The Bucs handled this one easily. Jeff Karstens was cruising, allowing only three hits and a run through his six innings of work, striking out four, walking nobody, and taking a no-hitter into the fifth inning. For some reason, a lot of fans want Brad Lincoln called up and Karstens taken out of the rotation. While I’m not opposed to the idea of Lincoln getting a chance in the Majors, I think Karstens has earned his stay in the rotation for a while as he’s sporting a 3-2 record and a 3.62 ERA. He has his problems going deep into games, but so do most fifth starters. Let him stay in the rotation until he either proves he can’t or Lincoln proves he’s too good to keep in AAA. Right now, neither thing is happening.

Neil Walker turned on beast mode in this one, collecting two hits which both went for extra bases – a double and a homer. He collected five RBIs on the day and six total bases hitting from the cleanup spot.

Andrew McCutchen had a hit, a walk, and a steal, and looks to be turning it on at the plate lately after a somewhat disappointing start batting average wise.

Ronny Cedeno continued his hot streak with a hit and a steal. He even threw in a walk for good measure. Actually, Cedeno has been walking much more recently than he normally does. Tonight’s game brings his triple-slash to an unreal .322/.435/.458 since April 29. I know this probably won’t last, but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy it while it does.

Garrett Jones had a single, a double and a walk, knocking in two runs.

Jose Tabata had two hits, two walks and three runs scored. Hopefully this is a sign of him breaking out of his slump.

Even Lyle Overbay got in on the act, hitting a solo homer in the sixth inning.

It’s great to see a strong performance from this team as we open interleague play, as this is usually the point in the season when the team falls off a cliff that they can never climb back up.

The only complaints I can possibly have about this game are that Pedro Alvarez was on the bench for Brandon Wood (an emerging trend that I’m not at all a fan of – especially when Alvarez homered last night.) and that I had Tabata on the bench in my fantasy league. The Bucs are now playing .500 ball in blowouts. This is, again, a significant improvement over their 2010 record of 11-39 in such games.

I’m not here to argue against that. Walker has had a low walk rate for most of his pro career, and it’s largely what has held him back to this point. Him taking more walks in AAA this year led to him hitting better overall and earning the call to the Majors.

That trend has not continued in the Major Leagues, though, as Walker has drawn only 11 walks since coming up, good for a 5.4% rate. If that rate is maintained, he’s likely to regress just like Matt said.

Something I’m interested in looking at, though, is whether there’s any hope that Walker will start drawing walks again.

Looking at his plate discipline data at FanGraphs, I think there’s reason to believe that the walks will come.

According to FanGraphs, Walker swings at pitches out of the strike zone 29.1% of the time. That sounds like a lot, but the league average is 28.9%, so there’s only a 0.2% difference there. As far as making contact with those outside pitches, he does it 73.5% of the time, presumably fouling off most of those to keep the AB going. The league average is 66.5%. And finally, his swinging strike percentage is 8% as compared to the league average of 8.4%.

So in all discipline categories that involve pitches out of the strike zone (and thus balls, assuming the ump doesn’t blow the call) Walker is around or better than the league average at handling those pitches.

The strikes against him are the following: He swings at pitches in the zone a bit more often than the league average (66.7% to 64.3%). It’s possible that some of those are borderline pitches which would have been called balls had he held off. He also swings in general at more pitches than the average batter (46.7% to 45.5%).

If there’s one thing that stands out with Walker, it’s his percentage of first-pitch strikes. The first pitch against Walker has been a strike 63.4% of the time as compared to a 58.9% league average. I’ve not paid close enough attention to see if that’s because Walker swings through a lot of first pitches or if it’s just a statistical anomaly and Walker has taken more first pitch strikes than average hitters. If it’s the former, we have a problem. If it’s the latter, a regression is due.

Regardless of all this, taking walks is not about taking balls. It’s about taking ball four. Based on this data, I’d say Walker is due to start walking more. However, we’ll have to wait and see.

UPDATE: Matt has since taken this post and played with some more numbers that I wasn’t aware were available, and has come up with a triple-slash line based on what we should expect from Walker going forward. The results confirm my thoughts on Walker: he’s not going to keep hitting like a star, but if he plays good defense at second, he can hit well enough to stick around as an average player.

The Pirates have four players in their everyday lineup – Andrew McCutchen, Neil Walker, Pedro Alvarez and Jose Tabata – who are either rookies or in their second year of Major League baseball. All of them are young players, Walker being the oldest at 24. It would be easy to point to this fact and say “that’s why we have so many fundamental mistakes. There are so many young players.”

This all came to a head for me today when I was listening to Rocco DeMaro’s post-game show Extra Innings, and Greg Brown said he thought the team should get a veteran like Cincinnati did with Scott Rolen, and talking about how in Texas they have a lot of young players and he had heard a story about how they all listen to Michael Young because of his experience. He then dismissed the previous signings of guys like Doug Mientkiewicz and Eric Hinske (and presumably Ryan Church this year) because none of them were starters.

There’s probably some truth to the fact that young players tend to listen to what veterans have to say when it comes to playing the game. Speaking personally, if I were a rookie I would soak up every bit of information I could from veterans.

The problem is, it’s not the young players that keep making the mistakes, it’s the team’s veterans! While guys like Pedro Alvarez have made a few physical mistakes such as striking out way too often, I can’t recall seeing any of the four players I named above make a mental mistake this season. That’s come from the team’s vets.

Ryan Doumit has made mistake after mistake this season, both physical and mental. He’s been a big leaguer since 2005, yet he almost cost the Pirates a game because he tried to tag up from second with one out as the go-ahead run, and then he didn’t even slide when he ran home.

Lastings Milledge may only be 25 years old, but remember that he was once considered to be the next big thing in baseball and came up at a young age. He’s been in the Majors since 2006, only a year less than Doumit. His baserunning errors and misjudgement in the outfield both when running routes and when deciding whether or not to dive have reached nearly legendary status in Pittsburgh.

Ronny Cedeno and Bobby Crosby are both experienced shortstops, with Cedeno having been in the Majors since 2005 and Crosby since 2003. Despite a strong defensive showing, Cedeno made so many gaffes at the plate and on the bases that he’s effectively been benched in favor of Crosby, and Crosby has responded by playing even worse, collecting seven errors in his fifteen games at short.

This team doesn’t need any veteran leadership, it needs to play like its rookies have.