Tag: Trevor Williams

PITTSBURGH — Baseball is a team sport, but not necessarily a synergistic one. A batting lineup can run hot or cold, but that has little impact on how well arms and gloves can limit the opposition. There can easily be a disconnect between scoring and defending, perhaps more so than any other team sport. Even […]

Ivan Nova was the Pittsburgh Pirates starting pitcher Tuesday night. Wednesday, he’ll mostly be “a cheerleader.” Such is the life of a starting pitcher. Day of the week? Doesn’t matter. The city they’re in? They might not even play there. It’s all about what day it is in the five-day cycle. There’s the day they […]

Earlier this week I wrote about how the Pirates were looking like legit contenders. That was based on the fact that the team is currently winning, despite the lack of results from some of their expected top performers. The idea was that they would eventually get better performances from some of those top guys, offsetting […]

WASHINGTON, D.C. — It appears that the 2018 version of the Pittsburgh Pirates are something of a streaky baseball team. The Pirates lost their third straight game to the Washington Nationals on Wednesday night, their second three-game or longer losing streak in the last 10 days. In between, the Pirates won five straight against the […]

PITTSBURGH — Trevor Williams is off to strong start to his 2018 season, sporting 1.93 ERA after his fourth start of the year on Tuesday in the Pirates’ 2-0 loss to the Colorado Rockies. Williams’ success, on the surface, is somewhat mystifying. He’s never had overwhelming stuff, and his 4.07 ERA in 31 appearances in […]

When discussing Trevor Williams’ success as a first-year major-league starting pitcher last summer, Clint Hurdle would often refer to Williams’ ability to utilize both sides of the strike zone. Using his fastball and slider primarily, Williams was able to ‘dot up’ the inside and outside corners of the plate in 2017, keeping hitters of both […]

FT. MYERS, Fla. — Trevor Williams had his most successful outing of the spring on Wednesday, striking out eight Minnesota Twins in 5.1 innings of work at Hammond Stadium. Williams didn’t have his most efficient outing of the year, taking 97 pitches to get to the first batter of the sixth inning. But his stated […]

BRADENTON, Fla. – It’s probably not a big revelation that pitching wins championships. Last year, the top eight teams in starter ERA made the post-season. Coincidentally enough, or maybe not coincidence, those teams also were the eight teams to make it beyond the Wild Card game. That group included teams with a good offense, and […]

BRADENTON, Fla. — In my humble opinion, IMHO is one of the top five podcasts featuring Major League Baseball players. Of course, that’s not much of a hot take, because it’s the only podcast featuring MLB players that I’ve ever listened to. But regardless, the podcast, featuring Pirates right-hander Trevor Williams and southpaw Steven Brault, […]

Fangraphs had an interesting list posted on Friday in which they rank they players who recently lost their prospect status. Almost the entire list of 46 players are ones who exceeded rookie limits last year, with two exceptions. One of those exceptions is relevant to the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Pirates acquired right-handed pitcher Joe Musgrove […]