You, as a Pirate fan, have almost certainly seen some of the things being written about Mark Melancon’s alarmingly decreased velocity to open the 2015 season. I’m a little behind on this one (I apologize that I’m just getting to this now, I’m awfully crunched for time at the moment between TAing and trying to not be a grad student anymore), but it’s pretty easy to display how stark the situation is:
Over at Bucs Dugout, Joshua Choudhury has a good rundown of the situation, why it’s an almost immediate concern (fastball velocity stabilizes quickly) and why it might not be an outright disaster (Melancon’s release point has changed a lot since last year). You should read the whole Bucs Dugout piece, and you should read Travis Sawchik’s piece in which he talks to Melancon and Melancon doesn’t sound like a guy who’s pitching through pain right now.
What I have to add is this: the Pirates and Melancon can say that this isn’t alarming all they want, but this is at the very best a very worrisome thing, and it seems pretty unlikely to me to end well. The best case scenario here is that the Pirates’ best reliever dramatically changed his release point by accident, did so in a fashion that dramatically altered his velocity and effectiveness, and literally nobody from the team noticed until the season started. That last part seems to be very unlike the Pirates to me, so it seems like there’s something at play here that the public isn’t completely aware of. That makes me a little nervous.
Remember last year, when we spent a bunch of time fretting about Francisco Liriano’s velocity? He ended 2013 throwing his fastball about 94.3 mph, and started 2014 throwing it in the 92.5-93.5 range (it’s hard to tell because of the way the pitch classification changed, which indicates that Liriano may have changed something over the winter last year). It was a drop of about a mile per hour, maybe slightly more, and he bounced back pretty quickly. Melancon has gone from the 92-93 range to being almost unable to break 90. Maybe this is something that’s easily fixable and not a big deal, but Occam’s Razor says otherwise.
The last thing I want to point out is this: the Pirates aren’t going to let this carry on for much longer. Either Melancon’s going to get on track, or he’s going to be on the disabled list. After Jason Grilli’s disastrous Easter weekend against the Brewers last year, he disappeared for a month with the ever mysterious oblique injury. After his return, he appeared in 14 games. The first eight of those appearances were excellent; he struck out 10 and walked three in eight innings of work, he allowed one run, he converted all six save chances he was given. The last six of those appearances were awful; he only made it through 4 1/3 innings, he struck out four, walked four, gave up two homers, blew a save, blew a tie game, and let a third close game get out of hand. He was summarily dumped to the Angels after that, a grand total of 12 1/3 innings after his bad weekend in Milwaukee. The Pirates basically watched him pitch poorly, put him on the shelf to right himself, and got rid of him when they were satisfied that he hadn’t.
I’m not saying that the Pirates are going to have shipped Melancon off in a challenge trade by Memorial Day, both because that hasn’t turned out to be a great decision for them and because there were pretty clearly other other factors in play with Grilli (ahem). I do think, though, that if Melancon’s velocity and performance aren’t back where they need to be in his next couple appearances, he’s going to find himself on the disabled list pretty quickly.
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