Game 21, Mariners at Red Sox
Chris Flexen vs. Nate Eovaldi, 10:10am
It’s getaway day in Boston, as the M’s and Red Sox play the decisive game of this three-game set. The Red Sox had what looked like a fairly easy win in hand yesterday, but Kyle Seager made it interesting in the ninth with a three-run HR against previously-dominant Matt Barnes.
Neither starter was all that sharp yesterday, a fact that shouldn’t come as a huge surprise given the struggles both have had in recent years. I’m still pretty confused about Yusei Kikuchi and why he goes through periods where he seems easy to square up. Martin Perez has been easy to square up for some time, so that’s less of a mystery. Kikuchi’s first two starts were marred by some HRs, but they were ultimately quite promising. He had 16 strikeouts and just 3 walks in his first 12 IP. But in the two starts since, he’s tossed 11 2/3 IP with only 4 Ks and 6 walks. The cutter that had been his best pitch last year simply isn’t missing any bats; batters whiffed on it on just over 1/4 of their swings last year, but he got none last night. Boston’s line-up is deep and very good, so we can perhaps give him a pass. But the M’s will need him if they’re going to keep this strong start going.
Chris Flexen has been excellent in the early going, and I’m interested to see how he attacks this Red Sox line-up. Flexen’s perhaps been a bit lucky with HRs thus far, as he’s given up plenty of fly balls, but just one dinger. But he’s been equally UNlucky on balls in play, with a BABIP up near .400. As is the case so early, that’s essentially the result of his last start, a very good one against the Astros, in which he gave up 10 base hits in 6 IP. That sort of thing could happen again here in Boston, with a great line-up and a hitter-friendly park. But Flexen’s shown that he can pitch around baserunners and, critically for him, limit walks. It’s just that he’s going to have to get used to it if he doesn’t improve his putaway pitches and get some more whiffs. He’s not getting many batters to chase, and has a very high contact rate against him – he’s not fooling batters. But he’s also not getting blown off the mound. It’s a strange mix of outcomes, but as long as it works for him, that’s probably ok. He’s your one-man antidote to three-true-outcomes baseball.
Nate Eovaldi is one of the hardest-throwing starters in the game. He’s averaging 97 on his fastball this year, and has for some time. It was one of the bigger mysteries in the game why Eovaldi could have such elite velocity and not get and strikeouts in strikeout-friendly MLB, but he seems to have figured it out. He mixes in a 93mph cutter, a slider, a curve, and even a splitter/change. That cutter’s been one of his better strikeout pitches, and it really is pretty similar to Kikuchi’s. The split and curve give him options to change eye level and work vertically in (and out of) the zone, and everything plays much better now that he’s improved his control. Since the start of 2020, Eovaldi’s got the 4th-lowest BB/9 among starters, behind Zach Plesac, Zach Greinke, and Clayton Kershaw (Marco Gonzales is just behind at 6th-lowest).
He’s much improved, but he’s not a really dominant, K-heavy pitcher in the way that Shane Bieber or :speaks reverentially: Jacob deGrom is. I missed a good chunk of yesterday’s M’s game, because I try to catch some of every deGrom start; he’s become must-watch TV. I haven’t seen a pitcher on a run quite this good since peak Randy Johnson, and I do not say that lightly.
1: Haniger, RF
2: France, 2B
3: Seager, 3B
4: Marmolejos, DH
5: White, 1B
6: Trammell, CF
7: Torrens, C
8: Haggerty, LF
9: Crawford, SS
SP: Flexen
Game 20, Mariners at Red Sox
Yusei Kikuchi vs. Martín Pérez, 4:10pm
Yesterday’s game was a bizarrely compelling triumph. I still can’t tell if it was a super simple underdog-comeback story, like a sports-based Disney film aimed at tweens, or a complicated, but ultimately satisfying foreign film aimed at adults. At one level, the M’s couldn’t get any hits, but then got a bunch at exactly the right time, punctuated by the 10th inning HR that gave them the final margin of victory. It’s baseball; it’s not that complicated. They were behind, then they tied the game, then they won in extras.
But…like, it’s *weird.* This is the level of commentary that you’ve come to expect from this fine blog for decades. Seriously – I talked pre-game about how Pivetta’s got good stuff, but horrific results *especially* in terms of hits and HRs, but Justin Dunn’s raw stuff, while not as electric, was tougher to square up. Then the Red Sox square the hell out of Dunn, who pitched around hard hits all night, but kept his team in the game. Meanwhile, Pivetta gave up no hits into the 6th, before two walks and a double tied it up. The teams did look fairly equally matched, but it played out in such a different way than I would’ve expected, but in a way we’ve seen quite often in the early going this year.
One important part of that – the repeated late-inning comebacks after the bats have looked anemic for 5-6-7 innings – is the disastrous relief appearance. I’m certainly not saying this is new, like relievers haven’t had off days before Covid. I watched the 1990s Mariners, so I know all about crappy relief outings spoiling good games. But I’ve been struck this season by this phenomenon wherein one reliever (sometimes more, but often just one) comes into a game and utterly gives it away.
On Twitter, there’s a famous maxim about the Main Character. It’s “Each day on twitter there is one main character. The goal is to never be it.” Every day there’s some outrage, major or minor, and then loads of people dogpile on that person for whatever transgression they’ve made. I keep thinking that the goal of a reliever, especially a non-closer, is to never be the Main Character in the baseball game. That’s for starting pitchers, the batter who goes 3-5 with 3 extra-base hits, etc. A middle reliever can pitch fantastically well, but their goal is for the current score to remain the same: the story’s already there, they’re just trying to advance the plot. They’re the text onscreen in a movie that says, “Two Years Later.” If everyone is talking about the non-closing reliever, chances are that reliever has done something pretty bad.
Yesterday had a few main characters, but you can’t talk about the game without mentioning Darwinzon Hernandez, who faced 7 batters and allowed 4 runs in the 10th (yes, yes, one was a fake run because of the new extra innings rule). Because the inning started with a sac bunt, and because Tom Murphy flied out after Sam Haggerty (!) gave the M’s the lead with a double, he had two outs and was facing JP Crawford, who is *slugging* .254 as I type this. The lefty reliever in a one run game was facing a *lefty* hitter who’s grown remarkably punchless. Walking Crawford would put two on for Mitch Haniger, a right-hander with a slugging percentage several multiples of Crawford’s. There is one thing that Hernandez cannot ever do, but he did it. He paid a hefty price for it.
Seriously, how many games have we seen like this? It started on *opening day* when the Giants let a big lead go, giving up 6 runs in the 8th inning, but it was split over several relievers. Still, you’ve got to mention Jose Alvarez, who simply walked the bases loaded, and then walked it off with another free pass. Six days later, it was Matt Foster’s turn to be the main character, as he came in with two on and a 4-1 lead, and left with the White Sox trailing 8-4. Alex Colome a few days later, giving up 3 runs in the 9th to lose it for Minnesota. I’m not counting a reliever giving up a run to lose a tie game. That happens, and while it’s hugely important in win probability stats, it’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about a pitcher who comes in and very clearly doesn’t have it, and the inning just snowballs. I feel like we’re seeing more and more of them this year.
This may be biased by the fact that I’m watching the M’s, who’ve had a few thus far. But I feel like they’re happening all the time. I tried to look this up on Sports-Reference Stathead feature using RE24 and aLI (average Leverage Index), but it wasn’t giving me all the games; it didn’t have last night’s or opening night’s, both of which qualified. So I’ll keep trying to quantify it, but this is my theory: bullpen usage has changed such that there are now more relief appearances and relief innings in each game. The need for starters – and all pitchers, really – to pitch vastly more innings than they did in the Covid-shortened 2020 season magnifies this problem. The need for more pitchers pitching more innings plus the extra roster spot has led teams to go with 14-man staffs and super-deep bullpens. All of this means that we’re increasing the chance of finding the one guy who simply doesn’t have it.
Does that mean teams should change pitchers less? If your reliever pitched excellently in the 6th, maybe think about them pitching the 7th as well? Maybe, I’m not sure. But I do think it highlights that there’s a downside to the way essentially every team is turning to ever more relievers to fill out their roster. That said, I’m not sure that we can blame this on the 26th man; this isn’t just an issue with marginal middle-relievers. But I feel like the first 5 innings of a game mean less, somehow – like a lead isn’t safe until the game’s over. That’s flying in the face of the research I mentioned earlier about how later-inning lead changes have grown *less* common as managers don’t leave tiring starters in and instead give the ball to almost fungible 96mph power arms in the pen.
The game is so, so hard. I don’t want to focus too much on relievers losing the plot, so let’s talk about today’s starter. Martín Pérez has been facing the M’s for about a decade now, and while he was an uber-prospect for years around 2010, he’s become a journeyman lefty bottom-of-the-rotation guy now. It’s his second year in Boston, but he was on three clubs in three years before this. The lefty throws a four-seam and sinker, but last year focused heavily on a high-80s cutter and a change-up at 84. This essentially gives him two pitches with ~similar speeds and opposite horizontal break. He can mix in a curve, too. He never missed bats in Texas, his first team, and while he’s striking out a few more now, he’s still below average. His game is to generate weak contact, and at least by statcast, he’s doing so, and has been pretty effective at it since 2019. It just hasn’t shown up in his overall results. He hasn’t pitched in super friendly parks, but you just wouldn’t peg a lefty with 4-5 pitches and at least SOME record of weak contact to be seemingly perpetually on the wrong side of 5 with his ERA.
The culprit here is stranding runners. It’s simply never been a strength. Batters have hit .267 with the bases empty off of him in his career, but .304 with men on. His K rate goes down, and while his HRs do too, his walk rate increases. With no one on, he’s a so-so journeyman. With men on, he’s worse. So take some pitches, and pounce on mistakes in the strike zone, M’s.
1: Haniger, RF
2: France, DH
3: Seager, 3B
4: Lewis, CF
5: White, 1B
6: Murphy, C
7: Moore, 2B
8: Haggerty, LF
9: Crawford, SS
SP: Kikuchi
Game 19, Mariners at Red Sox
Justin Dunn vs. Nick Pivetta, 4:10pm
The M’s open a three-game series in Boston today with the AL East-leading Red Sox. Boston’s tied for the best record in the AL with the suddenly unbeatable Athletics, and they’ve done it by excelling in pretty much every phase of the game. Their offense leads MLB in each of the triple slash categories, and thus leads MLB in wRC+, wOBA, or whatever else you want to use. That offense is led by JD Martinez, who’s red hot and having an impressive bounce-back season; he’s tied for the AL lead in HRs with Mike Trout, Nelson Crus and a few others, and look: if it’s an offensive stat and you’re hanging around Trout and Nellie, you’re doing fine. But after a somewhat slow start, the entire group around Martinez has really picked it up. Xander Bogaerts is hitting for average, rookie Bobby Dalbec is coming on after a very rude introduction to MLB pitching in the first week, Rafael Devers is hitting for power, and journeyman infielder Christian Arroyo has been productive.
But it’s not just a good line-up. Their pitching staff has an ERA under 4 and a FIP even lower. The Sox have an ERA of 3.73 and a FIP of 3.28, whereas the M’s have an ERA of 3.87, but a FIP of 4.36. That divergence isn’t a huge surprise, as the staffs are, in a sense, opposites. It all starts with velocity: the Red Sox have loaded up on toolsy, hard-throwing pitchers, and this is key, *whether or not they’ve actually been successful.* The M’s under Jerry Dipoto have pretty famously eschewed velocity in favor of pitchability. Thus, the Sox come in with the 2nd highest average FB velocity in the game, while the M’s are perfectly fine to remain down in 28th. The Red Sox ace is Nathan Eovaldi, he of the 98mph average heater who for years struggled to miss any bats with it. The M’s have Marco Gonzales, tossing up 87mph sinkers and 84mph cutters to confuse hitters into mishits.
If Eovaldi’s the ace, then today’s starter, Nick Pivetta, is perhaps the purest distillation of the Red Sox approach. Pivetta is what you’d come up with if you asked sabermetrically-inclined baseball analysts to come up with a pitching approach. No, he doesn’t throw 105 or anything, but Pivetta throws a 95mph fastball with good rising action at the top of the zone, and uses that to disguise a hard curve that generates a ridiculous amount of downward break. Plus velocity, plus movement, clearly trying to tunnel both pitches, and then mixes in a change and slider in the mid-80s to give a different speed/movement look. It’s not wonder he’s been the sleeper pick of pitching twitter for years now.
In 421 career innings, he’s striking out over a batter per inning, or just shy of 25% of hitters faces. His walk rate’s not great, but nothing terrifying. How many All Star games has he been to? Well, :pulls collar: about that. In those 421 innings, he’s given up 264 runs. That’s a 5.64 RA9 and a 5.34 ERA over that span. He was bad enough last year that the Phillies let him go, and the Phillies were desperate for pitching last year. They’d simply seen enough.
In an era in which strikeouts are up sharply, base hits have become something of an endangered species. But not when Pivetta’s around; he’s given up 441 hits and 74 dingers. Despite looking great in terms of velo and movement, something’s not quite right with Pivetta’s fastball. Coming into the year, batters were hitting .308 off of it, and slugging .552. Righties and lefties alike hit well off of it, and while they struggle more with his curve, the ones they *do* hit tend to go a long way.
You can see why the Phillies tired of this, but you can just as easily see why the Red Sox wanted him. This is too good an arm to give up on, and after watching Eovaldi come into his own, it’s no surprise the Red Sox wanted to bet on their own player development group here. He’s got a career-high walk rate, which isn’t great, but he’s not hemorrhaging runs in the early going, so I guess that’s a good sign? I’d love to learn more about the Red Sox pitching approach, because they’re doing something fairly well. Rule 5 reliever Garrett Whitlock was plucked from AA, and in his first 9 innings has given up just 3 hits, no runs, no walks, and struck out 11. He, too, throws 95. Veteran Matt Barnes is posting his best year, with 16 Ks, 2 walks, and one run in his first 9 IP. Sure, Martin Perez is still struggling, but he’s been doing that for a decade; they’re not miracle workers.
Justin Dunn is an odd mirror image of Pivetta. Dunn, like Pivetta, throws a 95mph fastball (ok, more like 94), and a hard curve. Both have sliders, too, and esp. now, neither one is exactly a master of control or command. But whereas Pivetta’s heater – with more movement per statcast – gets hit hard, Dunn’s is trickier to square up. Both yield a ton of elevated contact – they both have very high average launch angles, as you can see from their very low walk rates. Both can struggle with HRs as a result of their approach. But while Dunn wasn’t exactly a soft-tosser when acquired, he didn’t light up a radar gun or scouting report, either. While Dunn may have closed the gap with Pivetta, that hard curve of Pivetta’s is a scouting dream, with super high spin rates and plus movement. By comparison, Dunn’s is much slurvier, much more horizontal, and perhaps harder to mirror with his fastball. Again, though, it’s Pivetta who’s had a harder time of it. Sure, Dunn’s walked too many, and may not stick in the rotation long-term, but he hasn’t been giving up anywhere near the hits and runs that Pivetta has (in a much smaller sample, to add the requisite/automatic caveat).
1: Haniger, RF
2: France, DH
3: Seager, 3B
4: Lewis, CF
5: White, 1B
6: Trammell, LF
7: Torrens, C
8: Moore, 2B
9: Crawford, SS
SP: Dunn
Game 18, Dodgers at Mariners
Marco Gonzales vs. Julio Urias, 1:10pm
Last night’s win was genuinely impressive – the easy choice as the best game of the season. They did it by jumping on their opponent’s starter, not something we’ve seen a lot of, and they held on through great bullpen performance and strategy. Dustin May was dealing, as we saw from all of the strikeouts, but when they got pitches to hit, they hit them very hard. There were a few times I thought Justus Sheffield was wobbling, but he came through it, and then, when he got in a jam and had to come out, the bullpen put out the fire. It wasn’t about pouncing on some reliever who didn’t have it that night, it wasn’t a weird, improbable late-game collection of hits. They just outplayed the Dodgers. It was amazing.
Now, they get the opportunity to do so again. Marco Gonzales hopes to take what he learned in Baltimore and apply it in this much more difficult setting. Marco’s a difficult guy to pin down, I feel. There’s always something people like me point to when he’s going well, but then he’ll change that thing, and still pitch pretty much like Marco Gonzales. Part of it is that it’s so difficult to pin down what “command” really is, and part of it is the reality that very, very few pitchers have the kind of consistency/stability that we attribute to them after the fact by looking at seasonal stats. Lucas Giolito was dominant early this year, and got knocked out in the first is last game out. Baseball’s volatile, and pitching is the most volatile component.
In 2018, I thought Gonzales was great despite pedestrian stuff because he simply didn’t have a pattern. All of his pitches were, in essence, equally likely. Fastball 25%, curve 25%, change 25%, cutter 25%. He was more confusing, harder to guess about, than other pitchers. Got it. Only now, he doesn’t pitch like that anymore. He didn’t in 2020, and that worked just fine. I used to think he needed to align the release points for his fastball and change, but he didn’t, and it didn’t matter. Marco was simply amazing at generating weak contact despite refusing to be chased out of the strikezone in the midst of the home run era. All of that is awesome, but it makes it harder to pinpoint things to fix now that all of the contact he’s generating is scalded.
Fangraphs has a post today on Dodger starter Julio Urias’ changing curveball shape. It’s been more of a 12-6, vertical pitch in the past, but is now has extreme horizontal sweep. It’s done well, but not especially so thus far. The key to Urias’ game is his change-up, and how he uses it to neutralize righties. In his career, he’s got fairly prominent reverse splits, and this is generally borne from his ability to get weaker contact from righties. The big thing that jumps out isn’t K rate, it’s that he’s able to limit righty home runs despite not being any kind of ground ball pitcher.
Normally, that would scream “fluke,” but I’m not sure it is. Change-ups are the one pitch that can *reliably* get swings even when thrown out of the zone. Sliders do too, sure, but mostly on two-strike pitches when batters have to protect and expand the zone. As I said for years, this was the key to Hisashi Iwakuma’s success – getting a ton of swings on his splitter (a type of change-up) even though everyone in the entire stadium knew that it would come in below the zone. Some years, Urias holds batters to an extremely low batting average on cambios, and some years he doesn’t. It actually doesn’t matter all that much, because they’re essentially all singles. He’s given up 38 singles in his career off of change-ups, but only 8 extra-base hits. By keeping them down and away to righties, it’s quite hard to elevate it.
But all of that’s good against righties. While reverse splits are weird/cool, they can be an indication that you can’t reliably get out same-handed bats. And that’s probably why Urias has been working so much on his curve. In his career, it’s been his worst pitch. Another actually effective pitch against lefties and righties would really make him a complete starter.
1: Haniger, RF
2: Lewis, CF
3: Seager, 3B
4: White, 1B
5: Murphy, C
6: Torrens, DH
7: Trammell, LF
8: Moore, 2B
9: Crawford, SS
SP: Gonzales
Welcome back, Kyle Lewis! The M’s activated Lewis off of the IL, sending Braden Bishop to the alternate site. As is so often the case in baseball, the great news that Lewis is back is balanced by the fact that Ty France is not. France took a fastball off of his right forearm last night, and later had to come out when he tried throwing, only to find that he couldn’t.
Evan White at clean-up: I’m still not a fan of it. White’s K rate has plummeted this year, and that’s impressive and worth noting. Unfortunately, it’s come at the expense of all traces of power. The one hopeful sign amidst last year’s disaster was that when he DID make contact, he hit the ball quite hard. More contact, more hard contact, good results. But somewhere in the process of cutting his K% in half, he lost the hard contact part, as his average exit velocity is in the 4th percentile in MLB. He’s a completely different hitter this year, but it all leads to the same overall result. His wOBA last year was .261, and it’s .277 this year. Neither are anywhere close to OK for a 1B, or a clean-up hitter.
Game 17, Dodgers at Mariners
Justus Sheffield vs. Dustin May, 7:10pm
After another late rally earned them a series win over Houston, the M’s turn their attention to the best team in baseball, the LA Dodgers. The M’s are off to a good start, but there’s still quite a gap between a team that hopes to contend and one that hopes to become the winningest team ever and defend their Series title.
I promise I will talk about Dustin May, who’s one of the most watchable and electric starters in the game, in a minute. But right now, the biggest story in sports concerns the Super League, and I’ve been musing on how to shoehorn it in to an M’s blog post. Essentially, 12 of the biggest soccer teams in Europe – teams who often play in the richest club competition, the UEFA Champions League – released a plan to form a new league, a Super League, if you will, that would play alongside their regular domestic leagues. So, the teams from England and Italy would play in England and Italy on Saturday, and then against each other on Wednesday. But wait, you say – you just mentioned the UEFA Champions League. Isn’t that *precisely* what the Champions League does? Indeed, it is, but the problem these clubs are trying to solve is that both domestically and *even in* the Champions League, they have to face minnows who have absolutely no chance of winning. The Champion of the Belgian league gets to play in the Champions League, and they get plenty of money to do so. But they’re not…you know, going to win. They’re the Washington Generals to the Harlem Globetrotting brands of the sport. You see the same thing domestically, where a lowly team just promoted in from a lower division is a fun story and can occasionally have a solid season (as Leeds is doing in England now), but they simply have no chance at all to win.
And the Super League teams know it, and like it. Their global brands have brought untold riches to the most popular sport, and the entire structure of European club sport seems designed to *produce* super teams. Promotion and Relegation help, but so does the lack of revenue sharing. You hardly even need to scout or develop players – just look around the world, find the best players someone else developed, and pay whatever you need. The contrast with MLB is stark: there’s only ever one top-flight pro league, and everyone in it is safe. They can’t be relegated. So much of the regulatory structure around baseball, including the CBA, is designed to produce a kind of balance that’s just not a part of European sport. There, the super teams sit on top of the vast pyramid of leagues and divisions and teams that proliferate across the continent. All of these tiny amateur or semi-pro teams have the theoretical ability to rise up the ranks over several seasons and join the top league. And when they do, they get a share of the TV rights to that top league (and conversely, if they’re relegated, they lose that money). It’s not going to happen for 99.9% of them, but it’s a possibility. So while there’s nowhere near as much direct sharing of revenue, TV rights are something of an exception. What if the big teams, the teams that nearly all American fans follow, created their own league and didn’t have share?
The reaction to this proposal has been near uniform scorn. England is postively aghast that anyone would think this was a good idea, but the reaction from the leagues and UEFA has been stronger still. UEFA is threatening to kick out any player who plays in this hypothetical league from any UEFA competitions and even the World Cup. Teams would be banned, coaches, anything that can be banned would be banned, and they’re checking with their lawyers to see if they can ban *harder.* The Premier League, which as this great column from Brian Phillips lays out, was created in 1992 as a sort of domestic super league to retain more of the TV revenue that was beginning to be fairly large. And now they’re incensed that some of its own clubs would try to create a new cash cow and leave the PL out! They do so by talking about the tradition and the sanctity of that same pyramid structure, and how beloved soccer is in each of the towns throughout the country that doesn’t host one of these super teams.
Having been there, I can vouch for how beloved it is, and how people will still turn up at tiny village games below in the Isthmian league. But everyone’s kind of dancing around the fact that people *love* watching the super teams. They hate the fact that Manchester United and Real Madrid get to even consider something like this, but they’re going to watch Manchester United’s next match. They point out that the whole thing is just a cynical cash grab, but what is the Champions League if not a cynical cash grab? A competition that runs *during* the regular season, televised worldwide? What’s that got to do with tradition and the beloved pyramid?
The problem is that the game’s gotten too out of whack. The teams with a chance at winning, say, the Premier League, or Italy’s Serie A can be counted on one hand. The global reach of those teams has never been higher, and there are bundles of money to be made from televising games. Right now, much of that goes to UEFA itself and domestic leagues as well, of course, as the biggest clubs. This “solution” is remarkably ham-handed and unlikely to work, but the clubs have, in their own way, called the question. Wouldn’t the Premier League really be more interesting *without* Man City and Liverpool, at least for a while? What use is that vast pyramid of clubs except to provide a couple of new no-hope teams for Man City to beat up on? The Super League really is just a cynical cash-grab, but that’s not to say that the leagues across Europe talking about the history and meaning in the current structure isn’t cynical as well.
To yank this back to baseball,* it reminds me a bit of the spiraling costs of regional TV contracts, and the spate of “baseball is dying” stories that are followed by soaring revenues. But baseball’s been soaked in money for a while. The imbalance now is the one between the pitchers and hitters. And like Europe, we’re going to get some out-of-the-box solutions to the problem, and we’ll get a lot of talk about tradition and how there isn’t really a problem at all. And as always, attitudes may change depending on the team you follow. Let’s just say I wouldn’t hold out a lot of hope if the Mariners would be included in a short list of MLB’s super teams.
If you love pitching, you might say the game’s never been better. As the Pitching Ninja tweeted, strikeouts are up, we’ve already seen two no-hitters, and MLB.tv viewership is *up.* that may be comparing to the wrong baseline, you might need caveats due to increase in cord-cutting, but it’s notable. Not everyone sees the problem in the same way.
Dustin May is just the kind of player who embodies this debate. Blessed with a 99 mph sinker that moves like peak Blake Treinen’s, he’s either a ginger-maned star in the making, or the perfect symbol of how velocity and pitch shape work have made the game too hard for batters and upset the balance between offense and defense.
They may have a point, but I’ll admit I love watching May. I’m just like the Man City fans rejecting the Super League while thanking their Petro-state Prince for buying the worlds best players and making them dominant! I want balance, but did you *see* that sinker?! Sports captured us long ago, and while I still want to see a balanced game and a perennially great M’s team, my behavior suggests I’m going to just keep watching. So, uh, Go M’s.
1: Haniger, RF
2: France, 3B
3: Seager, DH
4: Marmolejos, LF
5: White, 1B
6: Torrens, C
7: Trammell, CF
8: Moore, 2B
9: Crawford, SS
* MLB already IS the super league, and it’s worth considering how fans of NPB or KBO feel when a Yu Darvish or Masahiro Tanaka head to the US.
Game 16, Astros at Mariners
Nick Margevicius vs. Jake Odorizzi, 1:10pm
Yesterday’s loss was perhaps not a huge shock – Zack Greinke’s still pretty good – but still rough to see the line-up so utterly shut down. Chris Flexen was in and out of trouble, but ultimately pitched quite well, which bodes well for the M’s going forward. A bounce-back start from Nick Margevicius would do the same; Margevicius is critical now that James Paxton’s out for the year. If he’s replacement level or worse, that’s a pretty tough blow. If he can keep the team in games and take a step forward, that’s a pretty big lift from the #6 guy in the rotation.
Jake Odorizzi was out of a job for most of the offseason, after an ill-timed disaster of a season sunk the market for his services. The Astros, having lost Justin Verlander to TJ surgery and then Framber Valdez to a finger injury, decided they needed some veteran presence and signed him to a 2 year deal with an option year. Odorizzi was a big part of the 2010 deal for last night’s starter, Zack Greinke. After being drafted by the Brewers, Odorizzi was sent to Kansas City in exchange for a few months of Greinke. He was traded again in 2012, this time heading to Tampa, where he established himself as a dependable arm thanks to a diving split-finger pitch. A three year stint in Minnesota netted him every type of season: a great one (2019), a perfectly average one (2018), and an utter disaster (2020).
With a fastball at around 92-93, Odorizzi isn’t overpowering, but he has a very deep repertoire that includes a four-seam, a sinker, a cutter, a slider, a curve, and the splitter. Despite picking up the sinker and throwing such a diving pitch in the splitter, he’s put up some of the most extreme fly ball rates in baseball. That has, predictably, meant a lot of dingers as well. This is essentially the dilemma for modern pitchers, especially ones that learned to throw elevated fastballs to disguise curveballs and splitters – they look the same as fastballs until it’s too late for the hitter to react. But if they guess right, it’s easy to elevate the ball and give it a chance to leave the park.
It’s especially important for Odorizzi: over the 1000+ innings Odorizzi has thrown, batters are hitting only .225 on his four-seam fastball. But, they’ve hit 49 dingers. You can do the same with most of his offerings: his cutter limits batters to a .245 average, but a .448 SLG% thanks to 20 home runs. Add it all up and you’ve got a pitcher with a career BABIP under .280 and an ERA under 4, but who couldn’t get a job in the offseason because people were wary about HRs and a recurrence of last year’s disastrous HR/FB ratio. From the outside, watching the changes in the ball and MLB’s denial that they were happening, then buying the manufacturer, then attempting to dampen it… it all seems like a bizarre spy story, a very low-stakes cloak and dagger deal. It’s darkly comedic. I’m sure it’s not as funny to Odorizzi.
It’ll be interesting to see if he uses his sinker more, the way he was trending in Minnesota. Alternatively, he could use T-Mobile’s marine layer and humidor-stored balls to give him more confidence in his four-seam, which has had better results than the sinker. Part of it is how he uses it, though. Like a lot of pitchers, Odorizzi throws more sinkers to opposite-handed batters (in this case, lefties), and a balance with a slight edge to four-seamers to righties. The problem is that sinkers have very high platoon splits – lefties hit right-handed sinkers better than they do four-seamers. Of course, Odorizzi probably knows what he’s doing. In his career, he’s posted negative splits, though this likely has a lot more to do with that great splitter than with the variety of fastball he throws them.
1: Haniger, RF
2: France, DH
3: Seager, 3B
4: Marmolejos, LF
5: White, 1B
6: Moore, 2B
7: Trammell, CF
8: Murphy, C
9: Crawford, SS
SP: Margevicius
Game 15, Astros at Mariners
Chris Flexen vs. Zack Greinke, 6:10pm
The Astros had a three run lead, and their starter was dealing. The M’s cut the deficit to one, thanks to the inhuman hot streak that Kyle Seager is on, but Yusei Kikuchi coughed up two more runs. It was over. I was sure of it. We’ve seen this play out in this match-up time and time again. It’s close for a while, and then the Astros methodically pull away. 5-2, late in the game, against Houston.
The M’s offense still isn’t what anyone – probably including the Mariners offense – would call *good.* It has an excellent top third, and then things get split between underperforming sluggers and just questionable talent (yes, much of that necessitated by injuries and the ravenous hunger to acquire a 7th year of club control over a prospect). But what they ARE is incredibly entertaining, and as we watch this for entertainment, I have to applaud them for it.
The Mariners offense has a win-probability added of 2.64, just behind the #1 Dodgers at 2.80, and waaaay ahead of the Reds in third at 1.35.* That is, their offense has done things that make winning more likely, and add them all up, and they’ve essentially racked up 2.6 *games* worth of such moments. But whereas the Dodgers get to that total by being pretty comprehensibly excellent at batting, the M’s take a different approach. By Fangraphs’ “Clutch” metric, the M’s are far and away the best in baseball. It’s essentially a measure that compares how the batters do in really high-leverage situations to how they do in other situations; how much better or worse are they *than themselves* in clutch situations? The M’s bats look lost for large portions of the game, and then suddenly put together really good at-bats in the late innings, and THEN, string them together.
I would tend to doubt that this is really sustainable. It’s hilarious and entertaining, but it’s not exactly how you build a perennial contender. The M’s would argue that they don’t have to: the offense will get better because they’ll get better batsman when Kyle Lewis returns, or when Jarred Kelenic is promoted, or when the slumping Tom Murphy stops slumping. But of course, the games in April count, too, and it’s nice that the M’s are winning some of these winnable games, even when it looks impossible in the 5th or so.
Today, Chris Flexen tries to right the good ship Mariner, as the M’s starters have been as un-clutch, as deleterious to win probability as the batters have been at helping it. The M’s starters rank 26th in baseball by WPA, and 30th by fWAR. A high walk rate and a high HR rate will do that, especially in FIP-based value systems, but it’s not exactly a path to success on regular old score boards, either. That said, things have been trending upwards, as Marco Gonzales shook off a bad first inning and then looked great the rest of the way. Justin Dunn’s coming off a good game. But the best starter so far has been Flexen (in all of two starts, I know). Flexen’s a key player in ensuring the M’s rotation can be a net positive by the end of the year. His cutter’s become a weapon, and thanks to a solid change-up and curve, he can give lefties a lot of different looks and movement patterns. That’s good, because his four-seam fastball has been hit hard in the early going.
The M’s face off against the ageless Zack Greinke, now in his 18th season. After coming to the club that revitalized Justin Verlander and Charlie Morton, and then unlocked Gerrit Cole’s talent, I think many around the game thought they’d do the same with Greinke. He had a down year in his first season with Arizona, but by the time of his trade, he was back to being an excellent starter, with his consistently low walks and surprisingly good ability to miss bats even as his fastball’s lost pace. His first full year in Houston was amazing by K%/BB%, but his ERA started with a 4. This year, he’s not missing bats, and he gave up three HRs in his last game. But he’s still kind of hanging around the edge of effectiveness by inducing some weak contact. His four-seam now comes in at 88, and he has that Felix-like hard change-up at 86. His slider’s at 82, so to give batters something to think about and vary his speeds a bit, he’ll throw his curve that averages 71, but will get down into the 50s at times.
1: Haniger, RF
2: France, DH
3: Seager, 3B
4: Torrens, C
5: Marmolejos, LF
6: White, 1B
7: Moore, RF
8: Crawford, SS
9: Haggerty, CF
SP: Flexen
If mid/high-50s aren’t good enough eephus pitches for you, like you’re suddenly, oddly aggressive about what should and should not be called an eephus pitch, or if you just demand truly weird baseball content, I give you Willians Astudillo throwing 46mph pitches. The lowest recorded velo was 46, but he actually threw two pitches slower, and the system simply didn’t track them.
* Hat tip to the Dome and Bedlam twitter account that highlighted this in the afterglow of last night’s win over the Astros.
Game 14, Astros at Mariners
Yusei Kikuchi vs. Jose Urquidy, 7:10pm
Not sure it’s possible for the M’s to feel better coming into tonight’s game. Justin Dunn just threw one of his best starts as a major leaguer, walking but 2 in 5 very good IP, and that effort helped the M’s sweep a double-header that lifted them to first place in the AL West. Now, they’re back at home for one of the warmest, nicest days of the year.
So, how did Justin Dunn do it? I mean, the short answer is just that he threw strikes. We can complicate the picture, and I will, but really: it’s all he really needs to do. But why is THAT? Why can he be reasonably sure his 92-95mph fastball won’t get blasted once he starts throwing it in the zone? That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out. In his career, batters have a .162 BABIP against Dunn. When he finds the zone, good things happen.
How’s it possible to put up a .162 BABIP? Well, tiny samples and all of that. Let’s just do the requisite throat-clearing about tiny samples, as it’ll apply to everything in this post. We’re dealing with pitchers without much of an established MLB track record, so we’ll just have to see how he looks going forward. But right now, it sure looks like batters aren’t picking up the ball out of Dunn’s hand all that well, and have in essence been bailed out by the fact that Dunn’s had no idea where the ball would end up either.
It’s not a ton of weak contact, either. They’ve hit the ball about as hard as the league average, it’s just that they keep finding gloves. Some of that’s due to the fact that Dunn’s been a fly ball guy, and has pitched in some parks (like T-Mobile) that are relatively friendly to fly ball pitchers. But Dunn doesn’t just need to stay in pitcher’s parks: he’s been elite at eliciting pop-ups. The league-wide rate of infield fly balls is 9.9%. Dunn doubles that; he’s got a career mark of 18.8%. His fastball is a big contributor to that mark, but he’s able to get them on sliders, too.
Again, though: why? A fastball with a ton of rise and pure backspin might get you some pop-ups, just because it moves differently than batters expect – batters get used to a certain amount of “drop” on a pitch, and if a pitch stubbornly refuses to drop that much, batters will probably hit underneath the ball and sky them. But by spin or vertical movement, Dunn’s fastball doesn’t look at all like the hypothetical back-spinning rise ball (for real-world examples think of ex-Mariner Chris Young or recent opponent John Means). It’s got a bit more rise than average, but there’s simply no metric that jumps off the page as a clear contributor to this phenomenon. But if you put a few together…
Justin Dunn reminds me a bit of Freddy Peralta. As I talked about in a Cactus League game this spring, Peralta came up throwing nothing but 91mph fastballs by people. It made no sense. Even now that he’s mixing in more sliders, he’s still able to rely on what looks like an underwhelming fastball to miss bats. The key isn’t freakish spin or movement, it’s how his lower arm slot gives hitters a bunch of mental cues about how the ball will behave, and then the ball does something totally different. The movement pattern on Peralta’s heater has shifted a bit, but at least in 2019, it moves pretty much the way Dunn’s does -a bit of horizontal movement and some above-average rise. Dunn, too, has a lower 3/4 delivery, though to be clear, not anywhere near as low as Peralta’s. But maybe that bigger gap between what “should” be a pitch with no rise and a lot of run is what allows Peralta to get a ton of whiffs, while the smaller gap gets Dunn mishit popups.
Whatever it is, I’ll take it. It’s also notable that both guys *also* get pop-ups on their sliders, despite some sink. The horizontal break is probably enough to get a lot of opposite-field contact, and oppo contact is more likely to be in the air. It’s not a bad combo, but Dunn’s got to work on something for left-handed bats. Dunn gives up walks to everyone, but he *really* walks lefties. Interestingly, so does Peralta. Anyway, Dunn’s response has been to throw a lot more curveballs.
His curve is now his primary breaking ball, and given that he doesn’t really throw a change, it’s got to be a pitch to target lefties. There’s even less to go on here, but it’s an interesting slurvy pitch that looks a ton like…Peralta’s slider. It sweeps across the zone horizontally, and if he can control it, it could be a good pitch. All of Dunn’s offerings are showing increased spin this year, but that’s largely because he’s throwing harder. The curve hasn’t really increased in velo all that much – about 1 MPH or less – but it’s been the biggest gainer in RPMs. Clearly, he’s doing something different.
Today, the M’s face the Astros Jose Urquidy, a formerly-overlooked prospect who reached the majors in 2019 and ended up pitching well enough to make the postseason roster and starting a world series game. His fastball clocks in at 94, and he’s able to throw it for strikes consistently – through the minors and now in his 80 MLB innings, he’s posted very low walk rates, and he gets swings on over 50% of his fastballs (which isn’t that common). But his best pitch has been a well-disguised change-up that gets armside run and drops about 6″ more than his fastball. It averages around 84-85, and has been a true weapon against lefties – he throws it 30% of the time vs. left-handed bats.
And that’s produced some of the strongest reverse splits I’ve ever seen. Over time, you’d expect them to even out, but even at about 40 IP against both lefties and righties, lefties can hit a ton of HRs in a row, and it still won’t be close. Lefties have a .203 wOBA against him, compared to righties’ .361. A lot of this is BABIP-driven, to be sure, but it’s been *so* consistent in each of his three small yearly samples, I wonder if the M’s would think about trying to get as many lefties in there as possible?
He’s missing more bats, but when righties put the ball in play, they’re hitting it hard; I guess Urquidy is the anti-Dunn (not Dunn?). Some of this may be that he’s actually moved away from the change this year, and is now throwing more of his low-80s/high-70s slider. That pitch has worked out pretty well for him, as it has a higher whiff rate than his fastball, and he’s able to use it against lefties and righties alike. He used to throw a curve, but at this point, the two pitches look remarkably similar – Pitch Info still thought he mixed them both in about equally, but MLB is coding essentially all of them as sliders now.
Something to watch for: Pitch Info shows that his release point is far, far lower for his slider than for his fastball. Essentially, if he’s throwing a fastball, the arm angle should be fairly noticeable to the batter. Anything slower starts off lower. This was always a problem for Marco Gonzales’ change-up, and it’s not one he ever really “fixed” except by throwing more of his curve and cutter. Let’s see if we can see it on the broadcast, and if M’s hitters look like they’re picking up breaking stuff out of Urquidy’s hand.
1: Haniger, DH
2: France, 2B
3: Seager, 3B
4: Marmolejos, LF
5: White, 1B
6: Trammell, CF
7: Moore, RF
8: Murphy, C
9: Crawford, SS
SP: Kikuchi
Not the most defensively-skilled OF the M’s can throw out there, but there are 4 lefties, and injuries make things tough.
Anthony Misiewicz is back from the Covid IL after a few days off. Robert Dugger and Erik Swanson head back to the alternate site (this is the same physical site). Dugger had been the 27th-man for the double-header yesterday, while Swanson was called up when Misiewicz was IL’d.
A number of Astros starters went on the IL for Covid protocols yesterday. Because they may simply have been near someone who’d tested positive, it wasn’t clear if they’d play tonight – there’s no time limit on the Covid IL. A few negative tests and some quick contact tracing might be all they needed for the league’s OK to play. It doesn’t appear that happened, as I’m looking at this Astros line-up and…there are some new faces here. Jose Altuve, Yordan Alvarez, Alex Bregman are all out, so welcome…uh…Taylor Jones as the DH tonight. The 6’7″ DH had a couple of games last year, but doesn’t have much of a prospect pedigree; he wasn’t on the list of FG’s top 33 Astros prospects. Tough to be in a system like that, especially as a 1B/DH. Making his big league debut will be Alex de Goti, who’ll play 2B. De Goti, too, wasn’t ranked as a prospect, nor even given a mention. He’s been a contact-oriented middle infielder for several years, but has never been on the 40-man until a bunch of starters broke protocol. Good for him, though. Playing RF will be Chas McCormick, who actually (barely) cracked the top-20 Astros prospects. He made the Astros out of spring training, but has played somewhat sparingly, with only 11 PAs thus far. Aledmys Diaz, a long-time vet who’s a pretty darn good bench player, gets the start at third.
Games 12 & 13: Mariners at Orioles – Another Twin Bill
Game 1: Marco Gonzales vs. Matt Harvey; 9:35am
Game 2: Justin Dunn vs. Bruce Zimmermann; tbd
After yesterday’s rain-out, the M’s will play another doubleheader today in Baltimore. After splitting the first, they’ll try to win the series with another two shortened games. In the first, Marco Gonzales will try to right the ship after two rough starts. This is a good line-up to face if you want to get back to being aggressive, as it doesn’t have quite the threats that the Twins’ line-up had.
In Game 1, the M’s face Matt Harvey, one-time Mets phenom and recent punching bag. Before there was Syndergaard and deGrom, Matt Harvey was the face of the Mets pitching renaissance. From 2012-2015, sandwiched around a year off for TJ rehab, Harvey tossed 427 sparkling innings, going 25-18 with a 2.53 ERA, striking out 449 Ks to just 94 walks and 333 hits. He overpowered hitters with his four-seam fastball that sat 95-96 and a wipeout slider at 91. Before anyone else, I think Harvey made the super-hard, cutter-like “Warthen Slider” (named for the Mets pitching coach) famous.
And then, all of the sudden, it was over. He’s battled injuries, but more than that, it’s just that all of his pitches just…stopped fooling people. 2016 wasn’t that bad, especially given what was to come, but his fastball stopped being a weapon and pretty much immediately became a liability. In 2016, batters hit .325 and slugged .453 off of it, and they weren’t far behind off the once-untouchable slider.
The next year, his control left him. This meant that his slider wasn’t hit as hard, but that was probably just because he couldn’t keep it in the zone. This left him throwing get-me-over fastballs, and thus batters teed off on it. After a change of scenery and a partial recovery in 2018, he’s had plenty of opportunities to recapture the old 2015 magic. 12 starts and a 7+ ERA for Anaheim in 2019, 7 games and an ERA over *11* for the Royals last year (when batters slugged nearly 1.000 off of his slider).
He gets opportunities because he’s been so good, and because for a brief moment, he looked like he was figuring things out. It’s getting pretty late for that now, as his velocity’s down to the low 90s and the slider hasn’t been dominant since the Obama administration. The sinker he toyed with in 2016-17 is gone, and he’s back to four-seam, slider, change and curve. At least through two games, he’s been throwing strikes; the control problems seem to be improving. But the larger problem remains: he’s incredibly hittable in a game that’s now dominated by high-K, low-hit pitchers. You know, the kind that Harvey used to be.
Marco’s had a disastrous start, but it’s worth remembering that he’s been among the streakiest of M’s hurlers. In 2019, He started the year 5-0 after a brilliant April, but then collapsed in May, walking 3 in his first start of the month, and doing it again a few starts later. It culminated in his first start in June where he gave up 10 runs in 4 2/3 IP to the Angels. I was pretty much ready to write him off, but he was suddenly the April version of himself again, before losing it in an early September start against Houston. He walked 5 and struck out none, giving up 2 dingers in the process. But again, he righted the ship immediately, and finished the year strong.
The point is that for a command artist like Gonzales, the difference between being on and being completely out of sorts is incredibly fine. I’m trying to remind myself that he’s essentially the Raul Ibanez of pitchers, and that he’ll look completely cooked for a start or a month, and then pop right back to being the opening day starter, holding good line-ups down and dominating with pinpoint control and by mixing his pitches. But if the M’s are going to surprise, *these* are the games they need to win, and not just win 55-65% of, but just win them all. The M’s nominal ace is facing a just-trying-to-hang-on Matt Harvey, in a game in which the M’s have a decided advantage in line-up strength. This is not a just-try-to-give-my-team-a-chance or a keep-it-close situation. The M’s need to beat Baltimore convincingly and set up the nightcap as a momentum game.
In game 2, Justin Dunn will try to reacquaint himself to the strikezone. Fangraphs’ Brendan Gowlowski was impressed with Dunn’s stuff in his first outing, which gives me a bit of hope. It’s been 15 starts now, and Dunn’s *still* walked more batters than he’s struck out. That’s..not sustainable at all. This is an opportunity to just throw strikes; Baltimore can’t punish him for living in the zone the way other teams can, and he has to take advantage. His velo’s up, his slider is still remarkably hard to hit – everything’s ready for him to take the next step. He’s just got to throw strikes.
He’ll face off with the O’s Bruce Zimmermann, a 26 year old lefty who pitched in the Braves org before coming to the O’s in 2018. In the low minors, he overpowered batters and kept his walks in check. But his first taste of AA (still with the Braves) saw his walk rate skyrocket. He kept it in check for a while, but it resurfaces when he made it to AAA in 2019. It’s been less than 20 innings in the majors, but he’s done a good job of keeping his walks in check.
He uses a low-90s fastball up in the zone and a firm change at 85 down. He’s also got a slider and curve. All in all, it’s a remarkably John Means-like arsenal, which I suppose makes sense. The O’s had one pitching development success, and I suspect they’ll try to recapture that success with every lefty they’ve got. But while Zimmermann’s fastball’s got decent spin, it seems odd to throw it up in the zone like Means’. Means has elite vertical rise (as in, best in MLB thus far), while Zimmermann’s is perfectly average. You can snatch some whiffs with elevated fastball, but you run the risk of elevated contact, and Zimmermann’s given up 4 XBH on the pitch in his 12 IP this year.
Game 1
1: Haniger, RF
2: France, DH
3: Seager, 3B
4: Marmolejos, 1B
5: Torrens, C
6: Trammell, CF
7: Moore, 2B
8: Crawford, SS
9: Haggerty, LF
SP: Gonzales
Phew. After a rough first inning, Gonzales looked like the pitcher we saw last year. Hopefully, something clicked. Losing that game would’ve been tough, but Harvey was much better than advertised. And what a time for JP Crawford’s first extra-base hit of the year! I’ll take it, and don’t want to bury a guy who just brought in the winning runs, but Crawford’s average exit velocity has been extremely low this year, following a trend we saw last year. He’s increased his GB% every season he’s been in the big leagues, and we’re at the point now that the Crawford we saw in his first few months in Seattle is just about unrecognizable. That Crawford hit 7 HRs in less than 400 PAs. I can’t wrap my mind around that. He’s among a few players who actually hits his ground balls harder than fly balls/line drives, and while it absolutely came in handy today with that hot shot grounder into the corner, he’s got to hit the ball hard – and in the air – consistently. One of the big statistical outliers has been a collapse in the share of batted balls he pulls; he’s been going the other way or up the middle. Today’s yanked double hopefully shows he’s working on attacking hittable pitches and not just holding back and deflecting them. As Ryan Divish notes, that’s now a 5 game hitting streak for Crawford, so hopefully he’s making the requisite adjustments.
The second game should start soon (it’s 12:30 ish now).
1: Haniger, RF
2: France, 2B
3: Seager, 3B
4: Torrens, DH
5: Murphy, C
6: White, 1B
7: Trammell, CF
8: Moore, LF
9: Crawford
SP: Dunn
If Crawford can pull the ball again, and if Evan White continues to improve making contact on pitches thrown inside the zone, then my next request is for Dylan Moore to start driving the ball again.
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