It doesn’t really matter to the Pirates’ starting pitchers how their first innings go in spring training games.
Right-hander Chad Kuhl gave up two singles then struck out the side against Baltimore. Mitch Keller allowed three hits and two runs, then chucked a 97 mph fastball past Toronto’s Danny Jansen for a strikeout. JT Brubaker gave up a homer against the Detroit Tigers, and Steven Brault had a mostly clean outing with one walk thrown in.
At this stage in spring training, all Pirates starters are throwing one inning per outing, which is not a meaningful data point in really any sense. That inning could go however you might imagine, and as long as it’s not catastrophic, they’ll all describe it similarly. Pretty good. Nice to get out on the field. Body felt good.
There’s nothing much to report from an appearance that lasts, ideally, around 15 pitches.
Surely, though, there’s something the starters are trying to get out of the appearances. Obviously, the end goal is to ramp up to the regular season, to pitch a full five innings by the time the games actually count. The only real measure of success is staying healthy.
At the same time, each pitcher hits the mound with a plan to attack hitters and can take something away from the start as it relates to their actual pitching, right?
“I think that comes in when we come into camp of what we're identifying as things to work on,” manager Derek Shelton said Wednesday. “And you try it in bullpens and you try it in live [batting practices], but once you get another batter in the box, you get emotions going. So there's not a ton of evaluation off the first appearance or even the first two appearances, it's more just getting them comfortable back on the mound, trying to make sure we get the ball on the plate and see reactions of other hitters.”
In other words, the opening start is both an extension of the first couple of weeks of spring training and a slight barometer for how progress is going.
Take Kuhl, for example. The right-hander said at the beginning of spring training that he was trying to incorporate his two-seam fastball more. It was a pitch he lost a little bit in his recovery from Tommy John surgery and hadn’t gotten back in time for 2020. He wants to use that pitch in conjunction with his four-seam fastball to create a more diverse arsenal.
So Sunday, when he took the mound for the first game of the spring, he tried to put those two ideas to use and had some mixed success.
“The single to [the Orioles’ Cedric] Mullins was a two-seam. Felt like it had pretty decent action. A couple of them that I spiked was when I came across. The two-seam we’re working on,” Kuhl said. “The four-seam, had a really nice one to Chris Davis that stuck in there for a strike. That was probably belt high. We’re working trying to get some ride and some vert on the heaters. The stuff we were working on today was primarily fastball stuff, so it was good to get a little bit of feedback on what we were doing.”
And sometimes, the plan changes. Kuhl’s putout pitch is his slider, and he estimated he’d thrown it about four times in bullpen sessions this spring because it just doesn’t need work. When he got in some trouble Sunday, with the first two batters he faced hitting singles, he went to the slider and struck out the next three opponents, all swinging.
Brubaker, Brault and Keller were less specific in their goals for the outing, essentially saying the main objective was to attack hitters and be aggressive.
Brubaker allowed a solo home run on a backdoor slider that ran over the plate a bit more than he wanted, and Brault walked a hitter on four straight pitches with two outs. Not ideal, but it was relatively little trouble and not much to write home about, all things considered.
Keller’s day was a bit more dicey. The first batter he faced flew out to center, but the next four went single-double-sacrifice fly-single. The goal remains making the outing as productive as it can be, which means the focus shifts to using whatever works and getting out of the inning. For Keller, that meant his off-speed stuff, which he said “felt really good.”
“Usually when you get in those aggressive counts, hitters’ counts, they are a little bit more aggressive,” Keller said. “You just want to make a good pitch. A lot of options for you, but you definitely want to come back with a strike. It’s nothing you want to practice, but definitely had that mindset of executing a really good pitch here.”
None of it matters all that much, as long as the pitchers remain healthy after the outings. The outings for the Pirates’ four starters thus far were mostly good, and they’ll be nothing more than a minor footnote by the time the regular season begins.
They are still part of the process of preparation, though. Good or bad, there was something accomplished, even if it’s one small step that will be followed by increasingly longer ones.
“In general it was pretty good,” Brault said. “I'm happy with it. Quick one. Just get ready for next time, but it was good.”
Mike Persak: mpersak@post-gazette.com and Twitter @MikeDPersak
First Published: March 4, 2021, 11:00 a.m.
