It seems almost too obvious to say that strikeouts are important.  After all, anytime the ball is put in play, lots of variables immediately activate.  The defense could commit an error, runners can move up on a sacrifice or on an errant or ill advised throw.  By recording outs without the ball being in play, your obviously much better off.  But in case it wasn’t already clear, there are 2 situations from last nights game that illustrate that clearly.

Last nights starter, Brian Burress, didn’t record a lot of strikeouts and he was far from efficient.  He did manage to go 5.1 shutout innings by getting out of jams in the 3rd and fourth innings.  The Dodgers should have been able to score in both of those innings.  Getting out of the third unscathed was mostly the result of a fortunate call at second base when Clayton Kershaw tried to advance on a pitch in the dirt.  The 4th is a different story.  The Dodgers had runners on 2nd and 3rd with only one out.  By striking out Casey Blake on 3 pitches, Burress was able to induce a 2 out grounder from James Loney to end the inning.  I’m not going to say they definitely score without that K, but lets just say that organizational depth pitchers don’t usually get out of 2nd and 3rd, 1 out jams in 2 consecutive innings.

Now lets talk about Burres opposite number last night, Clayton Kershaw.  Like Burres he wasn’t exactly efficient last night, throwing 117 pitches over 6.1 IP and walking 4.  But the Pirates offense never got anything going, and only managed the 2 runs they did in the 1st inning as a result of Matt Kemp badly miss playing a Ryan Doumit single into a “triple”.  Kershaw’s 7 strikeouts prevented the Pirates from ever getting a rally going.  He stuck out at least one batter in 5 of the 7 innings he pitched in.  It’s that ability to get strikeouts that makes him the Dodgers ace.  The fact that no one on the Pirates current staff displays that ability is at least somewhat concerning.  I’m willing to bet that if this franchise ever does turn it around*, they will do so only once they find a true staff ace.  Go back through World Series teams and try to find one without a true ace.  Just in the last few years, the ‘09 Yanks had CC, the ‘08 Phils had Hammels, the ‘07 Red Sox had Beckett, I think you get the point.  Teams that compete at the highest levels do so with elite starting pitching.  At this point, and unfortunately for the foreseeable future, the Pirates don’t have that.

*By “turn it around” I don’t mean 82 wins.  I mean that they are in thick of the division race, competing for playoff spots, or dare I say even NL Pennants and World Series titles.

In addition, in an unexpected move the team has DFA’d Hayden Penn to make room on the 25 and 40 man rosters for Brian Burress, who will start tonight in place of Ross Ohlendorf.  Ohlendorf has been scratched due to back spasms, but the team thinks he will be ready for his next start.  All of this, and much more detail can be found in here in MLB.com beat writer Jen Langosch’s post about the subject.

Penn was hardly with the team for long enough to know his name, he was claimed off waivers during the last week of Spring Training, and he struggled in 3 appearances to the tune of 30.86 ERA.  I’m curious why the team picked Burress to start (without looking closely at the AAA rotation, my guess is he may have been the only option available), but his stats are far from impressive and I’m not expecting much from him.  Let’s just hope he can keep the team in the game tonight and that Ohlendorf isn’t out for more than 1 start.

EDIT: Jen Langosch has the reasoning for why Burress was the one called up in her game preview post.  Basically, due to an obscure MLB rule, at this early point in the season guys already on the 40 man can’t be called up without placing someone on the DL.  The Bucs aren’t ready to put Ohlendorf on the DL, so that rules out Veal, Hart, Lincoln, and Jakubauskas.  Burress was scheduled to start tonight for Indy anyway, so giving him the call made the most sense.