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Karstens’ turn-around buoys Pirates’ surprising success
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Photo
Pittsburgh Pirates' Jeff Karstens delivers a pitch in the eighth inning of a baseball game against the Houston Astros, Friday, July 15, 2011, in Houston. Karstens pitched a complete game as the Pirates beat the Astros 4-0. (AP Photo/Pat Sullivan)
Associated Press
PITTSBURGH
Jeff Karstens heard the chatter. Hang around the fringe as long as the Pirates right-hander has and it’s hard to ignore.
Manager Clint Hurdle heard it too. He saw the reports labeling Karstens a “five and 75 guy,” meaning once he got through five innings or 75 pitches, things started to get ugly.
Did it bother Karstens? Sure. But considering his lackluster numbers during his first five seasons with the New York Yankees and the Pirates — a 12-27 record with a 5.07 ERA — he couldn’t exactly blame scouts for placing him with the not-so flattering tag.
“They had the stats to back it up,” Karstens said with a shrug of considerably slight shoulders.
Not anymore.
The 28-year-old Karstens is arguably the biggest surprise on one of baseball’s biggest surprises. Thrust into the rotation when Ross Ohlendorf went down with a shoulder injury in April, Karstens is having the kind of breakthrough year he wondered would ever come.
Scan the list of lowest ERAs in the National League and there’s the usual suspects like Philadelphia’s Roy Halladay and San Francisco’s Tim Lincecum. And then there’s Karstens, shipped from the Yankees to the Pirates three summers ago as a throw-in on a trade that sent Xavier Nady and Damaso Marte to New York and heralded prospects Jose Tabata and Daniel McCutchen to Pittsburgh.
Karstens was an afterthought then. He looks like a steal now.
The guy, who never met a corner of the plate he didn’t like to nibble on, is 8-5 with a 2.28 ERA — second best in the league among eligible pitchers — while becoming Pittsburgh’s most consistent starter.
How’d it happen? Karstens isn’t quite sure. Hurdle thinks Karstens simply got tired of reading the scouting report on himself and decided he was at the point in his career where opportunities to change people’s perception were starting to run out.
“Sometimes what bothers people is when [the perceptions] are accurate and you can’t get out of it,” Hurdle said. “Oh, he’s a 5 and 75 guy, you keep going 5 and 75 and the barrel starts showing up [and] the noise and the madness. You either do something about it or that’s who you are.”
In four months, Karstens has morphed from long-reliever to workhorse. He’s pitched into the seventh inning in each of his last nine starts, including a typically efficient seven-inning outing in a 3-1 loss to the Cincinnati Reds on Wednesday.
Karstens needed just 77 pitches to get through one of baseball’s most productive lineups.
For a guy who wasn’t quite sure of his role four months ago, he’s been a key cog to one of baseball’s best stories.
“You’ve got to love watching him go out there and pitch,” closer Joel Hanrahan said. “When he was in the bullpen, we always saw him as a starter in our eyes. And man, he’s doing it.”