Pirates do need to make a trade

by Mike Z

First for the record, this isn't a post to slap fearless leader's post in the face, but just to play devil's advocate. This post is coming off the heel's of Paul Zeise's blurb in the Post-Gazette about Hurdle indicating Lyle Overbay is on the verge of losing his job if he doesn't turn it around quick. I've mentioned Lyle Overbay a few times in the past about how poorly he's performed, but here's a couple other stats to further reinforce things.

One of the best comparative stats out there is adjusted OPS, abbreviated OPS+, which takes OBP plus Slugging (OPS) across the league and also adjusts for ballpark factors. A score of exactly 100 is league average. Approaching 75-80 is very poor and 120-125 is very good. League leader usually approaches 200, which is where Joey Bats is right now. It may be helpful to become familiar with OPS+ because I've seen it more and more in articles because it incorporates stadium neutrality. (Granted, it still gauges OBP as SLG equals, which isn't exactly true because OBP has been proven to be more predictive of run production, but OPS+ is still hugely effective.)

Overbay for the season is at 82 now, being a 108 for his career. His last 8 seasons: 122, 112, 125, 85 (injury shortened 2007), 108, 119, 105, 82. So this is a pretty severe drop-off. To further condemn him, his last two months are 87 and an abysmal 58 this month. To put that into numbers you're more familiar to, Lyle's OPS this month is .567. Bautista's slugging alone is higher than that. He's absolutely destroying this team.

This black hole is why the Pirates need to make a trade (or at the very least, find someone internally). For the talk on Carlos Pena, he's been slumping the past 3 weeks or so but still has an OPS+ of 116. The difference between the two players is about 3 wins, according to WAR at this point in the season and projects to be about 2 more by the end of the season. Now am I saying that Carlos Pena is a good player? Absolutely not, and I think calling him decent is a stretch. He can't hit lefties at all, as he's only hitting .125 (yes, that's one-hundred-twenty five) and glove isn't anything special so there are still plenty of flaws.

Whether it's Lyle Overbay, or any of the other names rumored like Jason Kubel or Casey Kotchman, they all have severe flaws. But when it comes to who they are replacing, it's an upgrade no matter who you're replacing Overbay with. And for all the flaws the players have, especially with Carlos Pena, they can be had for cheap. The Pirates have a lot of players eligible for the rule 5 draft this year and won't be able to protect all of them. Trading one of these C+ type prospects and taking on all of Pena's contract would most likely be enough. Replacing the Grand Canyon with a crater definitely isn't ideal but it's definitely better than what the Pirates have now.

AL Positional WAR All-Stars

by Mike Z

Hey guys, sorry for the long delay. Here's the AL list. I'll focus on the original guys that were placed on team, instead of analyzing the 90 other players that were added a replacements. All stats are through July 18th.

C - Alex Avila - 2.7 WAR
Reserve - Matt Wieters - 2.6 WAR
Reserve - Carlos Santana - 2.4 WAR

Actual - Alex Avila - 2.7 WAR
Reserve - Matt Wieters - 2.6 WAR
Reserve - Russell Martin 1.7 WAR

Avila has quietly come out of nowhere to help a Detroit offense that would arguable be a liability without him. At the halfway point, he already had more runs, RBI and HR than he did all last year. Granted, his BABIP is .350, but he is only 23 and will probably only get better. Wieters here is why I jokingly gave Jeff a hard time in the comments a couple posts back. He's really improving as a hitter, after really looking lost his first season. His K% dropped each year from 22.3%, to 18.7% to 15.5% this year and he's slugging .425, well above league average, and even more so compared to other catchers.


1B - Adrian Gonzalez - 4.5 WAR
Reserve - Miguel Cabrera - 3.3 WAR
Reserve - Mark Teixeira - 2.6 WAR

Actual - Adrian Gonzalez - 4.5 WAR
Reserve - Miguel Cabrera - 3.3 WAR
Reserve - Paul Konerko - 2.5 WAR

Yes, by using SABR, I was able to figure out that Adrian Gonzalez is good at baseball. For me, it's fun seeing WAR numbers for the people destroying the league because they just look absurd. That said, his WAR is only 3rd highest for his team, which is surprising and I'll get to in a little bit. He's quietly having a great season again, and his WAR would be higher if he knew how to use his glove. I'd have gone with Konerko over Teixeira in the actual game as well. For the 2nd half however, keep an eye on Teixeira because he's only hitting .239 due to his insanely unlucky .221 BABIP so he could start flat-out raking soon.



2B - Dustin Pedroia - 5.5 WAR
Reserve - Ben Zobrist - 4.8 WAR

Actual - Robinson Cano - 2.9 WAR
Reserve - Howie Kendrick - 4.0 WAR

This is the first position in this post series that wildly varies from actual vs. WAR. Does it surprise anyone that Pedroia has the 2nd highest WAR in all of baseball? After having the foot injury that hampered him last year and raised plenty of questions if he could hold up over a full season, he may be having a better season than his MVP year, and nobody is talking about it. Check out these lines:

Games HR R RBI SB BB%
2008 157 17 118 83 20 6.9%
2011 91 13 63 50 17 15.0%

He's on pace to crush these totals. In 2008, his total WAR was 6.8 so he's just on a tear right now. If Cano weren't voted on, Pedey is on this team easy. Zobrist is interesting too because his stats are more in line with his 2009 stats than his disappointing 2010 follow up. (He's also eligible as an OF)


SS - Asdrubal Cabrera - 3.5 WAR
Reserve - Jhonny Peralta - 3.3 WAR

Actual - Derek Jeter - 1.0 WAR
Reserve - Asdrubal Cabrera - 3.5 WAR

How awesome has Asdrubal been? He's playing an amazing SS and playing a huge part in turning around the Indians. I'm waiting to see him turn a double play by fielding a grounder while doing a cartwheel. His glove is sick. I don't need to say much about Jeter that hasn't been said. I'm fine with the lifetime achievement picks like this, but I'd like to see All-Star appearances stopped being used as a Hall of Fame gauge. Props to Peralta for hitting better than he ever has--he's earned his spot as a replacement. Honorable mention to Yunel Escobar being hundreths of a point below Jhonny.


3B - Alex Rodriguez - 4.1 WAR
Reserve - Kevin Youkilis - 3.4 WAR

Actual - Alex Rodriguez -4.1 WAR
Reserve - Adrian Beltre - 3.3 WAR

Statistically A-Rod is having his best season since his 30-100-100 of 2008. He's again playing great with the bat, and his war is somewhat inflated with a high UZR rating, which I feel is skewing things slightly. Not too much going on with this position to debate. Watch Beltre in the second half as he's getting unlucky with a low BABIP and a few other things, so he may experience a spike in production.

OF 1 - Jose Bautista - 6.9 WAR
OF 2 - Curtis Granderson - 4.7 WAR
OF 3 - Jacoby Ellsbury - 4.7 WAR
Reserve 1 - Brett Gardner - 3.7 WAR
Reserve 2 - Melky Cabrera - 3.1 WAR
Reserve 3 - Carlos Quentin - 2.7 WAR
Reserve 4 - Denard Span - 2.7 WAR

Actual 1 - Jose Bautista - 6.9 WAR
Actual 2 - Curtis Granderson - 4.7 WAR
Actual 3 - Josh Hamilton - 1.7 WAR
Reserve 1 - Jacoby Ellsbury - 4.7 WAR
Reserve 2 - Carlos Quentin - 2.7 WAR
Reserve 3 - Matt Joyce - 2.3 WAR
Reserve 4 - Michael Cuddyer - 2.2 WAR

This is a great example of where the criticism of WAR is best portrayed. 4 out of the 7 on the WAR team received a huge boost due to their defensive rating. WAR has been determined to be one of the best ways to compare overall worth of players, but be sure to keep this list in mind when looking at WAR. That said, Bautista is making a mockery of the league again. 6.9 WAR is just insane. There will only be a handful of players that will break 7 WAR by the end of the entire season. Just another example of how ridiculous he's performing.


DH - David Ortiz - 2.5 WAR
Reserve - Michael Young 2.0 WAR

Actual - David Ortiz - 2.5 WAR
Reserve - Michael Young 2.0 WAR

No surprises here. I'm still slightly amazed how it looked like in 2009 that Ortiz just lost his hitting ability for half a season, then all of a sudden put it back together like nothing happened. Good for Michael Young keeping things together after "losing his position" in the off-season. Granted, there was a good bit of whining on his part and was asking for a trade, but he's put a nice season together. If Travis Hafner didn't get hurt, he would've most likely been the reserve.

Just one more post on the AL pitchers and you don't have to look at WAR again for another year.

NL Pitching WAR All Stars

by Mike Z

Similar to position players, WAR still attempts to determine overall value of pitchers. Again, I'm not saying that these are the players that should have been on the team or that the teams should be picked based on WAR. I'm doing this as a different way to evaluate players and to generate some thought and discussion. All stats include up to the end of games July 4th via Fangraphs.

SP 1 - Roy Halladay - 4.7 WAR

SP 2 - Cole Hamels - 3.8 WAR

SP 3 - Clayton Kershaw - 3.6 WAR

SP 4 - Cliff Lee - 3.5 WAR

SP 5 - Daniel Hudson - 3.2 WAR

SP 6 - Tim Lincecum - 3.2 WAR

SP 7 - Jordan Zimmermann - 3.0 WAR

SP 8 - Madison Bumgarner - 2.9 WAR

Actuals

SP 1 - Roy Halladay - 4.7 WAR

SP 2 - Cole Hamels - 3.8 WAR

SP 3 - Clayton Kershaw - 3.6 WAR

SP 4 - Cliff Lee - 3.2 WAR

SP 5 - Tim Lincecum - 3.2 WAR

SP 6 - Matt Cain - 2.6 WAR

SP 7 - Jair Jurrjens - 2.2 WAR

SP 8 - Ryan Vogelsong - 1.4 WAR

Is it really that surprising that the 3 of the top 4 are Philles, with Halladay just crushing everybody? He's 0.4 WAR ahead of CC for leauge lead, and on pace for the best season, according to WAR, of his career. His strikeout rate is at his highest at 8.65 K/9 and his walk rate is at 1.12 BB/9, which is only 0.04 higher than his career best. His xFIP is essentially identical to his ERA (2.41 v.s 2.44) so his ERA is right in line, and his BABIP is .302 as well, so nothing he's doing can not really be attributed to any "luck". The man isn't human, that's all there is to it.

The last couple on the list is a big reason why I find WAR and other SABR stuff so interesting. After Daniel Hudson went to Arizona after being traded from the White Sox, he was lights out, but his numbers superficially make it look like he's dropped off after his breakout. His ERA this season is an uninspiring 3.75 this year. In his first 4 starts, he gave up 17 runs and walked 12 batters in 4 games. But since then, he's been fantastic, he's had a 2.6 ERA since then. Overall, his xFIP of 3.45 indicates he's pitching better than his numbers indicate. His walk rate has dropped from 2.55 BB/9 last year to 2.03 BB/9 this year. You could make a great case for his inclusion.

Jordan Zimmermann is an interesting case because he's been performing like an ace this year with a 2.62 ERA and with a 76/24 K/BB ratio. However, his xFIP is 3.68, indicating some luck. His BABIP is a low .281 and his HR/FB% is a ridiculously tiny 2.9%. That HR rate just has to jump soon, as league average normalizes around 11% every single year.

Now onto the debacle. Ryan Vogelsong is a cool story, pitching lights out after working his way back from pitching in Japan after being absolutely awful with SF and Pittsburgh before that. That said, he has no reason to be near this team. His BABIP is only .256 so he's due for some regression. With the luck he's getting with a skewed BABIP, high left on base percentage, low HR/FB rate and low ground ball percentage, he's bound to come back to earth. All of that goes into his current xFIP of 3.62, about 1.5 higher than his ERA. Plus, he's had at least 5 fewer starts than any other starter (he doesn't have enough starts yet to qualify for statistics yet). Other pitchers that have a WAR of 1.4: Ryan Dempster, Charlie Morton, Paul Maholm, Chris Narveson. There were plenty of better picks than Bochy taking one of his own.

Relief 1 - Craig Kimbrel - 1.9 WAR

Relief 2 - John Axford - 1.3 WAR

Relief 3 - Jonny Venters - 1.3 WAR

Relief 4 - Sean Marshall - 1.3 WAR

Relief 5 - Joel Hanrahan - 1.2 WAR

Actual

Relief 1 - Jonny Venters - 1.3 WAR

Relief 2 - Joel Hanrahan - 1.2 WAR

Relief 3 - Heath Bell - 0.8 WAR

Relief 4 - Tyler Clippard - 0.6 WAR

Relief 5 - Brian Wilson - 0.6 WAR

Because the sample sizes for these guys are so small (52 innings pitched is the high), it's tough to use WAR to compare them. All this really shows is that the save stat is usually overvalued. Craig Kimbrel, Heath Bell and Joel Hanrahan are tied for the league lead with 25 saves, and there's there's a sizable gap between the three. Kimbrel's big lead is driven by his 67 strikeouts, tops for all relievers. There are some guys with some nice seasons like Carlos Marmol or Mike Adams that you could add instead of Clippard or Wilson, but there isn't too much to argue about. It is interesting though that WAR agrees with most analysts that Hanranan and Kimbrel have possibly been the top 2 closers this season.

I'll be out of town for the next few days, so it might be a while, but I'll definitely be back to do WAR for the AL all stars as well. Until then, you can use the time to try and figure out a reason Vogelsong deserves to be on the team. Enjoy.

NL Positional WAR All Stars

by Mike Z

That's right, I'm back to use SABR to pick the all star teams. As a refresher, WAR (Wins Above Replacement) is an all-encompassing calculation to determine a player's overall worth, in comparison to a player called up from AAA to fill in. The calculations for WAR vary slightly depending on the website you use, so I'll be using the numbers from Fangraphs throughout. All stats are through the beginning of July 3.


C - Brian McCann 3.1 WAR

Reserve - Miguel Montero 2.3 WAR

Actual - Brian McCann 3.1 WAR
Reserve - Yadier Molina 1.4 WAR

Brian McCann has been an absolute animal this year, and deserves the start here. He's blowing everyone away due to his great offensive numbers, as well as leading all catchers in hits, HR, OBP, and RBI. Montero of the Diamondbacks got a huge WAR boost due to some very good offensive numbers, as probably the 2nd best hitting catcher in the NL this year. Because "This game counts~Bud Selig", Molina is a great choice due to his stellar defense, which is really driving up his WAR. No real snubs here at all.


1B - Prince Fielder 3.6 WAR
Reserve - Joey Votto 3.6 WAR
Reserve - Gaby Sanchez 2.5 WAR

Actual 1B - Prince Fielder 3.6 WAR
Reserve - Joey Votto 3.6 WAR
Reserve - Gaby Sanchez 2.5 WAR

WAR lines up perfectly with the actuals here. Picking your starter here comes down to whether you prefer a masher or an on base machine with great defense. Fielder is in the top 5 in baseball slugging, HR, and RBI. Votto has been "slumping" recently and is hitting .317 now and has been on base in all but 5 games this year. He's not slugging nearly as much as Fielder, but has one of the best gloves at 1B in the league. Gaby Sanchez may be surprising here, but he looks like he'll become a big time slugger real soon, if not already, and can field his position well. He's the only Marlins rep, but he does deserve the spot. He beat out Helton and Pujols by 0.1 WAR.


2B - Rickie Weeks 3.3 WAR
Reserve - Danny Espinosa 3.1 WAR

Actual - Rickie Weeks 3.3 WAR
Reserve - Brandon Phillips 2.8 WAR

Those are some high WAR numbers thanks to defense for all three of them. Weeks is having a repeat of his great season of last year, and is more than deserving. (Sidenote - His brother Jemile looks like he's going to be even better) Espinosa is pretty surprising here, but is getting propped up due to his .466 SLG even though he's only hitting .243 overall. Phillips is having another great season, being on pace for career highs for all major categories except steals. I would've gone with him as my reserve as well.


SS - Jose Reyes 5.3 WAR
Reserve - Troy Tulowitzki 3.5 WAR
Reserve - Stephen Drew 2.1 WAR

Actual - Jose Reyes 5.3 WAR
Reserve - Troy Tulowitzki 3.5 WAR
Reserve - Starlin Castro 1.6 WAR



Yeah that Reyes WAR isn't a typo. He's 0.3 behind Bautista for the league lead. He's been that good. You could make a great case for him being the MVP of the first half. Hitting .354 with already having 65 runs and 30 steals is real impressive. The man is going to get paid this offseason. And if the Mets decide to trade him even though he's almost gotten them back to .500, he could bring back a massive haul for all their holes. Or maybe a lot of money to help pay for Bobby Bonilla's buyout for the next 25 years. I have no idea why they need 3 SS, but they need to get a Cub on the roster somehow. I would've gone with Darwin Barney, just because I think his name is awesome.


3B - Ryan Roberts 2.1 WAR
Reserve -Chase Headley 2.0 WAR

Actual - Placido Polanco 1.8 WAR
Reserve - Chipper Jones 0.8 WAR

.......and Polanco wins by default! He's actually done a nice job for the Phillies, but the hot corner has been a whole lot of suck this year in the NL. Chipper's WAR puts him in elite company this year as Chris Getz and Miguel Olivo. Heath Bell is the Padres rep so there's no way they would get 2 and Ryan Roberts is such a generic name that everybody forgot about him.


OF - Andrew McCutchen 4.6 WAR
OF - Matt Kemp 4.5 WAR
OF - Shane Victorino 4.0 WAR
Reserve - Ryan Braun 4.0 WAR
Reserve - Michael Bourn 3.4 WAR
Reserve - Justin Upton 3.3 WAR
Reserve - Matt Holliday 3.2 WAR
Reserve - Carlos Beltran 2.7 WAR

Actual - Matt Kemp 4.5 WAR
Actual - Ryan Braun 4.0 WAR
Actual - Lance Berkman 2.6 WAR
Reserve - Justin Upton 3.3 WAR
Reserve - Matt Holliday 3.2 WAR
Reserve - Carlos Beltran 2.7 WAR
Reserve - Hunter Pence 2.2 WAR
Reserve - Jay Bruce 1.5 WAR

OK who's ready for a rant? Hunter Pence? OK fine I get it, everybody needs a rep (because this is still 4th grade-why not give everybody a plastic trophy for participating?), regardless of how bad they are. But Cincy already has a few, so please explain why Jay Bruce is there for any other reason than the celebrity softball game beforehand? Why would it matter that he has 18 HR when he misses the ball every other time (K% of 26.1)? Plus, he'd still have trouble fielding his position with one of those giant gloves that the mascots use. Not only is McCutchen leading all NL outfielders in WAR, he's 3rd in ALL OF BASEBALL. How he isn't even on that dumb vote for the last player on the team is beyond me. (Michael Morse? REALLLLLY?)

Up next: NL Pitchers

ERA vs. xFIP

by Mike Z

Considering I throw around a bunch of these obscure stats, I've often considered posts explaining the major ones a little more. This was a little tougher than I thought because I had to find some way to make formulas sound interesting. The ERA formula is self-explanatory (earned runs/innings pitched X 9), but the xFIP one is insane [xFIP = ((FB*.11)*13+(BB+HBP-IBB)*3-K*2)/IP] and essentially miserably dry to break down all the variable. However I'll try to briefly go over what xFIP is before I go any farther.

xFIP, or expected fielding independent pitching, is a metric devised to determine what a pitcher's ERA should be, taking into account only the variable that he is theoretically responsible for. Those variables are walks, strikeouts, hit batters, home runs and innings pitched. Walks, strikeouts, and hit batters are self explanatory. The innings pitched dividend puts the calculation onto an ERA scale so you can now effectively compare the two stats.

The one major thing I want you to focus on in the formula is the (FB*.11). This is fly balls times .11, with .11 being the average home run to fly ball ratio for pitchers league wide. Without that correction, you get the calculation for FIP instead of xFIP. Home run rates for a single pitcher fluctuate wildly from year to year so (FB*.11) provides a more accurate calculation.

So now that the crash course is completed, what's a good way to compare the statistics? I decided on a correlation study as it can compare multiple data points at once and is fairly simple to follow. I compared starting pitcher win/loss percentage to ERA, and then starting pitcher wins to xFIP on a graph made by Excel and then best fit a line through the points, using the slope of the line as the read out. A slope/correlation value is on a 0 to 1 scale, for example, 0.1 being a weak correlation to 0.9 being a strong correlation. To protect myself from small sample sizes skewing my results, I took statistics for only the starters that qualified for statistical awards (about 25 starts each year) and took all data from 2008-2010, which gave me 251 data points to work with (Excel can only calculate 255 points, otherwise I had data going through 2006).

First, here's the correlation graph for W/L (X-axis) vs. ERA (Y-axis):

The correlation for this graph is 0.44, so not that strong. the greatest density of points is running right along the 3-4 range of ERA , but there are still points all over the place, which is what the correlation value indicates.

Here's the same thing using W/L vs. xFIP instead:


The correlation with this graph looks similar to the ERA comparison, but notice how the data points are much more closely scattered around the best fit line than previously. The correlation for this graph is 0.62, not strong, but much better than ERA and definitely an improvement.

So what does all this mean? This is a real quick study with plenty of factors that make it less than ideal, with using Wins/Losses the biggest gripe that I have. If anybody has an idea for a better correlation study, let me know because I saved all my data from this so that I can revisit it if I decide to do anything more in-depth with the data. This was pretty crude, but I hope it illustrates why a lot of the sabermetrics types use xFIP to gauge starting pitchers than ERA, especially when attempting to project how they'll perform for the remainder of the season.

If anybody has any suggestions for other stats they would like me to look at, leave them in the comments and I'll look at it the next time I do one of these.

Kevin Correia: behind the W-L record

by Mike Z

With the Pirates 9-3 over the Mets last night, it gave Kevin Correia his major league leading 8th win of the year. While I don't put much into the win-loss statistics for multiple reasons, it's still fun to see a Pirates pitcher leading the league in a pitching category other than losses and batting average against (cheers Zach Duke!). He's now 8-4 on the season with a 3.40 ERA, some pretty good numbers for a guy that I was worried about being a liability coming into the season. The purpose of this post isn't to determine if Correia is one of the best pitchers in the league so far (he isn't), but rather determine how much of this is a fluke and how much he can carry on through the rest of the season.

I looked at Correia's PitchFX charts, courtesy of Fangraphs, from this year with the Pirates and last year with the Padres to see if I could determine anything different between them. I have a couple theories after going through the charts and statistics and I found two game I'll use as a case study at similar times of the year with similar stat lines. The first is a Rockies-Padres game from 5/3/2010, while the second is a Padres-Pirates game from 5/4/2011. These games are taken in isolation, but each season as a whole indicated these same trends. Here are Correia's lines from each game for context.

	IP	Hits	ER	BB	SO	GB/FB/LD
5/3/2010	6	4	3	2	4	12/4/3
5/4/2011	6	5	2	2	3	14/4/1

With these lines similar, I thought they'd be perfect to compare to each other by having fewer variables, allowing me to to rely more on the Pitch FX charts. All of his game charts show essentially the same arm slot and release point, so there's no indication of him changing his delivery, but the one thing that did jump out was the horizontal break on all of his pitches.

5/3/2010


5/4/2011


Both these graphs are from the catcher's perspective, depicting horizontal movement on the X axis in relation to pitch velocity on the Y axis. A couple things jump out here. First, look at how grouped together each pitch is in 2011 versus 2010. Generally, that can mean Correia is doing a better job at controlling his pitches around the strike zone. Specifically, check out his two seam fastball first (FT=blue) In 2010, the two seam had a little more break into the hands of a right handed hitter, but the velocity was dropping close to 85 MPH for some pitches. For the game, his fastball was sitting 91, with the two seam sitting 87, a noticable difference for a major league hitter. In the 2011 graph, note how he is throwing the two seam almost as hard as his fastball. For the game, the fastball was sitting 90.7, but the two seam was at 89.1, making it harder for hitters to distinguish between the two pitches.

Also, take close notice at the curveball (CU=purple dots). He's doing a much better job of controlling his break and having it tail away from right handed hitters 5-10 inches in 2011. In the 2010 graph, the horizontal break is all over the place. What also jumped out at me with the curveball, is how many times he was throwing it. The 2010 game had him throwing 9 curveballs out of his 106 pitches, while in 2011 it was up to 15 curveballs of only 94 pitches, a much larger percentage. I found this interesting, so I checked his pitch selection for the year to determine if it's the curveball that's directing his success so far.

In fact, pitch selection seems to be the case. His use of the slider is down from 16% to 11.4% while his curveball is up from 10.5% to 15.2%. This is a sizeable jump. The sample size is still a little too small to use any of the quantitative statistics for each pitch, but his curveball is saving him an impressive 1.4 more runs this year than last, for what that's worth.

To me, it seems like his better use of the curveball is setting up his other pitches to keep batters a little more off-balance than year's past. Batters are swinging at 31.3% of his pitches outside the strike zone, up from his career average of 24%. He's kept this curveball trend up the entire season, which may help him maintain his success throughout the season. He does need to strike out more hitters, though. His K/9 is an awful 3.99 right now, with his career average being 6.38, a low number as it is. Getting a few more Ks will certainly go a long way in allowing his recent success be sustainable for the remainder of the season.

His BABIP is at .265 and his xFIP is around 4.12, so his statistics may regress backwards gradually, but that doesn't mean he cannot maintain his current level of pitching. As long as he maintains the control of his breaking pitches like he has for the first two months of the season, he'll be be one of the Pirates' better pitchers going forward. I'd expect his ERA to settle around 4 by the end of the season, but that doesn't mean it's a foregone conclusion. With the Pirates improved infield defense and Kevin Correia's improved control, he may not end the season as the league leader in wins, but that doesn't mean he won't be one of the best free agent signings for any team this season.