We will never know just how the Pittsburgh Pirates originally planed on utilizing Johan Oviedo heading into the season.
Set to be on the outside looking in when it comes to the rotation, the options were either use him as a swing-man of sorts out the major league bullpen, or send him to Triple-A to stay stretched out as a starter.
With JT Brubaker heading to the Injured List to begin the season, that conversation became moot, as Oviedo will slide into his place as one of the five starting pitchers.
As we saw in his last tune-up before the season started, Oviedo has a fastball that can push the upper-90s, but a lot like fellow starter Luis Ortiz, didn’t have a great track record of generate swings and misses with the pitch, despite the velocity.
In fact, Oviedo’s whiff rate on his fastball (13.6%) was ranked 510th in baseball last year.
On the flip side, he had one of the better sliders, especially when it comes to Run Value on Baseball Savant (23rd). Generally speaking, not being able to generate a lot swings and misses with the fastball isn’t the best recipe for success, unless you have another couple of pitches you can rely on.
Enter Tuesday’s start for Oviedo, where he pitched five innings, allowing six hits, and two runs while striking out seven.
Attacking backwards, 33 of the 70 pitches Oviedo threw were sliders, with just 25 being fastballs (two were recorded as sinkers). That’s a 33% fastball usage, which is right at a ten-point drop in percentage compared to what he did in 2022.
The plan worked perfectly, as he generated nine whiffs on 20 overall swings with the slider. Overall he picked up 13 whiffs on 27 (48.14%) non-fastballs. That was all while he faded towards the end of his outing, allowing more balls in play during his final frame.
Using the slider so much had a secondary effect. Hitters kept looking for it, and that allowed him to fool them with the fastball. He picked up nine called strikes on the 25 total fastballs he threw.
After spending most of the spring expecting to have a certain role within the organization, Oviedo was thrust into something completely different. He responded exactly how you would want.
Pirates Prospects Daily
By John Dreker
The Pirates closed out their spring with a 7-5 loss to the Minnesota Twins. Here’s the boxscore. They finished with a 9-18-3 record. They had the second worst record of the 30 teams in Spring Training. They also had the second worst run differential (-47 runs). In both instances, they were only ahead of the Miami Marlins. Today’s an off-day. Tomorrow the fun starts.
**Pirate City Notes: Henry Davis Gets Work in Right Field Tim Williams reported from Pirate City, where Henry Davis was getting work in right field.
**Pirates Make Two More Cuts to the Spring Roster While they didn’t announce the final roster, seeing as a late pickup is always possible, the Pirates got down to 26 healthy players in camp.
**The Pirates Opening Day Roster is Nearly Complete Some earlier moves that were confirmed
**Fangraphs Ranks the Teams by Every Position A look at how the Pirates stack up at each position compared to the other 29 teams.
**Canaan Smith-Njigba Showing Complete Hitting Ability This Spring An in depth look at Smith-Njigba, who won a job this spring
**Final Pittsburgh Pirates Spring Training Observations
**Pirates Prospects Daily: The Difference Between Injury Prone and Freak Injury
**Pirates DVR: Yordany De Los Santos, Connor Scott Catch, Maikol Escotto Home Run
