Starter Spotlight: Ryne Time

5-26-2025 – By Michael Castrignano – @412DoublePlay on X

After a successful home-stand which ended on a bit of a sour note, the Bucs head to the Copper State to face the Arizona Diamondbacks, who have Ryne Nelson on the bump for the first game of the set.

The Pirates battered Nelson a bit last time they faced-off on August 4th, getting to him for 4 runs off 6 hits, 2 walks, a hit batter and 7 strikeouts over 5 innings of work.

Nelson has fluttered between starting and long relief this season with much more time spent on the latter. He enters the day with a 4.60 ERA over 31.1 innings but has had considerably more success as a starter (2.89 ERA) than in relief (5.32 ERA), albeit in a small sample size.

Much of Nelson’s success comes from his mid-90s 4-seam fastball that can touch 98 and he goes to the offering nearly 60% of the time. The pitch plays up due to his above-average extension resulting in the 95-97 velocity actually looking closer to 98-100 from the hitter’s perspective. He’ll mix in a low-90s cutter, mid-80s slider and change with a low-80s curve but primarily will hold to fastball against hitters from both sides of the plate. 

Nelson has had some control issues and struggles to throw his secondary offerings for strikes but has historically been much better (6.7% career walk rate) and fills up the zone with his fastball, which has resulted in a 71% strike rate.

His success with the pitch has been especially fruitful against lefties, who are batting a meager .184 against the offering, while righties are modestly better with a .216 clip against the pitch.

Lefties have done statistically worse against Nelson (.176 batting average compared to .239 for righties) but underlying numbers indicate that Ryne has gotten lucky in those instances as lefties are striking out at just a 20.3% rate (25.4% for righties) but have a .189 BABIP and 90.8 MPH average exit velocity off the fastball.

Gear up for the heater high in the zone or breaking balls that catch too much of the plate. The Snakes have a tough lineup so the Bucco offense needs to continue the outburst from this past weekend to get the road trip started on a hot note.