INDIANAPOLIS – Jameson Taillon is tweeting like it’s 2009.
The biggest topic surrounding the Pirates right now is Super Two, with everyone wondering when the top pitching prospects will arrive in Pittsburgh. It covers talk radio, articles, social media, and it definitely reaches the players.
“You’d be blind if you didn’t see it,” Taillon said.
It’s gotten to the point for Taillon where he has deleted the Twitter app from his phone, making it a bit more difficult for him to see the talk.
“I’ve deleted Twitter off of my phone, so if I want to get on, I actually have to log on,” Taillon said. “We see it. The thing that’s good here, is we have a good clubhouse atmosphere. Everyone enjoys being here. We don’t get too ahead of ourselves. I think I’ll be ready whenever they do need some help.”
Pirates fans would probably say that the help is needed right now. Taillon had a bit of a different take, and didn’t seem discouraged that he was still down in Indianapolis.
“Looks to me like they’re about to start rolling,” Taillon said of the big league rotation. “Looks like guys are starting to catch their stride a little bit up there. Our job down here in Triple-A is to be as ready as possible whenever the call does come. You see guys getting called up every single day out of here. Keep honing it, and be ready whenever the call comes. I think if you ask any starting pitcher here, we’re working on stuff, but we all feel like we’d be ready if we were needed.”
The funny thing about this is that Taillon has no clue what Super Two is all about. He sees the term every time he logs in, but isn’t clear on the meaning. That said, he feels that he’s not just in Triple-A because of this rule that he knows nothing about.
“To be honest, if you asked me to explain what it meant, and what it was, I don’t know the definition and exactly what it is,” Taillon said. “I’ve kind of been reassured that it’s not all about that. There are things I need to work on and get better at. There’s pitches I need to hone in on. I need to get back in the groove of facing upper level hitters. From my part, I’ve been throwing the ball well. I do feel really confident. I’m really in no rush. I want to make sure I’m as ready as possible when I go up there. We’ve got a really competitive ball club up there in a competitive division. When guys do go up, you have to be ready to go. You have to be ready to actually contribute. You can’t develop more up there, you have to be ready to go.”
Yesterday, Taillon didn’t have his best curveball. Despite this, he still looked like a guy who was ready for the majors. Taillon’s curveball isn’t really an issue, and a pitcher isn’t always going to have all of his pitches every start. The encouraging thing was Taillon’s ability to change his game plan when he didn’t have the curve, turning instead to the changeup. His ability to throw three pitches makes him look ready for the big leagues right now, if there weren’t any Super Two considerations. But there is one other thing to consider.
Taillon is coming off two years that were derailed by injuries. He had Tommy John in 2014, and spent half of 2015 returning from that. Right when it looked like he was ready to start making his way to the majors, he went down with a hernia, which shut him down for the year. Now he’s pitching with very little work the last two years, and the biggest focus for the Pirates is monitoring his workload.
An example of this took place yesterday. Taillon finished the sixth inning with 91 pitches. Rather than extending him one more inning, he was pulled. This has been common this year. Taillon has only gone past the 90 pitch area once, and that was his last outing in Syracuse. Every other start has seen him finishing with around 90 pitches, regardless of innings. As it turns out, the pitches matter more to the Pirates than the innings.
“He could have went out for that seventh inning,” Dean Treanor said after yesterday’s game. “We got him out of there. I think the basis that we’re going on is more pitches for the year, than innings. There is a system that they use, the number of stress pitches that you have. In the fifth inning, with runners all over the place, now those pitches become stressful. They have some way of figuring that out, don’t ask me.”
The Pirates aren’t about to reveal the way they figure out “stress pitches”, and how they factor that into Taillon’s workload. As for limiting him going forward, they might continue pulling him an inning early, after 90 pitches, or they might pull him after five innings. Treanor had conversations with Pirates General Manager Neal Huntington in Syracuse and in Scranton recently, and the main focus was being conservative with Taillon.
“We’re going to be conservative, and we’re going to do what’s best for him, and future-wise, what’s best for the Pirates,” Treanor said. “We’ve got to take care of this guy because of that time off. You’ve got to give him a lot of credit for coming back from Tommy John. You think he’s going to be ready to go, and then he has the hernia. He’s worked his ass off. But we can’t get ahead of ourselves. It’s what’s best for him, and for the Pirates.”
It’s not like the Pirates have this road-mapped out, though. Taillon is in a very unique situation, and you can tell that they’re playing it as they go with bringing him back. The goal has always been to make sure he can pitch in September and October, without leaving innings and pitches on the table by being too conservative early in the year.
“We’re not 100% set in stone on our plan,” Taillon said. “I’ve been told innings will play some sort of a factor, but it’s not the end-all, be-all. Pitch count, effective pitch count, the stress innings. They just kind of talk to me, check out how my body looks like, how I’m throwing in my side sessions, how I’m recovering, how crisp do I look.”
Taillon said that the Pirates might use an off-day to push him back a few days, but that there hasn’t been any talk of skipping a start, shutting him down, or even scaling back to extremely shorter outings where he’s only throwing four innings.
“Whatever they want to do, I’m on board with,” Taillon said. “They’ve got some pretty smart guys in charge of that.”
What Are Stress Pitches?
The biggest thing I took away from my conversations this week is that the Pirates are putting a big focus on “stress pitches” and “stress innings”. Again, there is no definition for this, but we do know a bit. Treanor said that Taillon’s fifth inning yesterday had some stress pitches. He threw 20 pitches total that inning.
When the Pirates are mapping out starting progressions in Spring Training, and rehab starts, they always set limits at X innings and Y amount of pitches. The amount of pitches is always an average of 15 per inning. So we might be able to assume that any pitch beyond pitch number 15 in an inning would be a “stress pitch”.
For the most part, Taillon has done a great job to avoid this. He has thrown 49.1 innings this year, and 26 of those innings have come with 15 pitches or less. He’s had 12 innings with 10 pitches or less. On the flip side, he’s had just six innings with 20 pitches or more.
Taillon has thrown nine innings with exactly 16 pitches. If we’re counting any pitch over 15 as a stress pitch, that would give him 9.
He has six innings with 17 pitches. That brings the total up to 21 stress pitches.
There are two innings with 18 pitches, and one with 19. The new total is 31.
There are four innings with 20 pitches, taking us up to 51. One inning had 22 pitches, and his worst inning had 26 pitches. That makes the grand total 69 stress pitches on the year.
One thing to consider here is that we don’t know how pickoff throws factor in to this mix. Do they count the same as pitches? If so, then Taillon’s pickoff attempts this year would add 21 more stress pitches to the total (yes, I counted his pickoff attempts), bringing us up to 90 stress pitches through eight starts.
This is where we run into another wall. Let’s stick with the non-pickoff number. We don’t know if 69 stress pitches in eight starts is good or bad. I’d assume it’s a good thing, considering how efficient and dominant Taillon has been.
I did go through Gerrit Cole’s innings in the big leagues in 2013, to see what his totals were. He ended up with 227 stress pitches in 19 starts, which is an average of 11.95 per start. Taillon is currently averaging 8.63 per start.
We also can’t assume that all stress pitches would be the same. Pitch number 16 is not going to be as bad as pitch number 20, and that’s not as bad as pitch number 30 in an inning. Taillon has done a good job of keeping his pitch count under 20, only reaching 20 or more in 12% of his innings. Cole reached 20 or more in 15% of his innings in the big leagues in 2013. He also reached 30 a few times, which Taillon hasn’t done, and has only come close to once.
I’m comparing MLB innings to Triple-A innings here, and it might be better perspective to get Cole’s Triple-A innings as a comparison to Taillon. But that would be missing the point that Taillon’s stress pitches are going to go up when he reaches the majors. So while he has been gaining innings at a rate you’d hope to see in the majors (consistently pitching 6-7 innings per start), it’s not like he’s wasting innings in Triple-A, since they are lower stress than what he’d see in the big leagues. If he ends up with the same average stress pitches as Cole above, then every three starts in the minors this year essentially cuts down one MLB start’s worth of stress pitches. That can really add up.
Let’s say he makes 12 starts in Triple-A, and 19 in Pittsburgh with the averages listed above. That would lead to about 330 stress pitches on the year. If the Pirates paid no attention to Super Two, and called him up a few starts ago after six outings, then he’d be projected for 350 stress pitches on the year. That’s like adding two additional MLB starts to his workload, even if the inning totals are the same.
Once again, all of this is based on a lot of speculation about what “stress pitches” could be, and how to interpret them. We’re probably not going to know the real story, which brings me to my final point.
Similar to Another Health System
The Pirates went with their Golden State Warriors program last year in the big leagues, with the goal of giving more rest to their position players, in order to keep them fresh. The thing was that most of those players ended up playing more than they ever had in their careers prior to that season. It wasn’t as simple as giving a day off after X amount of games played. They used metrics to track when a player needed a break, giving strategic off-days.
We don’t know the formulas behind that system, but by all player accounts, it worked. The “stress pitches” approach feels similar. We don’t know what is going on behind the scenes, and there’s nothing we can point to in order to track Taillon’s progress. It’s not like an innings total, where we can count up to X amount of innings.
There’s really not a blueprint for Taillon’s situation, since his situation is so rare. Because of that, there isn’t a right or wrong answer in how to approach his workload this year. What gives me confidence here is the fact that the Pirates are very conservative with their rehabbing guys, and they’ve got a lot of smart people working on this approach, between the stats department and the trainers. Their goal is to make sure Taillon can still pitch in September and the playoffs, while not leaving innings and pitches on the table. I have a feeling they’re going to bring him up right when they feel they can meet that goal.
It might not be a coincidence that this could occur right after the Super Two deadline passes. Taillon’s stuff looks ready now, but if Super Two provides a reason to keep him down a few more starts, then this could benefit him. A few extra starts in Triple-A would reduce his stress load this year, making it even more likely that he could pitch for the Pirates late in the season.
