Baseball is a chess game.
Every pitch is a move. Every move gets a team closer or further away from the goal of winning. Every game features several hundred moves, and one winner in the end.
If you break down the game into the individual moves, which would be the individual pitches, then the best move that can be made is a swing and miss for a pitcher, and a home run for a hitter.
I don’t need to write anything explaining the value of home runs. You get runs on the board with one swing, moving closer to the goal of winning. That’s pretty straightforward. On the other end of the spectrum, the whiff stat tracks the same level of dominance from a pitcher. You need three strikes to get a hitter out, and if you’ve got a pitch that no one can touch, you’ve got an advantage in your pursuit of strike three.
Take a look at the whiff% leaderboards, and you’ll find some of the best pitchers in the game.
The Pirates have three pitchers who were in the top 30 last year, out of pitchers with 150+ batters faced in 2023. Free agent addition Aroldis Chapman ranked third overall with a 42.2% whiff rate, meaning when batters swing, they missed completely almost half the time. Dauri Moreta was 33rd on the list with a 33.6% rate, but is also out until the second half of next year, which is a major blow to the bullpen. David Bednar ranks 45th from last year, at 32.8%. He and Chapman will provide one of the best late inning combinations in the game, shutting down opposing lineups when the Pirates have a late lead.
Jose Hernandez was just outside of the top 100 with a 29.3% rate, giving the Pirates a strikeout option from the left side. Ryan Borucki (27.7%) ranked 161st, and with 152 batters faced, he was honestly the reason for the qualified parameter for this ranking group. Roansy Contreras (26.5%) is the only other Pirates relief candidate in the top 200.
The Pirates don’t have a lot of whiffs from their rotation. Of the current candidates, Domingo German led in whiffs in 2023, with a 30.3% rate. That puts him 88th on the list. They lost one of their best performers last year in Johan Oviedo, whose 26% rate was 226th out of 443 pitchers. Offseason additions Martin Perez and Marco Gonzales were both under 20%, and outside of the top 400. Mitch Keller was just outside of the top 300, with a 23.2% rate, getting a lot of his strikeouts thanks to a high called strike rate.
In Thursday night’s 3-2 loss to the Blue Jays, the Pirates had two standout performances. Borucki threw 12 pitches, striking out the side thanks to six whiffs. He had two each on his slider, sweeper, and changeup. Contreras threw 15 pitches, getting four whiffs on his fastball and two on his slider. The shutdown ability from both pitchers, when added to Bednar, Chapman, and the rest of the group, could lead to one of the best bullpens in the game.
I’ve been encouraged by Martin Perez this spring. In his three starts, he’s had whiff rates of 29%, 22%, and 28%. The latter came on Monday, when he generated 11 whiffs on 39 swings across 89 pitches. Perez has never really been a big swing and miss guy, with season high whiff rates of 21-22% in 2019, 2020, and 2022. The latter was one of the best overall years of his career.
The Pirates have a dangerous bullpen. The question will be how many times can they get that bullpen a lead? Keller and Perez are the two starters who bring some form of comfort in the rotation, at least for Pirates fans. I’m interested to see if Domingo German can turn things around and use his swing and miss stuff in the big leagues. There’s also the eventual debut of Paul Skenes, and the possibility that Jared Jones joins the rotation.
By the end of the 2024 season, the Pirates might just have some whiff ability in their rotation.
