I finally got a chance to peruse this year’s Baseball Prospectus this weekend and among other things in the Pirates’ section (including a great team essay by Sarah Sprague, if you needed another reason to pick the book up) I was surprised to find this in the Jeff Locke blurb:
Despite being optioned three times last year, including once as a procedural move, Locke found time to notch 13 quality starts in 21 tries.
Quality starts are problematic, but they’re not a bad way to note that he was effective enough to give the Pirates a chance to win more often than he wasn’t.
I spent a little bit of time this winter trying to figure out exactly what it is that the Pirates see in Locke. That sounds critical, but I don’t mean it like that: I mean that I think that in general anyone that’s in the Pirates’ rotation is in it because they have some kind of unique skill, be it obvious (Gerrit Cole) or somewhat more less so (Vance Worley). I thought that maybe Locke had a bit of unseen deception the way that Worley does (he does have that exaggerated back turn, which can be used to generation deception), but I’m not sure that the numbers bear that out.
It turns out that the answer is probably more obvious. In Locke’s wins and his no decisions last year, he threw exactly 100 innings and struck out 62 hitters (5.58 K/9) and walked 21 (1.89 BB/9). That’s a really nice walk rate for Locke, given that his BB/9 was 4.5 in 2013, and while it’s not a ton of strikeouts, it is a 3:1 K:BB. In Locke’s seven losses, he he struck out 27 and walked 19 in 31 1/3 innings. That’s a much higher strikeout rate (7.8 K/9), but an awful walk rate (5.5 BB/9).
I don’t have a great explanation for this, but I think that maybe Locke’s problem comes when he ends up deep in the count in either direction. If you look at Locke’s splits, hitters have an .851 OPS against him when they’re ahead in the count, a .682 OPS against him in even counts, and a .632 OPS against him when he’s ahead in the count. Compare that to Worley, who is in huge trouble when he gets behind hitters (.942) and isn’t great when the count is even (.757), but is deadly when he gets ahead (.432).
That perception that Locke can’t finish hitters off is deserved. He’s not a strikeout pitcher, but he’s perfectly serviceable as a back-end starter when he’s throwing strikes and letter hitters hit the ball. I don’t think that he’s one of the five best starters on the Pirates right now, but he is out of options and will likely keep his roster spot because of the lack of rotation depth that Brandon Cumpton’s potential injury creates until Nick Kingham is ready. That’s perfectly fine: Locke is certainly talented enough that if Ray Searage and Jim Benedict can ever fully rein in his control, he’ll likely be worth a rotation spot on his own merits.
<500 is an ongoing series previewing 2015 for each key Pirate in fewer than 500 words.
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