OnlyBucs

The Bucs have used 34 different pitchers this season. 3 of the 9 lowest ERAs belong to Shuck, Stallings and Osuna. Those are obviously SSSs but it's telling that no other pitcher in a SSS has complied anything other than awful stats.



Here's the list of the other SSSs including games, innings, walks and ERA:

G IP BB ERA

Rios 8 8.1 3 6.48

Davis 5 10.2 8 6.75

Wang 5 4.0 3 6.75

Markel 12 14.0 9 7.07

Keller 10 43.0 14 7.74

McRae 9 22.2 14 7.94

Escobar 4 5.2 4 7.94

Marvel 2 9.0 2 9.00

Ramirez 7 12.0 7 9.00

Burdi 11 8.2 3 9.35

DuRapau 14 17.1 9 9.35

Neverauskas 10 9.1 7 10.61

Lyons 3 4.0 3 11.25

Jerez 4 2.1 2 11.57



And then there's Hartlieb who is no longer a SSS with 29 games, 35 innings, 18 walks and a 9.00 ERA. And Kingham had 14 games, 34.2 IP, 17, 9.87 and has since been released by Toronto. For an organization that vowed to build from within via pitching, this is a disaster. You would think that at least a few of the AAA callups would experience something other than dismal failure even if it's just a misleading SSS. But when every single pitcher they call up or acquire flat out stinks, you have to wonder what is going on in terms of player development (from within) and talent evaluation (when acquiring from other organizations). :-[

Those really are depressing stats. You have to wonder what happens off-season.

It's pretty sad that 5 innings, three earned runs can be considered a "quality" start by a Pirates pitcher.



Pretty sure Uncle Ray is going to be the scapegoat, even though I think he played a relatively small part in this collapse.

I wonder if they will try to sell it as injuries to the starters forcing use of people not quite ready yet for prime time.

The 2008 club got 18 starts from pitchers who finished with ERAs over 9.00. I remember wondering, "I understand a guy with a 5.00 ERA, but what happened to a 6 ERA? What happened to a 7 ERA...an 8 ERA?" Where did all those guys go?"

66647E786E0B0 wrote: I wonder if they will try to sell it as injuries to the starters forcing use of people not quite ready yet for prime time.


That's certainly been a factor. We expected a rotation of Taillon, Williams, Archer, Musgrove and Lyles. And a BP of Vazquez, Kela, Crick, Rodriguez, Burdi, Liriano, Brualt and Feliz. Taillon's injury took Brault out of the BP. Injuries to Archer and Musgrove and the trade of Lyles gave opportunities to Kingham, Keller, Agrazal, McRae, DuRapau, Marvel and Davis.



Injuries and/or ineffectiveness by Feliz, Rodriguez, Burdi, Crick, Kela gave opportunities to Holmes, Stratton, Hartlieb, Markel, Ramirez, Davis, Neverauskas, Markel, Rios, Escobar, Lyons, Wang and Jerez. Clearly, most of those pitchers would not have gotten to MLB this year without the injuries and ineffectiveness of others. But even so, it just defies belief that not one single one of these guys even over an unrepresentative SSS were able to be anything more than awful. For the most part they are either unable or unwilling to throw strikes and do not have plus pitches to confound batters.



And while we can say these struggling pitchers were forced to face MLB batters out of necessity, it is not a particularly young group. While Keller and Escober are just 23, Agrazal is 24 and Hartlieb, Ramirez and Marvel are 25, no one else is under 26 while showing no signs of developing into useful MLB pitchers. When they start getting into the upper 20s and still haven't shown anything, we have to suspect they never will.