Bucs' biggest surprise
PITTSBURGH — Jeff Karstens heard the chatter. Hang around the fringe as long as the Pirates' right-hander has and it's hard to ignore.
Pittsburgh 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.
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, 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 five and 75 guy, you keep going five 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.
Karstens needed just 77 pitches to get through one of baseball's most productive lineups. He didn't overpower the Reds — he doesn't overpower anybody, really, with his middling 88-91 mph fastball — but now he knows he doesn't have to.
He knows he's got eight teammates around him who can catch the ball easier than he can throw it past a hitter. He's more than happy to let them do their job.
"Get them involved," said Karstens, who hasn't struck out more than five hitters in a game all year. "The more they're involved, the better they're going to be at the plate and in the dugout."
Pitching coach Ray Searage says Karstens has developed into "a pitcher's pitcher," relying more on control and confidence than electric stuff.
"He's playing a chess game with the hitter and the hitter is going to try and figure out his chess game, his strategy," Searage said. "He's going to go out there and try and have the hitter hit his pitch and get himself out."
Even if Searage chides the reserved, laid-back San Diego native for being too "rocket scientisty" at times.
