Starter Spotlight: Looking For A Rea of Hope

7-9-24 – By Michael Castrignano – @412DoublePlay on X

Heading to Milwaukee for a potentially pivotal series this week, the Pirates will once again face off against Brewers starting pitcher Colin Rea, who enters play tonight with an 8-2 record, 3.34 ERA and 1.20 WHIP over his 94.1 innings this season.

Although he’s experiencing a breakout this year, Rea is a well-traveled pitcher who has been a Quad-A type arm playing parts of four seasons in MLB over his career before this ascendence in Milwaukee last year.

His pitching repertoire consists of a fastball-heavy approach as he leans on his low-90s sinker, high-80s cutter and low-90s 4-seamer making up 70% of his total pitches thrown on average.

His secondary stuff mixes in a low-80s sweeper, high-80s splitter and a high-70s curve to change speed and eye level of hitters as each of these break down in the zone.

His sweeper has provided the best results for Rea, producing the highest amount of strikeouts (19 of 66) and the lowest oBA among his offerings at .068.

That sweeper has been his 2nd most used option against right handed hitters (after his sinker) as he charges the ball down and in against opponents while the pitch is breaking away from lefties.

Looking at his other pitches, it’s definitely the hard stuff that Pirates hitters should target. Each of his sinker, cutter and four seamer have xBA of 300+ and xSLG of .470+ as they’ve universally been hit hard and often.

While his face-value numbers disclosed earlier look nice, Rea’s sub-par K rate (16.8%) and walk rate (7.1%) have his expected values looking much less rosy than the surface metrics indicate.

Pirates batters will want to get on Rea early. His ERA first time through the order (4.80) is much higher than subsequent turns through and he’s surrendered 7 of his 13 long balls first time facing opposing hitters.

This has been an area where the Bucs have struggled as they have been held scoreless first turn through in each of their last ten games. Bats perked up again in yesterday’s game.

Rea has a record of 2-2 with an ERA of 5.56 and 16 strikeouts in 5 appearances versus the Pirates in his career so they have fared well against him historically.

If they can keep some momentum from yesterday heading into the divisional matchup today, they can get Rea out early and start digging in against the Brew Crew bullpen.

Let’s Go Bucs!