In his two seasons as a Pirate, Mark Melancon has this line:
142 IP, 111 H, 30 R, 26 ER, 19 BB, 141 K, 3 HR
This is so good that it’s borderline comical. Three home runs and 19 walks in 142 innings? Out of every pitcher in baseball that’s thrown at least 100 innings in the last two years, Melancon has the second best K/BB ratio and the lowest HR rate of the group.
This makes it almost impossible to write more about Melancon: pitchers are supposed to get strikeouts, limit walks, and keep the ball in the park. Melancon has quite possibly been better at those three things (if taken as a whole) than literally any other regular pitcher in baseball over the last two seasons. Because he doesn’t have the inhuman strikeout rate of a Craig Kimbrel or an Aroldis Chapman and therefore lets more baseballs get put into play, I guess it sometimes feels like he’s executing a tightrope walk across the ninth inning.
The numbers do not really support this — in fact, if you go by runs instead of earned runs, his 2013 and 2014 seasons look startlingly similar. He pitched 71 innings in each season. In 2013, he struck out 70 and in 2014, he struck out 71. In 2013, he walked eight batters. Last year he walked 11, though he did have one intentional walk. He gave up one home run in 2013 and two in 2014. He allowed 15 runs in each season.
I mention this consistency because in 2015, we’ve more or less all accepted that volatility is part of being a reliever. When you only throw ~70 innings in a season, almost anyone with decent stuff can have a great run or an awful one. For two years, though, the eighth or ninth innings of Pirate games have gone like this: Mark Melancon enters the game, Mark Melancon throws strikes, and the hitters either strikeout or ground out.
Given the Pirates’ approach to relievers, there’s a decent chance that 2015 will be Melancon’s last as a Pirate (he will be a free agent after 2016, so he’ll be a trade candidate next winter). For now, though, let’s take some time to appreciate the boring simplicity of what Mark Melancon does at the end of baseball games. It’s not exciting, but there aren’t very many relievers better than he is.
<500 is an ongoing series previewing 2015 for each key Pirate in fewer than 500 words
Photo by Justin K. Aller/Getty Images
