2019 Pittsburgh Pirates Season Thread

[willeyeam]

And that was talkin Buccos with will eye am

[LeopardLetang]

Bummer about kingham. I thought he had a shot at becoming solid. Good to see Reynolds with 2 hits. You watching willeyeam? Were his hits good swings?

[willeyeam]

Bummer about kingham. I thought he had a shot at becoming solid. Good to see Reynolds with 2 hits. You watching willeyeam? Were his hits good swings?

i turned it on after he got his hit in the 1st and fell asleep before his 2nd hit

[Ad@m]

Bell crushes another HR (446’) to dead center.

[Freddy Rumsen]

Bell. My word. That went in the camera well in dead center.

[Ad@m]

OMG!! He just crushed another one 460’

[blackjack68]

OMG!! He just crushed another one 460’

[blackjack68]

Raise it!

[Freddy Rumsen]

That second home run was hit so hard it nearly ricocheted back on the field from the patio deck.

What did Eckstein do?

[willeyeam]

He remembered some of the Cardinals devil magic apparently

[DigitalGypsy66]

That second home run was hit so hard it nearly ricocheted back on the field from the patio deck.

What did Eckstein do?

He actually spent much of the winter with a hitting guru in LA by the name of Joe DeMarco. Working on launch angle, evidently, which is something that previous hitting coaches in the Pirates organization were hesitant to do.

[Troy Loney]

He has drastically reduced his ground ball percentage. He’s seen a bump in the strikeouts but has turned into an mvp candidate.

I’d love for that anonymous scout to out himself and admit how wrong he was

[Troy Loney]

Archer has walked three of the first four hitters in his return. christ.

[Dickie Dunn]

Seems more like the anti-Christ to me.

[Troy Loney]

And now Shane Baz is also off to a good start in 2019.

This has the potential for being an infamous MLB trade.

[Dickie Dunn]

Archer is quite bad.

[Freddy Rumsen]

Archer came of the DL yesterday. He's been fine since the trade.

[Factorial]

4.33 ERA ain't great.

[DigitalGypsy66]

He refused a rehab stint, which might have been useful.

[Factorial]

I hit 3-0 and started to FFW...

[Morkle]

Archer is quite bad.

Hindsight is 20/20, but the argument for why couldn't coaching figure out Glasnow, looms large.

Archer is trash.

[MrKennethTKangaroo]

I mean, to an extent, they had glasnow figured out. he was dominant all through the minor leagues (2.02 ERA). they clearly did a good job developing him. even when he stunk in the major leagues in 2017 he was still awesome in AAA ( 93 innings, 140 strikeouts).

[Dickie Dunn]

I mean, to an extent, they had glasnow figured out. he was dominant all through the minor leagues (2.02 ERA). they clearly did a good job developing him. even when he stunk in the major leagues in 2017 he was still awesome in AAA ( 93 innings, 140 strikeouts).

They were 100% **** him up, his stuff was just too damn good for AAA hitters regardless of what the Pirates were having him do. The Brooks Baseball profile for Glasnow is very telling. He's throwing his fourseam a bit harder than earlier in his career and his release point has changed over time, but in general there have been no major changes in velocity and vertical movement of his pitches throughout his MLB career. The horizontal movement of his fastball has transformed throughout his career, going from primarily a cut movement to primarily a running movement to now being a cut or run that causes the pitch to average out to near zero horizontal movement.

Unsurprisingly, his worst season (2017) is the year the Pirates **** with him the most. Fourseam fastball was paired with a two-seam sinker that got heavy usage despite never using the pitch before or since that season and changeups were 10+% of his pitch selection in every month despite having little feel or command for the pitch. Since going to Tampa he's gone back to primarily using his fastball and curveball with the occassional changeup.

The single biggest change since he went to Tampa is that he's working much higher in the zone, where he always felt more comfortable but the Pirates wanted him to pitch down. Throughout his entire Pirates career 46.5% of his pitches were in the midpoint of the zone profile and up; since becoming a Ray that number is 57.4%. That's translated to 64.6% of his pitches being thrown for strikes vs. 59% in every season he spent as a Pirate. That number for his entire minor league career is 64.2%, but was consistently below 60% the closer he got to the majors and the more the Pirates provided instruction. Difference being that in the minors trying to pitch down in the zone and grooving a pitch or missing outside the zone didn't matter because he was facing scrub ass hitters who couldn't hit his stuff even if you told them exactly where it was going. Get to the major leagues and suddenly that bottom of the zone pitch that missed and was instead dead center of the zone resulted in a 500 foot homerun instead of a whiff.

The Rays have let him be the pitcher he always was. Even when he was a mess with the Pirates his K rates and whiff percentages were outstanding, he would just lose control and have complete meltdowns. The Rays are letting him work in an area of the strike zone where it is easier for him to control his pitches and the misses are less destructive.

[Morkle]

I just don't think the Pirates had some magical pitching coaching staff. They got lucky on a few guys, but that hasn't translated to everyone. I remember when they were touting Searage as some pitching whisperer but just doesn't ring true at MLB level.

I'll be interested to see what they do with Kingham but I don't have high hopes.

[MrKennethTKangaroo]

Stuff

I remember when the pirates tried to get glasnow to start throwing changeups. I think by that time, he was in AAA. I know for a while there the pirates philosophy was "get fastball command and learn the rest later" but wtf did they wait until he was in AAA to start experimenting with a changeup? he was right on the doorstep of the major leagues and had a trash changeup and that was on of the reasons why his debut was such a cluster.