“Work fast, throw strikes, change speeds” – Ray Miller
This was the philosophy of former Pirates pitching coach Ray Miller. Does it cause pitchers to perform better? Well, we may be close to finding out. FanGraphs is now tracking each pitcher’s average time between pitches. The table below shows each player who started a game on the mound for the Pirates in 2010. I also included each pitcher’s innings pitched, Earned Run Average (ERA), Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) and Expected Fielding Independent Pitching (xFIP). League average is 21.5 seconds between pitches. Daisuke Matsuzaka worked the slowest at 25.9 seconds, while Mark Buehrle was the quickest at 16.4 seconds.
| Name | IP | ERA | FIP | xFIP | Pace |
| Jeff Karstens | 107.1 | 4.78 | 4.78 | 4.41 | 19.9 |
| Zach Duke | 159.0 | 5.72 | 4.95 | 4.48 | 20.1 |
| James McDonald | 64.0 | 3.52 | 2.91 | 4.03 | 20.4 |
| Paul Maholm | 185.1 | 5.1 | 4.18 | 4.56 | 21.1 |
| Daniel McCutchen | 43.0 | 6.49 | 6.85 | 5.9 | 21.1 |
| Chris Jakubauskas | 0.2 | 27 | 3.08 | 5.13 | 21.4 |
| Ross Ohlendorf | 108.1 | 4.07 | 4.44 | 4.96 | 21.7 |
| Dana Eveland | 5.0 | 5.4 | 4.88 | 6.79 | 22.0 |
| Charlie Morton | 79.2 | 7.57 | 5.29 | 4.26 | 22.5 |
| Brian Burres | 68.2 | 4.46 | 4.58 | 5.29 | 22.8 |
| Brad Lincoln | 50.2 | 6.57 | 5.68 | 5.53 | NO DATA |
David Allen also posted some interesting observations on the data.
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This confirms my observations on Kip Wells and more recently Kevin Hart. Man do those guys work slow. I was kind of surprised that Ian Snell fell in the normal range, though.
Yeah, I was surprised about Snell too. He was one of the first guys I checked.