Games 10-11, Mariners at Orioles
Game 1: Justus Sheffield vs. John Means; 1:05pm
Game 2: Nick Margevicius vs. Dean Kremer; it depends [Edit to add the time] 4:15pm
Yesterday, I gave a run-down on Dean Kremer, who’s now scheduled to start game 2. For game 1, the O’s hand the ball to their ace, John Means. Means is an interesting pitcher both because he’s a complete black swan in being a somewhat successful pitcher developed by Baltimore, and because he reminds me of what we *thought* we were getting in Marco Gonzales.
Means throws a four-seam fastball with lots of rise, which is itself propelled by a well above-average spin rate. When he initially came up, it was only around 90, but he’s added to it, and it’s now 92+. It’s down slightly from his velo last season, but it may get back up to 93 when the weather gets hotter. It’s a good fastball, as he gets plenty of foul balls along with miss-hit contact. He can command it fairly well, which has helped him post some very low walk rates.
Initially – and especially in his breakout year of 2019 – his best pitch was a frankly bizarre change-up. I’ve been doing this a while, and don’t think I’ve ever seen a…rising change-up. Despite coming in 10mph slower than the fastball, it has nearly the same vertical movement. I would argue that such movement is very, very counterproductive, and that you don’t want a change to stay up, but rather dive down like a splitter. To be fair, this has been a problem: his change had very good results, but it has led to some dinger issues. Despite throwing it less than his fastball, he’s given up more HRs on the change over his career.
But it *does* help him deal with righties – it gave him a way to hang around while he developed some breaking pitches. And now he has. He came up with a slider that he threw a ton of, and then a rare curveball to change things up. In 2019, he started using the curve a bit more, though it was still the fourth pitch in his arsenal. That changed a bit in 2020, when he began going to the curve more than the slider. It probably helped that batters started battering that slider, and, to a degree, the change. Indeed, he showed more marked platoon splits last year than he had before, and HRs were the primary reason: it just doesn’t help to a big fly-ball pitcher in a juiced ball world.
So he came up as a FB/CH guy, and has since developed a good curve. He doesn’t walk people at all, but will get the occasional K, and he hopes to have a low BABIP due to all of the fly balls and pop-ups people hit. Sounds kind of like Marco, right? Both are lefties, neither is overpowering, but when on, their fastballs are sneaky-hard to hit. Means had a down year in 2020 (by results; some peripherals looked great) whereas Marco had his best season. By velo and movement, they’re not all that similar, but they seem to have a similar *approach.* I bet a good game from Means would look pretty similar to a good Gonzales start.
I’ve talked a lot about Dean Kremer, so scroll down to yesterday’s post if you want the run-down on him. Today, though, is an opportunity to talk about the new 6th-man in the M’s rotation, Nick Margevicius. Margevicius came up with San Diego, but became expendable when the Padres went out and acquired *all the pitchers*. A lefty throwing 88 with decent rise *also* sounds sort of Marco-esque, but that’s pretty much where the similarities stop. Margevicius came up as a pitchability lefty with four pitches and two interesting breakers. He throws a big, looping curve in the low-70s and a slider that, to me, is pretty interesting.
It’s changed noticeably since his 2019 debut. Starting out at 80mph, it’s now more cutter-y at 84, just 5-6mph slower than his “heater.” It has tons of gyro spin, meaning spin that does not contribute to movement, so it doesn’t move all that differently than a hypothetical pitch with zero spin, or like a football thrown with a perfect spiral. That’s intriguing, because there’s a huge difference in movement from his rising fastball. Here’s what I wanted to see from Means’ change – Margevicius slider moves almost like a good splitter. There’s not much horizontal movement, there’s just a huge drop. BaseballSavant tells us that it moves differently than expected based on its inefficient spin, so here’s another fairly clear seam-shifted wake pitch.
If I was him, I’d throw it more to righties. Last year, it was his *least* used pitch against them. He tried the slider-heavy approach in 2019, and got hurt by it – he gave up 4 dingers to righties on the pitch. And I’ll be honest: the curve approach *worked* last year. But there’s something here that the M’s could work on, and I think they already have: at 4mph faster than it used to be, I’m not sure the bad 2019 results mean all that much. It was a different pitch!
Margevicius hasn’t gotten off to the best start, though. He’s been hit hard in his 4 IP, but the O’s don’t boast the best line-up (as a team, they’re getting on base at a .289 clip), and their best hitter, Cedric Mullins, is a lefty.
Game 1 Line-up:
1: Haniger, RF
2: France, 2B
3: Seager, 3B
4: Torrens, DH
5: Moore, LF
6: Murphy, C
7: Trammell, CF
8: White, 1B
9: Crawford, SS
SP: Sheffield
Ok, so that was an impressive performance from Justus Sheffield, who needed just 77 pitches to go 6, leaving with a 3-2 lead. Those two runs came on an opposite field HR; he’s still having that problem of one inning that he just can’t quite close out. And honestly, the O’s seemed like they were making much better swings against him late in the game. Early on, they had no idea what was happening, and kept chopping easy grounder after easy grounder.
Means had the opposite problem: balls in play *averaged* 100 MPH off of his fastball. I regret having talked it up! Part of it was that he was missing his spots badly, which, for him, meant leaving that FB down. A fastball seeming to rise up to the middle of the strike zone is a bad idea, and he paid for it.
It’s just one game, but man, the O’s seem bad. That’s mean, and I don’t exactly cheer for a perennial playoff team myself, but the O’s have been terrible now for a few year, and it doesn’t look like it’s getting a lot better. Maybe if we watched more of them, the improvement would be obvious, but I cannot imagine watching too much more of them, and I watched the 2010 Mariners.
Game 2 Line-up:
1. Mitch Haniger (DH)
2. Ty France (2B)
3. Kyle Seager (3B)
4. Jose Marmolejos (1B)
5. Luis Torrens (C)
6. Taylor Trammell (CF)
7. Dylan Moore (RF)
8. J.P. Crawford (SS)
9. Sam Haggerty (LF)
SP: Margevicius
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3 Responses to “Games 10-11, Mariners at Orioles”
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Nice start for Seattle.
Bad called strike three on White.
Marmolejos apparently got wind of my criticism.