The Pittsburgh Pirates have a very good pitcher in Jameson Taillon. What is it that’s been giving him trouble, lately?

Ivan Nova got the Opening Day start this year for the Pittsburgh Pirates but everyone knew who the true “ace” of the staff was. Jameson Taillon may have only been entering his second full season but he’s showed promise, maturity, and consistency in that time frame. The Pittsburgh Pireates pitcher started off well, earning NL Player of the Week and had an ERA under 1.00.

Then Taillon had an atrocious start against the Philadelphia Phillies. No big deal, even Cy Young Award winners trip up sometimes. The Detroit Tigers came to town and Taillon got rocked again, although he lasted twice as long (3.2 IP vs 1.2 IP).

With 1,629 RBIs, @MiguelCabrera passes Harold Baines (1,628) for 30th in MLB history. pic.twitter.com/Nl0JShcHca

— Detroit Tigers (@tigers) April 25, 2018

Two atrocious starts don’t form a pattern but it starts to raise some questions, especially when the Pirates need Taillon to develop into a top of the rotation guy. Are these last couple starts a cause for concern? Is something wrong with Taillon?

The first thing to check is velocity. Thankfully, Taillon’s velo has been hanging around 95.0 MPH through every start. So the problem isn’t with velo, which probably means he isn’t injured.

His pitch selection has been relatively the same throughout the year. He hasn’t become fastball happy and been punished for it (like Tyler Glasnow last year). The ratio of strikes to balls has also remained pretty consistent, indicating he still has control. Even a spin rate check (courtesy of baseballsavant.com) doesn’t raise any red flags. So the pitches aren’t flying any differently and control isn’t an issue.

What exactly is causing the troubles for the Pittsburgh Pirates starting pitcher?

We start to find some red flags in BABIP (batting average on balls in play, “luck”). In the three good games, Taillon maintained a .300 or lower BABIP. In the games against the Phillies and Tigers, he had BABIPs of .500 and .600 respectively. That is astronomically high. Before saddling Taillon’s terrible luck as the true cause, take a look at the expected batting averages over this year’s starts.

Game Date Batting Average (BA) Expected Batting Average (xBA) 4/2/18 .200 .149 4/8/18 .087 .168 4/14/18 .182 .204 4/19/18 .444 .390 4/25/18 .476 .338

Even though the hitters were over performing, they were still hitting Taillon much harder than in previous outings. Luck doesn’t come into play when finding xBA, opponents are simply making much better contact.

So Taillon is getting unlucky but also giving up better contact. Let’s take look inside the strike zone.

When things were going well Taillon was painting. Sure some of the pitches are a bit over the plate but he was consistently pounding that corner.

The above image is not good. His precision improved but the accuracy did not. You don’t have to be Ray Searage to know that leaving pitches over the middle of the plate is bad. Maybe he’s struggling with one pitch, where are the fastballs ending up?

Really hammering that outside pitch albeit leaving some pitches in the middle.

Oh. That’ll do it. Throwing that many pitches down broadway wouldn’t even work for Nolan Ryan.

We’re on a roll with these, so let’s look at Taillon’s second most frequent pitch, the curve.

Perfect placement for a curveball, not hung, and in a hard to hit location. That’s consistency a pitching machine would like to have.

Well, I think we solved the mystery of all those Tiger home runs….

Taillon isn’t missing the strike zone instead he’s missing within the zone. It seems like Jameson has lost the feel for his pitches. He didn’t lose his control and hasn’t mentioned anything about being mechanically off. To me, that says he lost his feel for the break on his pitches. This is a game of inches and Taillon being off just slightly is creating terrible results.

Hopefully, work in between starts will help get him back in his groove. It’s not quite time to start panicking in Pittsburgh, for now.

*Stats were acquired from baseballsavant.com, fangraphs.com, and baseballreference.com