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May 29, 2016 Rubbing MudOn Taillon and Glasnow As This Story's HeroesThe Pirates have weathered the storm at the start of their season nicely. The team didn’t have Jung-ho Kang for the first 28 games. Gerrit Cole has been uneven, and Francisco Liriano has been wild. For the second consecutive year, Andrew McCutchen started slowly. Still, here they are, 27-19 through their first 46 games, on pace to win 95. Though the Cubs have stolen the headlines with their blazing start, the Pirates stood only four and a half games back at the start of play Friday. That’s well within range, but it’s especially heartening because, in the view of many, the Pirates haven’t yet opened up the engine to see what they can really do. Behind Cole and Liriano, their rotation has been a mess, and the guys who make up that back half right now (Jeff Locke, Juan Nicasio, and Jon Niese) aren’t very good candidates to turn things around. Pirates Starters, 2016, DRA- and cFIP
If things go the way the Pirates hope, though, this won’t be the look of the starting rotation in the second half. Pitching prospects Tyler Glasnow and Jameson Taillon have had their names on the tips of Pirates fans’ tongues for multiple years, and now, both are on the cusp of joining the parent club. This probably isn’t news to you. It’s been a well-covered topic, and it will only get even more well covered in the weeks to come, as the time at which the Pirates can call up one or both hurlers without making them Super Two-eligible after 2018 approaches. Here’s my red-hot take on the situation: what a story! It’s really hard to say whether it will work, but what an extremely appealing story this is. The Pirates, always a bit hamstrung by their market situation, fiercely committed to sustaining their newfound success, criticized at times (both fairly and unfairly) for not trading more of the future for a brighter present, these scrappy and special Pirates are going to have a chance to use the prospects they have so closely clutched as real, on-field weapons in what could be their toughest pennant race yet. They could call up a pair of guys who have not merely gotten people out at the highest level of the minors, but have punched them out. They’re a pair of guys who have not just overcome their opponents, but overwhelmed them, with scorching fastballs and some of the best breaking stuff in the minors. To this team chock-full of stars already, this team with probably the best outfield in baseball, with a Hall of Famer patrolling center, with their top overall pick from 2011 waiting at the front of the rotation for his fellow young guns, Neal Huntington is probably going to get to add even more excitement. Imagine the Halberstamian masterwork you could craft from this raw material. Pointing out how cool this story is feels a little vapid, though, so let at least try to handicap this. First of all: how often does it happen? If Taillon and Glasnow each come up by the All-Star break, there will be time for each to start 15 games before the year is out. I used the Play Index to look for teams who have given that many starts to two different pitchers (ages 24 and under) who had never made it to the majors before. That’s been a little bit rarer than I would have guessed: only 42 teams have done it since 1947. Of those 42, though, most were either expansion teams (the 1969 Expos and Royals, the 1977 Blue Jays, etc.) or overtly rebuilding (1998 Tigers, 1999 Mariners, 2009 A’s (who had three such pitchers reach 15 starts, by the way), and more). Most were, intentionally or structurally or just out of mismanagement, pretty bad. Only 10 of the 42 won more than 83 games and finished within 15 games of a playoff spot. Here are those 10, and the pairs of pitchers on whom they bet. Two Young Rookie Starters, One Contending Team
1960 Orioles: Steve Barber and Chuck Estrada Estrada couldn’t have been much more different from Barber than he was. A righty from California, he’d signed with the Braves, but been passed to the Orioles in a transaction lost to history, sometime before the start of the 1958 season. He threw harder and struck out more batters than Barber, though he, too, racked up unbelievable walk rates. He departed from Barber in one more, significant way: He threw a lot of innings everywhere he went. He’d thrown 223 innings in the California League when he was 19, and still the Braves’ property. In 1960, as a rookie, he pitched 12 complete games. Included among them: a May 1 win in which he allowed 11 hits, six walks, and five runs, and faced 44 batters; a 9-4 win on July 5 in which he walked nine, fanned seven, and faced 41 batters (after which he appeared on three days’ rest in relief and faced 10 batters); and a July 24 contest in which he went the full 11 innings and won 2-1, facing 40 batters along the way. He pitched 208 2/3 innings for the Orioles as a rookie, and increased from there in 1961 and 1962, effective the whole time. DRA pegged him at 2.8 WARP in that rookie season, then 3.3, then 3.9. You know how this story ends. He blew out. Before he did, though, he and Barber were two of the five pitchers 22 and under (along with Milt Pappas, Jack Fisher, and Jerry Walker) who combined to start 117 games for those Orioles. Baltimore was tied with the Yankees as late as mid-August that year, but with so many young arms wearing down at the end of the season, they went 10-12 over their last 22 and finished a distant second, eight games back. The Yankees swept them in a four-game series in mid-September, in which the losing pitchers were, in order: Barber, Estrada, Fisher, and Pappas. 1976 Reds: Santo Alcala and Pat Zachry There’s nothing especially complicated or interesting about Alcala’s story. He was pretty bad, and probably never would have escaped middle relief, if not for Don Gullett’s three separate trips to the disabled list that season. (At 25, Gullett already had over 1,000 MLB innings on his odometer, and there turned out not to be many more miles in his arm.) Alcala finished with a 4.70 ERA and 4.92 DRA, good for -0.6 WARP. Zachry’s story is different. The Reds had drafted him some five and a half years before his debut, so he was an old rookie, but he was a good one. The tall right-hander kept the ball on the ground over half the time and struck out 143 in 204 innings, which was pretty good for that time and place. His 3.42 DRA across a hefty workload made him worth 2.9 WARP. Zachry stepped nicely into the breach left at the front of the Reds’ rotation by Gullett, and even if Alcala was a bad fill-in starter, he wasn’t as bad as he could have been. With the veteran core of Gary Nolan, Fred Norman, and Jack Billingham doing about as well as they had the year before, the Reds rolled to the same result they’d achieved the year before: a World Series title. In fact, they won all seven games they played that postseason. Zachry won Game 2 of the NLCS and Game 3 of the Series. Alcala didn’t pitch in the playoffs, and indeed, it’s not clear that he was on the roster. 1979 Tigers: Dan Petry and Pat Underwood Petry didn’t make his first start until July 8, when he was called up to pitch the second half of a doubleheader. The Tigers lost that game, to fall to 40-42 and 14 games back in the standings. They would go 45-34 from that point on, not good enough to reach the playoffs, but not bad, either. Petry was a full-time starter at age 20, and nine of his 15 starts were quality starts. In seven of them, he had a Game Score of at least 60. He didn’t strike out anyone (43 whiffs in 98 innings), but didn’t walk the world, either, and ended up with a DRA of 4.27 and a WARP of 1.0. The Tigers didn’t come all that close to making the playoffs, but without Petry and Underwood, they would have barely reached .500. 1982 Giants: Alan Fowlkes, Bill Laskey They would be better in 1982, though it was not thanks to their bizarre offseason choices. In December, they had traded declining outfielder Jerry Martin to the Royals, and got back two pitchers: Rich Gale and Bill Laskey. It was after Laskey asserted himself in the spring that the Giants dealt away Blue and Alexander, getting back Atlee Hammaker and Renie Martin, among others. Their rotation, for most of the season, would consist of Laskey, Gale, Hammaker, Martin, and Fowlkes—all five 28 or younger, three of them 24 or younger. That really wasn’t the strength of the team. Laskey emerged as a quasi-ace for an aceless team, pitching nearly 190 innings with an ERA of 3.14, a DRA of 3.74, and 3.0 WARP. The rest of the group was shaky, all with ERA+ figures under 100. Fowlkes, a 10th-round pick out of Cal Poly less than two years beforehand, was thrust into the rotation on Opening Day, and struggled. He visited the minors twice, and limped to a 5.23 ERA in 15 starts and six relief appearances. DRA favors him, giving him a 4.94 and 0.1 WARP when the old-school numbers suggest something much worse, but the old school might have been right about Fowlkes. He would only appear in two more big-league games after 1982, for the 1985 Angels. The Giants had a bullpen full of guys who did good work and a solid offense, but the rotation and the old legs of Smith, Morgan, and Darrell Evans in the field did them in. They won 18 of 22 at one stretch in September, closing from nine games behind the Dodgers to just one, tied with the Braves for second in the NL West with seven to play and Atlanta coming into Candlestick Park for two games. The Braves shut them out 7-0 in the first game, and knocked Laskey out after 2 1/3 innings to win the second 8-3. Never try to build around young arms. 1983 Phillies; Kevin Gross and Charles Hudson Gross came up in late June, as Glasnow and Taillon might, and made 17 starts. He posted a ridiculous 65 percent groundball rate, but that was the only shining star in his constellation of skills. He did well, with a 3.56 ERA, but DRA feels that was a bit lucky, and pegs him at 4.78, good for 0.4 WARP in his 98 innings. Hudson had a complete-game win in Game 3 of the NLCS, but lost Games 2 and 5 of the World Series. Gross wasn’t called upon at all during the playoffs, but they were four and a half games back on the day he came up, so he and Hudson were both important parts of the team’s march through the regular season. 1984 Cardinals: Ricky Horton and Kurt Kepshire One reason Horton lost his place in the rotation down the stretch was that Kepshire was pitching so well. He didn’t debut until the Fourth of July, and made 16 starts (plus one relief appearance) through the end of the campaign. Though the Cardinals faded, Kepshire finished the season with a furious flourish, spinning consecutive shutouts in his last two starts. He had a 3.99 DRA and 1.4 WARP, enough to keep a mediocre team competitive. 1984 Royals: Mark Gubicza and Bret Saberhagen 1997 Cleveland Indians: Bartolo Colon and Jaret Wright Wright is, of course, a different story. He came up for the first time June 24, made 16 starts (in which the Indians were 12-4), posted a 4.38 ERA and 5.03 DRA, and was worth 0.8 WARP. That was the worst Indians team of their very impressive run, though it was the one that came closest to winning the World Series, and the lack of pitching depth was part of the reason. They won only 86 games. It’s fair to say both that the team was counting on more than it got from Colon, and that things could have gone much worse than they did, considering that Colon and Wright combined for a full slate of starts and were above replacement level. Wright made five playoff starts, earning three wins despite pretty shaky performances. 2003 Giants: Jesse Foppert and Jerome Williams Glasnow was 11th on our Top 101 Prospects list this year, so he’s the Pirates’ answer to Foppert. That would make Taillon (51st on this year’s list) the equivalent of Williams (50th, according to BA, in 2003), which is about right. Like Taillon, Williams had been a much more highly touted prospect in previous years, but had hit a snag. Taillon’s has been injuries. Williams’s was performance-related. He just wasn’t missing bats, even in the minor leagues, and confidence in his future was fading all over. When the Hefty Hawaiian (no one called him that, as near as I can tell, but I don’t know why not) got his chance, though, he acquitted himself well. He was called up for a spot start in late April, which ended disastrously. After being promoted for good in early June, though, he posted a 3.05 ERA in 20 starts. His 4.46 DRA says he wasn’t quite that good, but 1.8 WARP in 131 innings is an impressive first go-round. Neither Foppert’s flop nor Williams’s wins mattered a great deal to those Giants, because they won 100 games and finished 15 up on the Dodgers. If the Pirates win 100, though, they might not even win their division, so a similarly strong showing from Glasnow and Taillon (1.9 WARP in 40 starts would still be 1.5 or so in 35) would be much more helpful to them. 2010 Reds: Mike Leake and Travis Wood Wood’s path was very different from Leake’s. He had been in the Reds organization for over five years, by the time the team called him up on July 1. He seemed more prepared for it all, too. In his third MLB start, he nearly no-hit the then-mighty Phillies. Only three of his 17 starts were clunkers, and at least five were certifiable gems. He finished with a 3.51 ERA, 86 strikeouts against 26 walks, a staggering 2.78 DRA, and 2.9 WARP. Wood not only offset whatever damage Leake did, but pushed the Reds over the 90-win threshold, allowing them to cruise to a division title. *** That’s everyone. If you read all of those narratives, you’ve probably already gleaned the theme: expect one good pitcher and one bad pitcher in any pairing akin to Glasnow and Taillon. It doesn’t seem that the overall quality of the team can hinge on the performance of two young arms like these, but under the right circumstance, they can have enough impact (in either direction) to make the difference between advancing into October and going home. The Pirates have an exciting season ahead, and a really good team from top to bottom, despite their crummy rotation depth. Some of their position players have overperformed early, allowing them to thrive despite adversity. When the regression dragon comes for those numbers, the Pirates have two young knights they can ask to help slay it. The fun part, I suppose, is that it’s impossible to know whether they’ll save the day or not.
Matthew Trueblood is an author of Baseball Prospectus. Follow @MATrueblood
5 comments have been left for this article.
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Most here in The 'Burgh believe the party line: we will see Taillon but not Glasnow. The latter is still struggling with his offspeed pitches. Perhaps the
3rd arm is more likely Chad Kuhl who has been unhittable at AAA
If struggling with your offspeed pitches results in 56 IP and 69 Ks with a 2.25 ERA and a 1.23 WHIP while pitching in AAA at the age of 22, color me impressed.