's place in the game now as the "data-heavy" years wear on.
"The fastball will always be around!" Rob exclaimed. "Though hitters at all levels are taught to hunt fastballs, the pitch still dictates the pace of decision making for hitters. Since hitters hunt fastballs, it's important that a pitcher disguise his other pitches through tunneling, deception, etc., to have success."
Indeed, 2018 saw a fastball -- defined here as four-seam, sink, two-seam and cut versions -- usage of 60 percent, down from 62.4 percent as recently as 2015. The utility of fastballs offered can vary wildly from team-to-team. The Houston Astros, for one, have the horses to challenge hitters with a fastball in situations where a swing-and-miss is paramount.
Historically, the Pirates have taken a different route, using fastballs to -- say it with me -- establish command before busting out the breaking stuff. The "outs in three pitches or less" era may thankfully be over, but old habits die hard.
Friedman thinks the days of pitchers having to work early to establish that command are waning.
"I think the idea is definitely fading away." He told me. "More pitchers are going with their best pitches early vs trying to establish their fastballs. If your best pitch is a slider, why try to hold it back until the later innings....you don't even know that you'll be around then."
Pirates fans, of course, need not be reminded that the epitome of this philosophy was realized last season when the club's previous ace was dealt to those same Astros.
If we take a look at the club's current ace in Jameson Taillon -- specifically his early-count usage over his first three campaigns -- we can see this philosophy starting to take hold within 115 Federal Street. Here's a look at his most prominent offerings at key counts:
Nowhere is this change more startling than at first pitch. Taillon went from using a sinker more than half the time here in his first go-round in the majors to allowing his four-seamer to do the bulk of the work to start off an at-bat. That’s a hell of a swing across just 75 starts. Even if he still used a sinker to get back into at-bats early at a 1-0 count, the delta is much tighter now, with the four-seam right behind at 26.1 percent.
Taillon’s 42.7 percent usage of four-seamers at first pitch was much higher than the league rate of 22.2 percent among all starting pitchers in 2018. The differences in approach was a bit less pronounced at 0-1, with MLB starters throwing the straight heat at an 18.4 percent clip. Taillon still bested that mark by ten-plus percentage points, but the other weapons he can throw out guarded against hitters picking up on any tendencies.
In 2019, things have changed. Through his first two starts, Taillon has shown a bit of a different philosophy:
To start hitters off, Taillon has kept a much tighter range of offerings. The real tale comes at 0-1 and 1-0. Here we can see that Tiallon is throwing his burgeoning best pitch at key times - to get back into an at-bat, or keep them pinned down. Sample size (there's that phrase again) does play a part here, as Taillon has only thrown 11 pitches in total at 1-0, so this will look considerably different in just a few further outings.
So can we expect the fastball to continue its slow death spiral? Not so fast, says Friedman:
"The Fastball isn't going away. If it did, that would mean that hitters would stop looking for it, which would make it a more successful pitch...and then it would be back."
To hear more from Rob on specific Pirates-related pitching topics, please check out our recent chat on my podcast, Also, please follow along with Rob's other twitter accounts -- @flatgroundapp and @flatgroundbats -- which are going to great lengths to help grow the game.
