Pitching Questions
P1: How many different starting pitchers will the Atlanta Braves use during the regular season? [13 in 2018]
- 13 OR FEWER: 47.6%
- 14 OR MORE: 52.4%
The real answer? Eleven. Two of these (Josh Tomlin and Touki Toussaint) started just 1 game apiece, so this was close to being down to a single digit result.
This 2019 figure is also down from recent years during the ‘rebuild’:
- 2018: 13
- 2017: 11
- 2016: 16
Does that mean more rotation stability going forward? Let’s hope so.
P2: The Atlanta Braves team leader in regular season innings pitched will have…
- 150.O INNINGS OR FEWER: 25.9%
- 150.1 INNINGS OR MORE: 74.1%
This question had as much to do with the potential makeup of the rotation as well as the fact that we would be entering the 2019 season with multiple injured pitchers trying to get back into major league action, so it was far from a slam-dunk answer.
As it turned out, Mike Soroka, Max Fried, and Julio Teheran all exceeded 150 innings… all over 160, in fact. That was an excellent result.
P3: The Braves bullpen staff will have a walk rate of 4.0 or less in 2019 [4.41 per 9 innings in 2018].
- TRUE: 36.8%
- FALSE: 63.2%
Well, this didn’t start the season very well, did it?
Maybe it’s a testament of all the transactions that kept the entire bullpen wearing “Hello, my name is _______” stickers for most of the Summer, but in the end, the relief pitchers posted a 3.79 rate of walks per 9 innings.
Of all these answers… that’s probably the most surprising.
P4: The Braves pitcher with the most saves in 2019 will be surnamed…
- MINTER: 36.5%
- VIZCAINO: 25.0%
- NEITHER OF THE ABOVE: 38.5%
Luke Jackson recorded 18 saves. Sure, some happened with the patient on life-support, but they were saves nonetheless.
Second place went to Mark Melancon with 11 saves. For the record, A.J. Minter had 5 and Arodys Vizcaino managed 1.
Out of the 26 different relievers used, 11 of them recorded saves… including Jonny Venters.
P5. The entire pitching staff will have an ERA better than last year’s 3.75 figure.
- TRUE: 58.7%
- FALSE: 41.3%
Didn’t quite get there… a 4.20 ERA was the composite number for everyone.
The real problems here were 2-fold: bullpen issues early on, and (perhaps) the hitter-happy baseballs (which had scoring up by 0.38 runs per game over 2018, fueled by a homer increase of .24 per game… over 20%).