Jon Niese has quietly been on a good stretch lately. The left-hander has combined for a 2.25 ERA and a 3.45 xFIP in 24 innings over his last four starts. He has pitched into the sixth or seventh inning in three of those games. His ground ball rate is way up at 62.7%. His walks are down, and he’s still getting a decent amount of strikeouts. But as I’ve been saying all season, Jon Niese has a home run problem.
On the season, Niese has a 21.1% HR/FB ratio. Those numbers are a bit inflated by starts on the road against Cincinnati, Colorado, and Arizona, where he gave up seven homers in three games. He also gave up a home run in Texas in a recent start. That’s a pretty brutal stretch for any pitcher. But the problem with Niese might go beyond the ballparks.
“For the most part, it’s been missed execution and elevated pitches,” Pirates’ Manager Clint Hurdle said over the weekend in Miami. “There’s been a couple that have been down, but more often it’s just a mis-fire. There’s seasons where pitchers go through where they mis-fire and guys don’t hit them out. I’ve been with pitchers, because I’ve been behind the plate, where every mis-fire they have gets hammered. You see them both ways. As a hitter, I’ve hit them and I’ve missed them. Sometimes it’s just the game. But more often than not, Jon’s mis-fires have been elevated out over the plate and have been hit.”
In the past, and even this year, there have been two pitches that have led to a large amount of home runs for Niese. One is the curveball, which has resulted in a 75% HR/FB ratio from that specific pitch this year. Niese has actually reduced the usage of the pitch lately, even going without throwing it in his last start against Miami. He’s also had trouble with his two-seam fastball, but has been doing better with the pitch lately.
I asked Niese about his recent success, and what has led to the results. He credited the two-seamer, and his ability to stay at the bottom of the zone with the pitch, while mixing in the off-speed stuff and keeping everything from the middle of the plate. That definitely shows up in the numbers. He had a 48.9% ground ball rate and a 23.3% HR/FB ratio through his first seven games of the season. In his last four games, he has a 62.7% ground ball rate, and a 14.3% HR/FB ratio.
We’re dealing with arbitrary end points here, and small sample sizes. But it does show that the two-seamer wasn’t working for Niese early, and is getting better results now, with a lot more on the ground, just as he says.
“[I’m] just staying on top of it,” Niese said of the success with the pitch lately. “I’m not getting on the side [of the ball]. When I get on the side of it and try to manipulate it, it’s when it stays flat. When I explode through it, stay on top of it is when it actually has some good action.”
Hurdle also noted that in his recent starts, Niese has been showing command down in the zone, with good angle on his pitches. He also said that Niese has improved throughout the course of the season.
“I’ve seen a lot of growth and improvement since he’s been here,” Hurdle said. “It’s been incremental. He’s worked himself to a very good place here this month.”
But there’s still the home run problems. Lately, that hasn’t been much of a problem. Niese is pitching well, and the home runs really haven’t impacted the results. But the numbers are still a bit high. They’re much higher on the road, at 26.3%, compared to a normal 10.5% at home. Again, we got back to those road games in those hitter friendly parks.
“I pitched in Colorado and Arizona. And then Cincinnati,” Niese said. “There’s a group of starts there where I gave up a lot of home runs. There’s really no excuse for giving up a home run. A home run is a home run, whether they go a foot out, or a hundred feet out. I think I was a victim of circumstance, pitching in those parks.”
But it wasn’t that those parks were leading to the home run problem. They were just magnifying the problem. Niese was leaving too many up in the zone, and they were getting hit a long way. Looking at his results, he’s done better at that lately. Going beyond his ground ball numbers, let’s look at his zone profiles. First, we’ve got the start of the season, through his road start against the Reds.
Notice that the top of the strike zone has a pretty consistent 2-2.5% usage in all but one zone. Now here are the results in the last four outings.
There’s a pretty noticeable difference, with the usage at the top of the zone down in most areas, with the exception of up and in for right-handers. Likewise, he has increased his usage low in the zone, including pounding what would be the low inside corner for right-handers.
The question is whether Niese can continue this beyond those four starts. The explanation for his home run problems was elevated pitches, and the explanation for his recent success is doing a better job of staying down in the zone. Both of those add up, but that doesn’t mean he’s guaranteed to continue keeping the ball down.
“Sometimes people forget that it’s the big leagues. They’re paid to hit the ball, and if you make a mistake over the plate, they’re going to make you pay for it,” Niese said. “There’s times when I make mistakes and they miss it. I’ve just got to stay consistent at the bottom of the zone. Keep the ball on the ground.”
The good news is that Niese is done for the year at Colorado, Texas, and Arizona. He will have to focus on keeping the ball down in Cincinnati. If he can keep pitching the way he has lately, then the home run problem will be greatly reduced, and possibly even normalized. That means we could end up seeing the version of Jon Niese that the Pirates were hoping they’d get in the Neil Walker trade.
