Notes on An Opening Day Classic
The M’s beat Corey Kluber and Cleveland 2-1 behind 5 1/3 scoreless from Felix Hernandez. You may have noticed; it was a pretty cool thing. Aside from the King performing his own turn-back-the-clock night performance, particularly in the later innings after running up his pitch count a bit in the early going, the M’s bullpen came through. It wasn’t pretty, but they held the line and the M’s escaped with a victory against one of the best teams in baseball. I’ll take it.
A few things stood out from the game and opening day in general:
1: Felix’s velocity was low, but not insanely low. As Jeff Zimmermann’s article reports, Felix’s FB velocity was more or less right where it was last year, or a bit over 90. That news is whelming; it’s neither cause for alarm or a party, though it’s closer to the latter than the former. It’s still way too early to know what it means, particularly as Felix adjusts to a new, pitch-to-contact approach.
2: The other reason why it’s hard to know what to make of it: seemingly everyone at Safeco was throwing slower than they have before. Kluber’s average FB was down substantially, not that it really did him any harm. His sinker averaged less than 92 after averaging 92.5 last year. Of course, his opening day start last year featured a FB only 0.1 MPH faster than it was last night. No, the real action was in the M’s bullpen, where Juan Nicasio’s average FB last night was down nearly 4 MPH from his average last year. In his first appearance of 2017, he was at 95.3, but managed just a 91.8 average in 13 fastballs last night. Nick Vincent was down a bit, and Dan Altavilla was down a few ticks, though it’s hard to make much out of a grand total of two fastballs. The sheer numbers here suggest it’s a calibration issue, though it didn’t seem to affect Edwin Diaz. Just something to keep an eye on, particularly in Nicasio’s case – the M’s desperately need him with David Phelps out with injury.
3: There were 33 HRs hit across the league, with the White Sox/Royals game leading the way – Sox 3B Matt Davidson hit three of them himself. So far, so predictable. But my takeaway from yesterday, and today, as Max Scherzer/Homer Bailey are dueling now, is that there have been a hell of a lot of great pitching performances. Felix/Kluber were both effective, but so were a ton of others. Here’s a list of starters going at least 5 IP with 0 or 1 run allowed:
Dylan Bundy
Jake Odorizzi
Clayton Kershaw
Chris Sale
Clayton Richard
Chase Anderson
Ty Blach
Luis Severino
There are some Cy Young candidates in there to be sure, but there are also Ty Blachs and Jake Odorizzi (whose FIP was in the mid-5s last year). It may still be the year of the bullpen, as a number of these great outings were also short ones, but the rise of the strikeout and pop-up has meant that if you can avoid the HR, you can still be tremendously effective as a starter. Kluber and Kershaw lost their great games on a single mistake pitch.
4: Some of THAT success is due to the ever-decreasing rate of fastballs. Continuing a long-standing trend, fastball usage was at its lowest point since pitch tracking technology was installed. Last night, it was even lower. Felix was a great example, throwing 40 fastballs (mostly sinkers), but mixing in his change and a steady dose of curves to give him a pitch mix tilted slightly in favor of NON-fastballs. As a guy who’s seen his fastball get killed the past few years, it makes sense.
5: Back to the M’s: Edwin Diaz got the save, but as his two HBPs show, his command wasn’t quite in midseason form. To be more specific, his *fastball* command was poor, while his slider command essentially saved the day. The gameday record is incomplete, but it shows half of his fastballs went for strikes, while the sliders generally stayed within the zone, or induced swings out of it. A few of the FB strikes, particularly the first pitches to Yonder Alonso, Lonnie Chisenhall and Tyler Naquin were middle-middle. It was opening day, and he seemed to lose focus a bit after a fastball got away from him and hit Encarnacion. But it’s something to watch, given that it was a deterioration in his command that sapped some of his effectiveness in 2017.
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Meanwhile, Ichiro is still looking for his first hit of 2018. I am including spring training stats, too.
Are you comparing opening day velocity readings to full-season averages? I understood that pitchers tend to have lower velocity in general this early in the season. It seems like that more than calibration could explain most of it, though I agree that Nicasio may warrant some concern.
Don, John Jayso was 1-17 in the spring of 2012, if I remember correctly. With Ichiro’s history, I don’t think there’s cause for alarm after a handful of spring PA’s and just 1 regular season game.
That said, it would be nice to see him get going soon.
With Zunino hitting the DL, I would imagine Marjama is going to get tested quite a bit in the early going.
I liked how Cano and Cruz went up there first-pitch swinging. Trying to outguess Kluber once he gets ahead in the count is a fool’s errand…unless you happen to be Mitch Haniger!
Regardless of how it all turns out, watching Felix attempt to adapt his style this year is going to be interesting.