I'm a person who doesn't like vagueness much and a lot of talk about how good who is and how well they're going to do backed up with nothing but... well... nothing but some feelings or statistics which may be thoughtful and objective but are also don't make much intuitive sense. Let's see if we can do something better.
Ok… so let’s break down the Pirates starts from last year by grade and let's use a method that we can all get jiggy with. Or at least understand.
Basically, I reviewed the starts of all of the Pirates starters from last year and applied five different grades to each start. An ‘A’ start is 7 innings, 3 runs or better. Kind of arbitrary but that’s what I went with. A ‘B’ start is 6 innings and 3 runs or better. Think of it as the prototype Kevin Correia start. The dividing line between ‘C’ and ‘F’ start is just as arbitrary but let’s just say I picked innings/run combinations that made sense. Finally, I added a ‘P’ grade to record any successful piggyback type starts. They may not have been intended that way but if you go 3-4-5 innings and no runs and you have a Gomez type, that Gomez type can make that start and get away with it.
This isn't earned runs. This is looking up the start in baseball reference (I'm giving them a donation this year for sure) from each pitcher's 2013 game log and seeing how far they went and the total runs given up by the team by the time they left the game. x.1 innings becomes x innings. x.2 innings becomes x+1 innings. We're not shooting for theoretical perfections here, just an objective calculation which we can all understand and argue about since that's what we do best.
Oh, and please pardon the column alignments. Disqus is not kind in that way so I had to use the periods since tabs and spaces just don't work.
So last year’s Pirate starters grade out as follows:
...............A.......B......C......P......F
Total.......50......45....38.....6.....23
Liriano....11......8......2.......1.....4
Burnetr...12......8......1.......4.....5
Locke......8.......8......6.......3.....4
Morton....8.......2......6.......3.....1
Cole........4.......11....4.......0.....0
Wandy.....4.......4......1.......1.....1
Gomez....1.......0......1........5....1
Sanchez..0.......0......0.......1.....3
Crumpt....1.......1......3.......0.....0
Johnson...0.......0.....0.......0......1
Total.......50......45....38.....6.....23
Liriano....11......8......2.......1.....4
Burnetr...12......8......1.......4.....5
Locke......8.......8......6.......3.....4
Morton....8.......2......6.......3.....1
Cole........4.......11....4.......0.....0
Wandy.....4.......4......1.......1.....1
Gomez....1.......0......1........5....1
Sanchez..0.......0......0.......1.....3
Crumpt....1.......1......3.......0.....0
Johnson...0.......0.....0.......0......1
So, it’s like 105 A, B and P starts. I mean you can’t win them all but apparently, you can win a lot of them.
So where do these starts come from next year?
Liriano… seems prudent to expect some sort of drop off. One thing about this fellow, when he fails, it’s not good. He had 2 C starts and 4 F starts. So drop the A/Bs and pump up the C/Fs. He’s not going to be awful but it is probably prudent to expect a downturn. He is, however, going to start the year with the team so maybe 30 starts seems reasonable.
Liriano A-9, B-7, C-6, P-1 F-7
Locke… personally, I think he will have a better year than last year but certainly it is reasonable to think he will make a couple more starts… 30?… and do ok. He had 29 starts last year. Let’s figure he comes up with less clunker starts and improves a couple of his Cs and Fs into Bs. That’s kind of Kevin Correia-ish.
Locke A-8, B-13, C-4, P-3, F-2
Locke A-8, B-13, C-4, P-3, F-2
Morton… let’s just plan on him going all year (30 starts) and that he matches last year’s level of competence. It’s a tad optimistic but not terribly optimistic.
Morton A-9, B-7, C-9, P-3, F-2
Wandy… hmmmm…. only 11 starts last year. He’s a pretty big question mark and only the Pirates know anything at this point. They must think he can pitch or they’d be frantic for another starter. If I was less lazy, I’d go back two years and draw up that profile and project it for this year. In fact, how about we do that. One thing that jumps out is that the Astros did not use Wandy like the Pirates and tended to let him go deeper into games even when he wasn’t doing so well. Here was his profile. He made 27 starts and I added a B start and a C start and an F start to make it 30.
Wandy A-8, B-15, C-4, P-0, F-3
Cole… you gotta think he’s going to play out like he did in August/Sept of last year. If not, the Pirate ship is going down. I think we were all wowed into thinking he did better than he did. One thing he was though was very consistent which was nice.
Cole A-5, B-19, C-3, P-0, F-3
So where does that leave us at this point
...............A.....B.....C.....P.....F
Total........39....61....26...7.....17
Liriano.....9......7......6.....1.....7
Locke......8......13....4.....3.....2
Morton....9.......7.....9.....3.....2
Wandy.....8......15....4.....0.....3
Cole........5......19.....3....0......3
Total........39....61....26...7.....17
Liriano.....9......7......6.....1.....7
Locke......8......13....4.....3.....2
Morton....9.......7.....9.....3.....2
Wandy.....8......15....4.....0.....3
Cole........5......19.....3....0......3
So, what does that leave? A few less A/B starts, 15 less C starts and 5 less F starts. I think you can count on whomever comes up from AAA or Volquez or others to cover those starts. For example, Volquez and Gomez could be used together for a bunch of piggy back starts and burn up some of the C starts that way. The Pirates are going to need a few more runs to cover last year's win total if these starting projections hold out.
On the whole, if we assume what I assumed, I think I’m projecting the Pirates starting staff to be a little less dominating but certainly do ok. So let’s look at those assumptions.
Locke is last year’s Locke, Wandy pitches like he does in 2012, Morton was last year’s Morton, and Cole repeats Aug/Sept all year long. What happens if one of these fails? I think that’s where things start to fall apart. Maybe Tallion/Crumpton can come in and help out. If two of these fail, the Pirates starters will be in huge trouble. Too bad AJ isn’t coming back. His addition would sure make me feel better.
For full disclosure, here is the total detail start distribution and assigned grades for the Pirates staff last year.
| grade | innings | runs | count |
| A | 9 | 1 | 2 |
| A | 9 | 2 | 1 |
| A | 8 | 0 | 2 |
| A | 8 | 1 | 3 |
| A | 8 | 2 | 2 |
| A | 7 | 0 | 16 |
| A | 7 | 1 | 12 |
| A | 7 | 2 | 12 |
| B | 7 | 3 | 3 |
| B | 7 | 4 | 3 |
| B | 6 | 0 | 2 |
| B | 6 | 1 | 11 |
| B | 6 | 2 | 13 |
| B | 6 | 3 | 13 |
| C | 6 | 4 | 2 |
| C | 6 | 5 | 2 |
| C | 6 | 6 | 1 |
| P | 5 | 0 | 4 |
| P | 5 | 1 | 4 |
| P | 5 | 2 | 6 |
| C | 5 | 3 | 10 |
| C | 5 | 4 | 9 |
| F | 5 | 5 | 3 |
| F | 5 | 6 | 2 |
| P | 4 | 1 | 1 |
| P | 4 | 3 | 3 |
| F | 4 | 4 | 2 |
| F | 4 | 5 | 2 |
| F | 4 | 7 | 2 |
| P | 3 | 0 | 1 |
| P | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| F | 3 | 5 | 1 |
| F | 3 | 8 | 1 |
| F | 3 | 9 | 1 |
| F | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| F | 2 | 5 | 2 |
| F | 2 | 8 | 1 |
| F | 2 | 10 | 1 |
| F | 1 | 4 | 1 |
| F | 1 | 5 | 1 |
| F | 1 | 2 | 2 |
| 162 |
Interesting to see that nobody went 7 and gave up more than four runs. That's not typical. I'm not exactly what that means but it's telling us something. Maybe it's telling us that the Pirates had a good bullpen and weren't afraid to use it. Sure. That's it.
Thoughts about ANY of this?