Stumpf's 10 Thoughts: Is it time to try the opener again? taken at PNC Park (Pirates)

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Trevor Cahill.

Let’s take a look at two pitchers in the Pirates rotation.

As a starter over the last two years, one has a 12.27 ERA. Someone who puts his team behind the eight ball early. The other, over the last two years, has a 3.78 ERA. Someone who can keep his team in the game.

Time for the reveal: They’re both Trevor Cahill. The first pitcher is Cahill in the first. The second is him in every other inning.

The first inning has been a nightmare for the Pirates this year. In 30 games played, no team has allowed more first inning base runners (60) or runs (34) than the Pirates have. On average this year, two players reach base, and one of them has scored. For a team that has offensive problems, the last thing they need is to be down a run after the first.

After the first, they’ve been pretty good. Their starting pitchers have a 3.65 ERA after the first inning, the 10th best mark in baseball. Considering Mitch Keller’s very inconsistent start and that they’re down two of their better starters from last year, Chad Kuhl and Steven Brault, that’s impressive.

Meanwhile, the Pirates are boasting one of the best bullpens in the game. Richard Rodríguez, Kyle Crick, Duane Underwood Jr., David Bednar. If the Pirates found themselves in a do-or-die game and just threw their relievers, they would have a shot of winning. The bullpen has produced a 3.56 ERA (9th best in baseball), 3.60 FIP (5th best) and a 1.76 win probability added (5th best). That last stat is very impressive for a sub-.500 team. It’s hard to greatly improve win probability when you’re down a couple runs.

So with a strong bullpen and a rotation that’s having a hard time getting out of the first, is it time for the Pirates to try the opener again?

They last tried in 2019, giving Montana DuRapau a pair of starts and Michael Feliz another. Clint Hurdle didn't even tell Feliz he would start until he arrived at the ballpark that day. It didn’t work out, but that was probably due more to who the Pirates pitched rather than the idea. Last season, Derek Shelton experimented with piggyback starts, having Kuhl and Brault each pitch three or four innings, but injuries to the rotation forced him to break up the duo rather than have them share one spot.

Cahill is an obvious candidate for an opener. Kuhl and Keller have each allowed 10 runs in the first inning, too. If the Pirates want Keller to work through his first inning problem, that’s fine. He’s part of the team’s long-term plans. Kuhl and Cahill, though? They probably won’t be Pirates come 2022.

Cahill even acknowledges he’s a bit of a slow starter.

“I know what I'm doing out there, just trying to figure out what's working that day and get outs,” Cahill said after his first Pirates win on Apr. 24.

It’s fine that he has to figure out what’s working that day, but wouldn’t it make more sense for that to happen facing the bottom-half of the team’s lineup rather than their 1-2-3 hitters? There’s a reason why more runs are scored in the first than any other inning.

Is it guaranteed to work? No, but shouldn’t the Pirates experiment this year? That’s why they’re being more aggressive on the basepaths, to see if it’s a viable strategy to get more runs that way. Here’s a way to potentially allow fewer runs to score on top of that.

• It’s hard not to look ahead to the trade deadline, especially with how Rodríguez is pitching. The Pirates don’t have to trade him if they don’t get a compelling offer, but he’s been downright unhittable this year and has two years of team control remaining. That could bring back a lot.

I have been using the Keone Kela trade as a rough outline for what the Pirates could potentially get back (45-grade pitcher Taylor Hearn and 40+ hitter Sterten Apostel), but that might be underselling it if Rodríguez is still rolling. A top 100 prospect may be a stretch, even in the best-case scenario, but maybe someone like Liover Peguero, who wasn’t on that top 100 list but had a trajectory for that spot.

• Speaking of Peguero, he’s off to a good start in Greensboro, going deep those first two games. Talking to him in February, he said he moved his hands up so he could do a better job catching up to high pitches.

So far, he’s done that:

There’s a lot of Ronald Acuña Jr. in that swing.

Nick Gonzales is off to a hot start too, and both he and Peguero have a shot of reaching the majors in 2022. If that happens, mix in Ke’Bryan Hayes and that infield is something special.

• One more prospect thought, this one on Roansy Contreras. He looked outstanding in his Curve debut, flashing high-90s heat and wicked movement on his breaking pitches:

The fastball velocity was a bit more surprising, as the report I got him after the trade was he would occasionally touch 95-96 mph. On Tuesday, he was sitting at the range and occasionally revving it up to 97 or 98 mph. When I asked him about the spike in speed, he said he spent the year working on his lower half mechanics and getting stronger in his legs.

I can’t imagine he’s going to be in Altoona for long, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s in the majors before the end of the season. He’s got special stuff, and he might not even be the best pitcher the Pirates got back in the Jameson Taillon trade.

5. One more thought on pitching. Expected weighted on-base average (xwOBA) is based on quality of contact and the number of walks and strikeouts a pitcher has allowed.

The Pirates’ pitching leader in xwOBA this season is Rodríguez. No surprise there. Second place is: Clay Holmes (.280). Baseball Savant translates xwOBA into expected ERA, and they have Holmes at 2.90.

Holmes’ actual ERA is 4.60, as he is still wearing a really bad outing against the Reds early on this season. Besides that, he’s been as reliable a pitcher in the Pirates’ bullpen, and a lot of that has to do with him just throwing strikes. His walk rate has been cut in half – from 15% in 2019 to 7.5% so far this year – and he’s getting more whiffs, especially on pitches in the zone.

It took a long time getting here, but he looks like a legitimate reliever. Maybe he can be a potential opener.

6. With how poorly the outfield situation has gone so far, the Pirates should breathe a little easier knowing that Bryan Reynolds has regained his 2019 form. He’s on pace for a 5 WAR, All-Star caliber season, and has done well defensively in center.

In an ideal world, the Pirates would still have him in left. Odds are he will return there once Jared Oliva or Travis Swaggerty get the call to the majors. That’s not happening anytime soon, though.

7. Adam Frazier has a .356 OBP this year. He has a .148 OBP in the first inning as a leadoff hitter.

Not exactly what the takeaway or thought is there, but that has to mean something, right?

8. That said, Shelton’s recent lineup construction of Frazier, a high OBP player, followed by Reynolds, his best hitter, in the No. 2 spot, is the right move analytically. It gives Reynolds a high chance of coming up with a runner on base, and over the course of the year, the No. 2 hitter will get, on average, 18 more plate appearances than the No. 3 hitter. That’s about four extra games worth of at-bats.

There isn’t a way to arrange this group of hitters into a really effective unit, but slide in Hayes into that third spot once he returns and move Colin Moran back to cleanup, and that’s at least a pretty good top half of the order. The bottom half, not so much.

9. Remember when Kevin Newman was supposed to be part of that top half of the order?

With very little outfield depth remaining, Phillip Evans will probably keep playing the corners, keeping Erik González at third and Newman at shortstop, at least for the time being. Once Hayes does return, González can move around the diamond again, and Newman might lose his spot.

He’s doing very well in the field, but a .196/.233/.247 slash line just won’t get things done. The Pirates need more out of shortstop, and Peguero and Gonzales aren’t too far away.

10. I’m not going to question Jim Callis of MLB.com, who is simply the best when it comes to the prospect scene. But it was surprising to see him have the Pirates take high school shortstop Jordan Lawler first overall instead of Jack Leiter in his latest mock draft.

Lawler is a potential five-tool middle infielder and probably the best position player in this draft, but the Pirates have a chance to get a huge arm, like they did with Gerrit Cole in 2011. (Though to be fair, going back a decade ago, there was a lot of debate of it should be Cole or Anthony Rendon first overall. Either would have been an excellent choice. Rendon is on pace to be a fringe Hall of Famer, as is Cole.)

Callis cited that scouts are wondering how Leiter will hold up over a whole season after allowing eight home runs over the last three weeks. Fair, but that was always a question surrounding Leiter since he didn’t get a normal freshman season. Why can’t it just be he had a couple bad weeks rather than immediately jumping to his body breaking down?

There’s still a long way to go until the draft. I have to imagine a couple bounce back starts from Leiter would change the narrative.

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