Nicolas pitching more confidently in bigs

This story was excerpted from Alex Stumpf’s Pirates Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

It was during his second outing last year that Kyle Nicolas started to realize his stuff could play in the Majors. After a rough debut on September 19, 2023, allowing six runs while only getting one out against the Cubs, his second outing still wasn’t exactly smooth, walking a pair and surrendering a run over two innings. But he saw he could get big league hitters out that day in Cincinnati. It was part a sigh of relief, part reaffirmation that this wasn’t just a September cup of coffee, and he belonged here.

“I always knew my stuff’s been good,” Nicolas said. “It’s just been filling up the zone. They’re going to have to respect all my pitches in the zone.”

Nicolas is right on both fronts, but especially the first. The 25-year-old rookie right-hander’s stuff is really good, and there’s data to back it up. Not just his 3.28 ERA and 40 strikeouts over 35 2/3 innings, but metric data that suggests his 98 mph fastball and his spin breaking offerings are some of the best on the entire Pirates staff.

The Stat “Stuff+” takes data – such as movement, velocity, release point and more – and grades those pitches and scores them on a scale where 100 is average compared to the rest of the league. Anything above 100 is considered to be above average and anything below is considered below average, very similar to how ERA+ or OPS+ work. So 110 is 10 percent better than average, while 80 is 20 percent worse.

The Pirates’ leaders in Stuff+ aren’t exactly shocking: David Bednar and Aroldis Chapman, both of whom have a score of 132. They’ve been All-Stars multiple times, Chapman is one of the game’s all-time southpaw relievers and Bednar has an incredible three-pitch mix. But who takes the bronze for the Pirates? It’s not Paul Skenes, Jared Jones or Mitch Keller.

It’s Nicolas, with a score of 128. When Henry Davis said Nicolas had “closer stuff” after catching him in June, he wasn’t lying. It grades out right with two legitimate closer arms.

“We always knew it,” pitching coach Oscar Marin said with a chuckle after hinting the Pirates’ internal metrics are just as bullish on Nicolas as the public Stuff+. “It’s one of the reasons why we wanted him up here.”

There is just one hangup. Stuff+ does not take location into account, and for the first month and some change this year, he struggled to find the zone consistently and get outs, and his ERA was 6.55 through his first dozen outings. He had stuff, but it wasn’t playing the way he wanted it to.

The solution was threefold. One, they tweaked where he was positioned on the mound, moving him more center to give him a better visual towards home. They also emphasized keeping his head still to not create too much superfluous movement in his delivery.

But perhaps most importantly, Marin wanted to instill more confidence, which has slowly been taking as Nicolas has gotten more Major League reps. That patience has paid off, and he just might be the hottest reliever in the bullpen, allowing just one earned run over his last 14 outings, holding hitters to a .164 batting average in that stretch.

“You see the way your pitches can play against some of the best pitches in the world, and it builds confidence when you’re able to get them out,” Nicolas said.

That success has let Nicolas be able to more confidently attack hitters the way he did in the Minors. He actually aims for the heart of the plate on a lot of his targets, the last place just about any pitcher wants to throw it.

“Just aiming for the middle, the heart of the plate and just trusting it’s not going to end up there,” Nicolas said. “It’s going to end up above or below.”

It takes confidence to do that, and it also takes serious stuff. The latter hasn’t been an issue, and now that he’s filling the zone more, it’s making him into a reliable bullpen arm.

“It’s the result of tunneling off of his fastball,” Marin said. “When you have a combination of not only a fastball but two breaking pitches that are plus – one has 12-to-6 action to it and one looks like a heater and just takes a hard left – when he gets ahead of you, it has a tendency to make hitters worry about what he’s going to throw.”