Mr. Wonderful

Not to steal a nickname from our friends over at Mondesi's House, but Pirates' starter Ross Ohlendorf has looked pretty sterling in the majority of his outings this season, including another fine effort last night against the Cardinals in front of the PNC Park faithful. He surrendered only one run on two hits in six innings while getting 5 strikeouts and 0 walks. The run came on a home run by Skip Schumaker; the only blemish on a pretty strong pitching performance.

So what is the secret to Mr. Ohlendorf's success? Well, a huge part of it, as much as it pains me to admit, is his .246 BABIP which is way off the normal .300 or so for pitchers. You may have read Dejan mention this a couple times in his articles, but the Buccos have benefited from an inordinate number of balls in play being turned into outs. Part of that is improved defense, but most of it is just good luck.

To give you some perspective, Greg Maddux's career BABIP is .286. Pedro Martinez's is .282. Their best seasons were .246 and .237 respectively, when each was at his peak. I by no means think that any of the Pirates' starters have that kind of year in them, so I think Ohlendorf and Zach Duke, who is at .265 are both due for a regression to the mean in the very near future.

Part of Ohlendorf's success (if I can play pitching coach here for a second), is that all his pitches are coming from roughly the same release point, as last night's graph shows here, and he's changing speed's effectively, as you can see here. Though his stuff may not have a lot of snap to it, the ability to change speeds between a 91-92 mph fastball and a 81-82 mph change and slider will help you keep hitters off balance.

Also, Ohlendorf's change and slider are averaging about the same speed, but as you can see below, their break is very different. Pitch f/x actually has him as throwing a two-seam and a curveball, but I think those are just mis-identified pitches, considering there are only 9 of them total.

A few more balls in play are going to end up being hits, but if Ohlendorf (and Duke) can find a way to miss more bats and keep doing what has gotten them to this point, the regression will not be as painful. Here's hoping, I guess.