STATE COLLEGE, Pa -- Before Melky Cabrera's heroics, before Jacob Stallings' bases loaded wizardry and before Kevin Newman's unassuming walk-off strut to first, there were six innings of uneven Pirates bullpen performance to be found in the eventual' 11-10 extra-inning victory over the Padres on Sunday.
This particular contest had all the trappings of a typical Pirates win in 2019. Good-enough starting pitching gives way to shaky middle-relief work while all the while the team waits for the run production attack to kick in.
Everyone knows that Felipe Vazquez and Kyle Crick have been very effective throughout their 2019 campaigns. It is the performance of the table-setters before them that have brought the unit down to carrying the sixth-worst wOBA in the majors at .346. Other peripherals are just as unkind, with the relief corps ranking 26th in Fangraphs' WAR at -0.1, 27th in BB% at 11.1 percent and 25th in fly-ball rate at 37.8 percent.
Here are three quick fixes for the middle relief that might just serve as enough of a salve to properly support the back-end, to say nothing of the suddenly potent offense.
FIGURING OUT FELIZ
11 relievers have pitched 10 or more innings for the club in 2019. Of these, three carry strikeout rates above 27 percent. You can probably guess that Crick and Vazquez are two, but how shocked would you be if I told you that Michael Feliz ranks second among this group? Well, it's true.
Feliz is striking out 30.8 percent of his batters faces, second only to Vazquez's 36.7 percent.
I apologize if I'm about to blow your mind again after just coming to grips with that startling fact, but here goes. Feliz actually carries the second best batting average against of any such Pirates reliever with a .182 figure, just five points behind Crick's .172. He's done it by primarily being a four-seam specialist, throwing the heat 77.35 percent of the time, followed by a slider at about 17.3 percent and a rarely seen changeup.
This has always been his M.O., but leaning even further into the fastball has unlocked a certain level for Feliz, though one not without its quirks. Feliz has had an earned run charged to him in 10 of his 17 big-league appearances. In those appearances, Feliz has a wOBA during his first 15 pitches of .736, and a wOBA of 1.361 on pitches past the 15-pitch mark. That's a difference of .625. This is not surprising on its own merit -- the longer a reliever stays in a game, the more chance for offense -- but the chasm between the two is more pronounced for Feliz, as the MLB-wide difference in these admittedly arbitrary pitch markers is .401.
To get the most out of Feliz -- more accurately, the most out of his fastball -- Clint Hurdle will need to do a better job of sensing when Feliz is about to go off the rails. Perhaps his first hint could come from Feliz's opening salvo to a hitter -- the right-hander is currently posting a first-strike percentage of 52.4 percent.
MOLDING CLAY
Like it or not, the organization is high on Clay Holmes.
The club likely can't quit Holmes because of his eye-popping 60.7 percent ground ball rate, easily the highest among the club's relievers and 9.9 points higher than the next-highest mark belonging to Geoff Hartlieb. Keeping the focus on the sinker keeps the ball on the carpet, as Holmes features the sinker as his premiere pitch with a 55.04 percent usage, and a 65.08 percent ground ball rate.
But just as a young man from Uniontown was told that he can't live off of lemonheads alone, so too can Holmes not live and die by the sinker. In looking at his pitch pair data, Holmes has gone sinker-sinker 67 percent of the time, with a wOBA against this pair of .452. Any other pitch paired with the sinker results in a .345 wOBA from the pair. A modest improvement, but one that could help Holmes hold the dam with more aplomb.
Mixing in a curveball more often than the 20.56 percent he currently boasts wouldn't be a bad idea either, as Holmes gets good movement on the bender -- 2.9 inches more than average -- some of which was on display in a high leverage situation:
By the way, the pitch that preceded this? A sinker. Just saying.
PUT RICH ROD IN THE RIGHT POSITION
It irks me when I hear people blindly praising Richard Rodriguez's performance since his return. Yes, he has kept the ball in the ballpark since his return on May 27th, and has held hitters to a .208/.309/.313 triple-slash for a 2.77 ERA.
Yet hidden in those murky ERA waters is the fact that Rodriguez has allowed 53.6 percent of his inherited runners to score over the season, easily the most of any Pirates bullpen arm with at least 30 innings pitched.
The odd thing is that Rodriguez carries identical wOBA figures -- .342 -- whether men are on base or not. If we can't find the proof in Rodriguez's wOBA-flavored pudding, perhaps we can point to a change in his bread and butter -- the high four-seam fastball. It is there that Rodriguez has not been able to quite replicate his 2018 self with men on base.
Here we see Rodriguez's four-seam fastballs thrown with men on base year over year. On the left, 2018. There, we see that Rodriguez still caught a ton of the plate with men on but was able to at least locate it on both sides. In 2019, the scatter has been a little more concise and in the heart. Sample size does play a factor here, but not as much as you might think. Rodriguez threw 389 four-seamers with men on in 2018 with 217 so far this season. If that's not close enough for you to agree with me, then how about this -- by percentage, the usage is nearly identical. 34.3 percent of Rodriguez's total pitches were thrown as four-seamers with men on base last season, and 34.7 percent fall into the same bucket this season.
Perhaps it would behoove Hurdle to not loosen Rodriguez leash just yet.
MORE MOUND VISIT
June 24: Big Joe's comeback
June 21: Frazier’s folly
June 20: Keller’s stuff examined
June 19: Advanced fielding stats and you
