Off-day Round-Up
The M’s are off today, heading to Chicago right before a storm that has *already* postponed tomorrow’s contest (which was supposed to be the White Sox’ home opener). Still, a lot’s happening with the team and in baseball, so let’s examine the first week.
1: The M’s may have a new closer in Anthony Swarzak
Swarzak came over from the Mets in the Cano/Edwin deal, and is only a year and a half removed from a brilliant 2017 season that saw him post career highs in strikeout rate and velocity. He spent years as a set-up guy with the Twins, and, following what seemed to be official Twins policy, pitched to contact. For a reliever, his K rate was essentially non-existent, and thus at the mercy of the BABIP gods. They were kind in 2013, but not so much in 2012 or 2014, and he eventually left Minnesota for the Indians org.
The Tribe ditched his sinker for a four-seamer paired with his solid slider, and his K rate spiked, though he still wasn’t exactly effective. He also had trouble staying on the field, so he only pitched 13 innings for them. The following year, he was off to the Yankees, who were in the process of setting records for most sliders thrown and fewest fastballs. Eager to fit in, Swarzak suddenly doubled his slider usage, throwing more breaking balls than fastball in 2016. It didn’t produce results, at least not then, but better velo, more vertical movement, and plenty of strikeouts was too intriguing to stop. So he didn’t, and in 2017, he K’d 91 in 77 IP. He was traded across town to the Mets midway through, as the Yankees simply couldn’t give him enough innings given their cerberus of Chapman/Betances/Robertson a year after Chapman/Betances/Miller.
And then the injuries returned. After a lost season, the Mets moved on, and packaged him with other contracts they were glad to be rid of. If healthy, Swarzak would give the M’s a legitimate bullpen weapon, and his platoon splits aren’t as brutal as you might think for a FB/SL guy. His velo was down a touch last night, but that’s to be expected. If he can get back up to 94-95 by late May, that’d be awesome.
2: The M’s definitely do have a new reliever in Connor Sadzeck, whom they acquired from the Rangers in a minor trade. He’s got premium velocity, averaging nearly 98 last year and sitting 98-99 in an appearance against the M’s late in the year. At 6’7″, he figures to have solid extension, which could further reduce the time batters have to decide to swing. Or, uh, get out of the way. Sadzeck’s had…issues with control, walking 11 in his 9 1/3 IP with Texas. His minor league track record is more encouraging, though he’s not likely to ever be a control pitcher.
He throws a fairly standard four-seamer from a movement perspective, but the velocity could help it play up a bit. His primary breaking ball’s a slider, though he threw a curve in spring training a few years back. That curve shows some intriguing depth and horizontal movement, and I wonder if the M’s will go back to that pitch. The slider’s fine. Slider-y. Obviously, the most important thing is to work on his mechanics to see if he can’t keep the ball in the zone. If he can, he’d be a solid addition to a bullpen that could use some help.
3: The return of Graham MacAree
Former LL writer and long-ago mod at this very site Graham MacAree long ago left the area to work for SBNation, helping produce the uncategorizable brilliance of Jon Bois…content as well as starting the network’s Chelsea FC blog. Graham’s been watching the M’s hot start from his hideout/laboratory in rural France, and has a word of warning for potential M’s bandwagoners: Hope is a trap.
It’s frankly awesome to see Graham write about the M’s again for the first time in a decade or more, but the piece seemed too pessimistic, or perhaps hectoring in its tone for much of M’s twitter. I loved it, but then I’m a pessimist, and includes snippets of Alexander Pope’s translation of the Odyssey, so I’m pretty much the target market for the thing. If you get a chance, I recommend it highly. No one’s saying don’t have fun. We’re saying have fun even if you know the axe will fall.
4: The Brewers are Doing Something
Today, former M’s prospect Freddy Peralta turned in one of the performances of the year, throwing 8 shutout innings at the Reds in a 1-0 win. He struck out 11, walked none, and yielded just 2 hits. That’s cool and all, but the real story was *how* he did it. Peralta threw 106 pitches on the day, and *90* of them were four-seam fastballs.
The Yankees slider-mania that I mentioned above caught on, and as we’ve talked about, baseball’s seeing fewer and fewer fastballs. It’s frankly remarkable that a non-Bartolo pitcher could not just throw a blizzard of FBs at a team, but do so as a way to get strikeouts. The majority of his Ks came on FBs, as they’d pretty much have to. It made his curve that much more effective, but it was something he didn’t want to overexpose, so he’d just paint fast-but-not-THAT-fast four-seamers around the zone and the Reds simply couldn’t touch them.
The thing is, Peralta’s not alone. With Cory Knebel slated for TJ surgery, the Brewers have Josh Hader closing. Just like last year, he’s off to a fast start with 3 saves and 10 Ks in 5 scoreless innings. He’s allowed just 6 balls in play on the young season, just one of which went for a hit. So far, so normal: really good reliever having really good week. That’s not the point. The point is: Hader has thrown 62 pitches this year, and *60* of them have been four-seam fastballs.
It’s a good pitch, and he’s been FB-dominant for a while, at nearly 80% FBs last season. But I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a pitcher get so many whiffs on a pitch that batters absolutely know is coming since Kenley Jansen and Mariano Rivera, who at least had some cut to confuse batters. Hader’s heater has plus rise, and more than he showed last year, but it is neither as fast as a ton of relievers in the game nor as freakishly moving (as, say, this.)
Hader, like Peralta, have to have some deception in their delivery, and I’m wondering if it’s something the Brewers are teaching. Peralta’s movement isn’t too exceptional, though he gets surprising rise from a lower slot. The Brewers lowered his slot this year, giving his pitch a bit of a different shape, though like Hader, he was about as FB-dominant as it’s possible for a starter to be last year.
Something to watch to see if teams start to zig as other teams zag to follow the Yankees/Astros. A related, but distinct, thought came up yesterday as the Angels stared at a ton of Marco Gonzales sinkers but swung like mad against his change and cutter. Gonzales induced only two swings-and-misses on the night, but by getting the Angels to swing at (and thus put in play) HIS pitches and leave his 88mph sinkers alone, he got them to make some terrible contact. Can THAT be taught? Can pitchers use batters’ tendencies (to take on the first pitch, for example), to sneak in-zone fastballs when batters are less likely to swing, and then switch to cambios when they’re more likely to swing? Hopefully.
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