Major League Baseball

Karstens' renaissance buoying surprising Pirates

Published Jul. 22, 2011 4:08 a.m. ET

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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, including a typically efficient seven-inning outing in a 3-1 loss to Cincinnati on Wednesday.

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.

''He'll over-abuse a certain pitch because he can throw them from a couple different arm slots and he'll go a little bit too crazy on it,'' Searage said. ''I tell him to use it when you want, but don't abuse it. He picks it up and goes `Yeah, you're right' and he kicks himself in the butt saying `I should have known better.'''

Karstens is no longer prone to repeating the same mistakes, and is going deeper in games because of it. He has thrown at least 77 pitches in each start over the last two months, and has become effective deeper in games because he's taken his ego out of the equation.

''I'm maybe not as `dumb' when I'm pitching,'' he said. ''I'm not trying to throw a fastball by a guy.''

Something he tried to do too often earlier in his career. Coming up, Karstens figured the point was to get the batter to swing and miss. It led him to be too tentative. He's gotten knocked around enough to know he's going to get hit. His job now is to try and make sure the ball gets hit at somebody.

For the most part, it's worked. Though he was undone Wednesday by a pair of unearned runs on errors by shortstop Chase d'Arnaud, Karstens also was bailed out three times by spectacular plays in the field.

''He has our trust,'' centerfielder Andrew McCutchen said, ''and we trust him as well.''

Karstens is doing his best not to get ahead of himself. But it's getting tougher, isn't it?

After all, the Pirates are in the middle of their best season in nearly 20 years. And he appears to finally have grown comfortable in his own skin.

For a guy who wasn't quite sure of his role four months ago, he's been a key cog to one of baseball's best stories.

''You've got to love watching him go out there and pitch,'' closer Joel Hanrahan said. ''When he was in the bullpen, we always saw him as a starter in our eyes.

''And man, he's doing it.''

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