The Pittsburgh Pirates won their Opening Day contest against the Miami Marlins by a 6-5 score in 12 innings. The game was highlighted by power from the offense, as well as 6.1 shutout innings from the bullpen, combining for a comeback victory.
Below are the Statcast Heroes from the game one victory, taken from the results at Baseball Savant.
The Power
The Pirates’ comeback was led by power production. Bryan Reynolds, Edward Olivares, and Oneil Cruz all homered, resulting in four of the five runs leading up to extra innings.
The home run from Reynolds was the hardest hit ball of the day for the Pirates, with a 107.5 MPH exit velocity. The ball traveled 406 feet.
Olivares had the longest shot, at 413 feet, with a 102.4 MPH exit velocity.
Cruz hit a line drive 105.5 MPH, traveling 384 feet over the left field wall.
One sign of encouragement was the hard hit ability of Michael A. Taylor. He went 1-for-5 with two strikeouts on the evening, but had two hard hit outs. Taylor hit a 103.9 MPH forceout in the 10th, after previously hitting a 101.4 MPH groundout. The hit from Taylor was a 77.7 MPH single.
Jared Triolo experienced similar. He had two outs which were in the 89-91 MPH exit velocity range, before picking up the game winning hit on an 81 MPH exit velocity single.
The Bullpen
It’s late in the game. Batters are tired. They’ve been focusing on the field every pitch, while also seeing 4-5 plate appearances by this point. What do they have to deal with? 98-99 MPH fastballs.
Aroldis Chapman came on in the ninth inning, and only needed eight pitches to get through a scoreless inning with one strikeout. Chapman threw just two fastballs, from 98.9-99.7 MPH. The rest of his pitches were sliders and splitters. The splitter got his lone whiff of the night, getting Josh Bell to strike out.
Luis Ortiz came on for two innings, and was averaging 97.8 MPH with his fastball. He picked up one whiff on his slider, along with two called strikes on his sinker. He also benefitted from two strategic intentional walks, which set up two double plays to counter the runner at second in extra innings.
Credit to Ryan Borucki for his swing and miss sweeper. Borucki threw ten pitches. All of them generated swings. Four of those swings generated misses. There were four foul balls, plus two balls in play at 86.3 and 94.5 MPH exit velocities. That is truly an elite pitch.
Hunter Stratton picking up three whiffs on five swings in eight pitches was also impressive. Stratton had two whiffs on his fastball, and one more on his cutter.
Swing and Miss From Keller
Mitch Keller didn’t have the most effective outing, but he did put together a lot of whiffs. Keller recorded 14 swing and miss on 50 swings, with his sweeper leading the way with 5 in 13. His four-seam fastball had 5 in 15 swings, while the cutter had 4 in 17 swings. Keller got a lot of his strikeouts last year due to a high called strike rate. He had 11 called strikes on the night, leading to an overall 29% CSW (percentage of called and swinging strikes).
Last season, Keller had a career high 28.3% CSW, with an 18.6% called strike rate. His swinging strike rate tonight was higher than his career totals, leading to a slightly higher CSW, despite a lower called strike rate on Opening Day.
The overall results weren’t good for Keller, but the underlying numbers were hopeful. If he can increase his swing and miss, Keller will increase his odds of either maintaining the progress from the last two years, and could possibly see another improvement in his overall results.
