Kipper : #Pirates Looking To Turn Francisco Liriano Into This Years A.J. Burnett

francisco_liariano.jpgI'll admit, when I heard that the Pittsburgh Pirates had signed Francisco Liriano the first thing that popped into my mind was "He's been terrible the last couple of years". Rewind back to February of 2012 when the Pirates were in talks with A.J. Burnett, my first thought was "He's been terrible the last couple of years".
It turns out that the Pirates had helped resurrect A.J. Burnett's career, even if it might have been for one season, they took a high risk, high reward gamble and got the reward. That is something that seldom happens for the Pittsburgh Pirates. The negative here is that A.J. Burnett needed to a change of scenery more than anything and Francisco Liriano needs to regain some semblance of control and command.
$7 million per year, $14 million over 2 seasons is a lot of money to the point where it is certainly fair for anyone to question whether the Pittsburgh Pirates overpaid. For $2 million less per year they could've retained a consistent 4-4.50 ERA guy in Kevin Correia, but instead chose to go the route of Francisco Liriano who the Pirates paid more for despite his recent seasons producing abysmal results. I personally believe that the market for Liriano was cheaper than what the Pittsburgh Pirates paid but that's my own personal speculation. If I wrote for the Tribune Review, I would say this opinion was backed up by an Anonymous unnamed MLB GM.
So, why sign Francisco Liriano?
A.J. Burnett.
When I paused after my initial reaction to this signing and recalled the negotiations to bring in A.J. Burnett I started thinking about how the Pirates had turned A.J. Burnett around last season. The pressure was gone. The expectations weren't even great. A.J. Burnett was expected to be the Pittsburgh Pirates Ace, but there was also a sense of belief that he wasn't going to put up Ace numbers as he did for most of 2012. A.J. Burnett came into Pittsburgh carrying a 5.15 ERA in 2011 and 5.26 ERA in 2010 and saw that dip to 3.51 in 2012. Francisco Liriano comes into Pittsburgh carrying a 5.34 ERA in 2012 and 5.09 ERA in 2011. Very similar ERA results. you can go a step further and look at an "Adjusted ERA" stat like ERA- at Fan Graphs and both are the same. A.J. Burnett so am improvement there this season as well.
So the question is what improved for A.J. Burnett? One thing that improved was his control. Now, A.J. Burnett's control was never bad. It was up to 3.8 BB/9 which is a little on the high side and saw it decrease to 2.7 in 2012. Burnett's K rate was actually on the low side of his career as well. His 8.0 K/9 was the lowest he had ever produced. Nothing jumps out until you take a look at his HR/9 and realize that getting out of Yankee Stadium was good for this stat as it went from 1.5 to 0.8 HR/9..
So I dug further on Burnett looking for signs of Ray Searage/Neal Huntington and the first place I went was to check out his Ground Ball % and there it was. A.J. Burnett's Ground Ball % went from 49.2% in 2011 to 56.9% in 2012. More importantly was seeing his Fly Ball % reduced from 32.3% to 24.3%. Make no mistakes, that is a pretty dramatic reduction in Fly Ball rate and it keeps the ball in the park more which is why you saw a big reduction in Home Runs given up by A.J. Burnett outside of getting to pitch in the pitcher friendly PNC Park.
This is going to be the same philosophy brought to Francisco Liriano. The first thing they are going to do is look at film and figure out where his mechanics were when he was good, where they are when he is bad and look at where they are now and get him back to a certain point. The word on Liriano is that he is physically fine, mentally he talks and acts like a winner but somewhere there's a confidence issue and a mechanical issue. Remember, when A.J. Burnett came from the Yankees the fans were running him out of town. His connection with New York was on the sour side and we've seen the complete opposite from him in his near year in the Organization. The guy was reluctantly taken away from chatting and signing autographs at Pirates Fest and fought to make sure he came back continued interacting with the fans.
One thing that the Pittsburgh Pirates are going to do with Francisco Liriano is bringing down that Fly Ball rate from 34.9% and 35.8% he's posted the past 2 seasons and getting it back to 27.4% he was at in 2010 which was also around where he was before Tommy Johns Surgery. Get that Ground Ball % up from 43.8% and 48.6% where it was the past 2 terrible seasons of his to up to 53.6% where it was in 2010. This is what Ray Searage is good at. He's good at getting Pitchers to improve their ground ball % and rely on the middle infield defense.
104b6b8aa94cdae007e203afcc983a81.jpgBy getting Liriano to pitch to a little of contact, his K/9 rate should dip a little bit but the thought process is so should his BB/9 which has been atrocious when he's had his bad seasons. His BB/9 in both 2012 and 2011 was 5.0 which is dreadful. By comparison going back to earlier in this Post, A.J. Burnett had a BB/9 of 3.8 that needed a little reduction, so that tells you where Liriano is but, he has posted great control numbers in the past and post Tommy Johns surgery. He had a 3.7 BB/9 in 2008 a year after Tommy Johns surgery and in2010 posted a 2.7 BB/9 which is where the Pittsburgh Pirates would most likely want to see him back at.
I looked at a number of other things such as Ballpark factors and it's really difficult to get a feel for Target Field since it's so new and the Twins have had Jeckyl and Hyde seasons there that skew the numbers either way. What we know is that PNC Park is certainly a pitching friendly Ball Park and it's a ball park that is inviting to left handed pitchers. For as bad as Erik Bedard was last season, he put up a 3.26 ERA at PNC Park which is half of what he allowed on the Road - 6.98 ERA. Francisco Liriano was indifferent in 2012 and 2011 posting up similar numbers on the Road and at Home. It's not hard to imagine he will put up better numbers at PNC than he does on the road and the friendliness of PNC Park for left handed pitchers could actually be a lot of the difference in pulling down his ERA. The splits amongst Pirates pitchers Home and Away over the years have been fairly night and day anyways.
That potential is there and I don't doubt that Neal Huntington looked at Francisco Liriano's problems and saw them as something that played into the hands of Ray Searage as a good fit. He's a big risk that if the Pittsburgh Pirates are able to catch lightning in a bottle twice will give them a very strong starting rotation - on paper. If A.J. Burnett can duplicate his 2012 success, Wandy Rodriguez continues being what he's been for years, James McDonald can duplicate his first half season success over a full year, that is 4 out of 5 rotation starters that could carry this team regardless of the Offense

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