7-1-2025 – By Michael Castrignano – @412DoublePlay on X
Pittsburgh’s offense has been rolling as they were able to shell Erick Fedde in the game yesterday after languishing against him in the previous few outings. Today’s starter, Andre Pallante, has been similarly dominant against the Pirates in his career to date.
Pallante faced the Bucs three times last season (covered here, here and here) combining 20 innings, 11 hits, 2 runs, 4 walks and 17 strikeouts over those contests. Over 34 career innings against the Pirates, he has a 2.65 ERA over 34 innings pitched.
While Pallante hasn’t been quite as bad as Fedde this season, he isn’t exactly installing a shelf for a Cy Young in his home as he enters the day with a 4.43 ERA through his first 87.1 innings pitched with 60 strikeouts to 21 walks, one of the worst K-BB rates in MLB.
One thing he has excelled at is generating ground balls. Among qualified starters, only Jose Soriano of the Angels has a higher rate of putting the ball on the ground than Pallante.
Although his ability to generate grounders has been mostly successful for him, his expected metrics – at least as compared to his peers – present some hurdles long-term.
Pallante’s xSLG of .435 is a bit higher than his already steep actual mark (.430) while his .284 BABIP is significantly lower than his career average (.298). Additionally, his hard hit rate of 45.1% and xBA of .277 indicate that he has gotten a fair bit of luck in the early going this season.
Looking at his pitch mix, Pallante primarily works off mid-90s 4-seamers high in the zone when facing lefties, dispatching the pitch 65% of the time this season to poor results as left-handed hitters have 5 home runs off the offering with an xBA of .313.
Right-handed hitters are seeing a more even distribution of the 4-seam (30.8%) with his high-80s slider (34.3%) and mid-90s sinker (25.1%) but the results against his fastball have been the same with a .333 batting average against and .550 SLG% for righties.
Universally, hitters targeting the fastballs have found success as his sinker has been hit at a .373 clip – though, the expected values for the pitch have been more kind to the Cardinals righty.
Pallante can go to the high-70s knuckle-curve to change speeds and induce swings-and-misses (40% whiff rate) but Bucs bats need to hold on the heat today, take the walks when possible and attack mistakes in the zone.
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