Trader Jim Hendry found a pair of left-handed pitchers before the non-waiver trade deadline. Since his quota of trades with Baltimore was filled, Hendry called upon another favorite partner, the Pittsburgh Pirates. Kevin Hart, Jose Ascanio and Josh Harrison were sent to the Pirates for John Grabow and Tom Gorzelanny.

Grabow has already showed his stuff in relief, and, on Tuesday night, Gorzelanny got his chance as a starter. Gorzelanny last pitched in the majors in June, but that was out of the bullpen. Pittsburgh stashed Gorzelanny in Triple-A most of the Summer, where he was impressive working in the Indianapolis rotation.

The Question Mark

The anticipation of Gorzelanny’s debut included questions about his velocity. After checking out his PITCHf/x right after the trade, I found his fastball was touching 95 out of the bullpen. That’s not the same as doing that as a starter, but it was a good sign.

Take a look at Gorzelanny’s speed chart through June of 2009.

I’m not making too much of the 2007 data. PITCHf/x was new and not as reliable as it is today.

An “Aside” on Gorzelanny’s Stuff

Once the two southpaws were acquired, I posted a profile on each over at Cubs f/x. Once Gorzelanny was named starter for three turns in place of Ted Lilly, I further analyzed Gorzelanny’s fastball and separated his two-seam sinkers from his four-seam heaters.

You an check-out the details at those two links, but, in short, Gorzelanny throws a curveball around 77 MPH, it’s not a big breaker, and isn’t too much off a slider in terms of spin. His slider, meanwhile, is thrown harder, around 82, and doesn’t look like anything special.

Gorzelanny’s third off-speed pitch is a change-up, which is an interesting pitch. He throws it below 80 at times, but has gone but past 88 with it on occasion. Still from other fastballs in that outing, I suspect he may, from time to time, lack sufficient gap in velocity from his fastballs (both averaging around 89/90, ranging from 85 to 95).

The Debut

You already know how it worked out, Gorzelanny throwing shut-out ball into the 8th, earning a win the first time out. But here’s how his stuff looked via PITCHf/x.

Gorzelanny’s two-seam fastball ranged from 91 to 94, his four-seam 92 to 96. Now, I have an inkling that Cincy’s system runs a little hot, just one or maybe two MPH. Maybe. Even with that guarded thinking, he threw the ball plenty hard and never lost his velocity. That’s a tight range, just 5 mph across the pair of pitches. And three MPH above his pre-Cub averages.

The change, which I had some concerns about, checked-in between 83 and 88 MPH. That’s spot on, about 7 or 8 notches off the heat.

The slider/curve combo were pretty distinct, with the curve sporting some OK top spin and coming out of Gorzelanny’s hand around 76 MPH. The slider was pretty straight, spin-wise, running around the same speed as his slower change-ups. Pretty typical.

With concerns about velocity and separation set aside (along with overall results, natrually), the next questions are strikes, swings and whiffs. Three of my favorite things.

Gorzelanny only threw four curveballs, and three of them crossed my two-foot wide strike zone. Less than half of the other 268 we have in the PITCHf/x data found the zone. Oh, the only swing on his curve Tuesday? A whiff.

On to the slider. Historically he throws it for strikes 49%, but against the Reds it found the box 55%. Not a real difference, so he was just about normal in that regard. Whiff rate ran 29%, about the same as his 32% rate as a Pirate. The Reds did swing at the slider more often than most line-ups (64% vs 47%) but did no damage on balls in play.

Gorzelanny’s change-up worked about the same as normal in Cincinnati. Like the slider, a few more strikes (55% vs 49% again), less whiffs (13% vs 22%) but, again, no damage on batted balls. More on those batted balls in a moment. First, the fastballs.

Like the change, not much to report on the four-seam fastball. Just about on his average (52%) in the zone, and a meaningless boost of 5 percentage points from his average whiff rate of 15%. The sinker, meanwhile, had it going on.

72% strikes with the two-seam fastball, compared to Gorzelanny’s own average of 56%. That avearge is nothing to snort at for a moving fastball, but pushing 3 out of 4 with it is nuts. Going along with all those strikes were a few more swings but no more whiffs. Again, I want to point out that his average sinker whiff rate of 13% is impressive, it’s a power pitch not a Derek Lowe worm killer. Again, as with everything else, nothing did damage when put in play.

Balls in Play

Based on the MLB Gameday stringer’s classifications, here are Gorzelanny’s ground ball, line drive, fly ball and pop-up rates. The shaded rows are from his dark days as a Pirate.

*no curveballs put in play against as a Cub

• The change, for the most part, was knocked into the ground or skied over the infield.
• No one lifted his sinker, which makes me feel better about calling his two-seam fastball a sinker.
• The “rising” four-seam fastball a fly ball machine, far beyond what his past numbers show.
• Nobody squared up the slider for a line drive

I’m totally willing to overlook the fact that Gorzelanny grew-up a White Sox fan. If he does, way to go Trader Jim for the sneaky deadline score.