Rich Hill keeps forcing us to rethink everything.
He has us rethinking how to pitch, finding success even while employing just a fastball and curve — and frequently utilizing the latter as his primary pitch.
Has has us rethinking when it’s appropriate to give up on an arm. Perhaps never, in his case. Hill’s return to the majors — and to a three-year, $48-million deal — began in independent ball two years ago.
Sometimes it takes a while to really hear an idea. Justin Turner told me something two and a half years ago that only recently clicked. All it took for this idiot to finally understand was an illustration of a bat path, a couple of graphs, and like 10 others players articulating a similar thought. Maybe you got it the first time. The rest of you, though, might benefit (as I did) from hearing it again: go get the ball. It’s that simple, but it’s also not that simple.
Back in 2015, there were 643 different pitchers who threw at least 100 pitches. Out of that entire player pool, Carter Capps generated the highest whiff rate, and he had the highest whiff rate by nearly five points. Capps was as close to unhittable as any pitcher has ever been, really, and so we were fascinated, the whole lot of us. You can say you’re growing tired of strikeouts, but extremes are extremes. Capps was something else entirely. It was as if he’d been sent down from some hidden higher level.
Here in 2017, there are 604 different pitchers who have thrown at least 100 pitches. Out of that entire player pool, Carter Capps has generated the lowest whiff rate. He has a lower whiff rate than Christian Bethancourt, who wouldn’t be described as a professional pitcher. In a mop-up role last night, Capps struck out Kolten Wong. It was his first strikeout since returning to the Padres more than two weeks ago.
A lot has happened.
Allow me to revisit something I wrote about yesterday. For the first sustained period in his major-league career, Byron Buxton has shown the ability to hit for some contact. It doesn’t mean he’s totally fixed, and he’s gone through his hot streaks before, but, with Buxton, we’re always looking for a reason to get excited. This is a new one, and in part because of Buxton doing a better job at the plate, the Twins are in wild-card position. It’s a close race, and I can practically guarantee you there’s going to be further jostling, but before the year began, we projected the Twins to be one of the worst teams in the American League. They’re poised to go to the playoffs. Outside of the mood around trade-deadline week, the year has been a fun one.
Allow me to revisit something I wrote about in May. Back then, when we were a month and a half into the season, there were promising signs up and down the Twins lineup, at least as far as plate discipline was concerned. There were suggestions of a team-wide improvement, which was sufficiently remarkable to catch my eye. The samples then were fairly small. They’re not so small anymore. Twins hitters have taken some steps. Buxton isn’t alone — something seems to be clicking, which has helped allow the Twins to get to where they are today.
Rob Manfred might be distancing himself from robot umps.
Last October, Manfred addressed and seemed open to the idea that tracking systems could be used to call balls and strikes:
“As technology continues to improve and those sorts of adjustments can be made [in] real time, that technology will become more feasible for use on the field. I don’t believe we are there yet.”
But last week, while speaking with USA Today’s Bob Nightengale, the MLB commissioner seemed to back away from the idea of turning over ball and strike calls to machines.
“I don’t believe the current technology is sufficient to call balls and strikes on a real-time basis,’’ Manfred says. “If and when we get to that technology — and sooner or later we’re going to get there — there’s still a fundamental question about whether or not we want to remove that human element from the game.
“There is a human aspect to that, a work aspect to it, that’s always been an important part of our game… I don’t think you can just jump to the conclusion that if you have the technology to do it that’s the right thing for your product.”
Added Nightengale: “Bravo.”
As indicated by Nightengale’s response, there’s still plenty of resistance to technology in the game — or anything that challenges tradition.
Maybe we’re further away from seeing automated calls than some thought, a fact that might be frustrating to Ian Kinsler and Joe Maddon, both of whom have voiced frustrations with calls recently.
One of the best closers in the game is struggling. In fact, one of the best closers in the game isn’t even being used as a closer at the moment. Last week, Yankees manager Joe Girardi effectively demoted Aroldis Chapman from his end-of-game duties, stating that he would use the hard-throwing left-hander “at any point.” This followed a series of shaky outings during which Chapman conceded seven runs in 4.1 innings.
Though he possesses a strikeout rate that would still make most of the league jealous, it’s also the worst of his career. And while he’s also experienced some misfortune on balls in play, there’s a sense that the misfortune is “earned.” And it is, in a way. It’s a little bit about how he’s throwing the ball, but also a lot about where.
More and more pitchers have been throwing four-seam fastballs at, and just above, the top of the strike zone. The trend has been influenced by multiple factors. Spin-rate data is one of them, and so is the fact that an increasing number of hitters are tailoring their swings with launch angle in mind. Well sequenced and well located — especially if it has good carry — the pitch is extremely difficult to square up.
Will hitters be able to adjust to the proliferation of high-spin heaters up and over the zone, and thus make it a less effective pitch? I asked 20 players and coaches — 10 on the hitting side of the equation and an equal number on the pitching side — for their thoughts on the subject.
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Josh Bell, Pittsburgh Pirates first baseman: “It’s definitely a tough pitch. I didn’t see a lot of them in the minor leagues. I did see them, but they’d be a little bit farther out of the zone — now it’s top of the zone and just above the letters. They’re trying to see if you can get the bat head to it. There are a lot of foul balls and swing-throughs, so if it continues this way, there will probably be a bounceback with the hitters.
Regardless of whether you believe that they’re good, the Twins are presently sitting in a would-be playoff position. In a crowded field for the American League’s second wild card, the Twins are alone in front, even after having sold off a closer and re-gifted a starter. That the Twins sold pieces is as good an indication as any that they didn’t expect to be here, but here they are, a team with a chance. Most of the AL teams count as teams with a chance, but who are the Twins to deny themselves an opportunity?
There’s no such thing as an organizational plan that revolves around three players, and yet there’s nothing more valuable than a young and cost-controlled star. For that reason, so much of the Twins’ greater outlook seems to depend on the development of Miguel Sano, Jose Berrios, and Byron Buxton. Last year’s Twins lost 103 games, with those three players combining for 2.6 WAR. This year’s Twins are vying for the one-game playoff, with those same three players combining already for 6.5 WAR. Very obviously, there’s been more that’s gone on. But the core has been more promising than not, with Buxton now making another attempt to emerge.
I don’t need to tell you about Buxton’s prospect pedigree. I don’t need to remind you that we’ve been teased by Buxton before. Great players have great whole seasons; talented players have great whole months. Buxton’s more of the latter than the former, but of late, he has shown something new. Buxton is teasing again, in a different way.
Washington left-hander Gio Gonzalez pitched into the seventh inning on Sunday in San Diego. His 120th pitch of the late afternoon was ripped into right field by Manuel Margot for a single. It was his last pitch of the outing, as Nationals manager Dusty Baker strode to the mound, gestured to the bullpen, and took the ball from Gonzalez.
Twenty years ago, this wouldn’t have been a noteworthy event. The sequence would seem rather innocuous, in fact. But we live in an age marked by an unprecedented number of pitching injuries, an age in which teams and players are more often turning to science to better understand performance and injury prevention. We live in an era when pitch counts routinely accompany the game data in the corner of a telecast. No team of which I’m aware has figured out how to significantly reduce pitching injuries, but there is a general sense that it’s better to be safe than sorry.
And this is where Baker stands out from the crowd.
While pitch counts are crude metrics, only 10 teams have allowed a starting pitcher to exceed 120 pitches this season; only two teams have allowed it to occur on multiple occasions.
Baker and the Nationals have accomplished it four times.
Baker is lapping the field.
| Team | Number |
|---|---|
| Nationals | 4 |
| Padres | 2 |
| Red Sox | 1 |
| Indians | 1 |
| Rockies | 1 |
| Tigers | 1 |
| Diamondbacks | 1 |
| Cardinals | 1 |
| Rangers | 1 |
| Rays | 1 |
| Everyone else | 0 |
The Nationals under Baker also rank second in average pitch count per start (100.5 pitches), one of only two teams averaging more than 100 pitches per start. They also rank second in number of 100-plus pitch outings (76). The Nationals are trailing only the Red Sox (101.1, 81) in each category, according to the Baseball Prospectus data.
It’s not curious just that Baker is leaning on his starters to an unusual degree relative to the league in 2017, but that he’s doing so at a time when the Nationals have a 14-game lead in the NL East and a 100% chance of reaching the NLDS according to FanGraphs playoff projections entering Monday. This would seem like the time to give players more rest when possible.
When Danny Duffy first arrived in the big leagues, he was electric. As a guy, he’s naturally laid back — perhaps a product of having grown up in southern California — but he used to throw really hard. Unfortunately, the velocity didn’t necessarily translate to success. Duffy lacked real command of his repertoire. As the left-hander put it to me recently, he “had no idea where the ball was going.” He threw mostly just four-seam fastballs and a curve.
Duffy has evolved pretty considerably since his rookie season in 2011. It’s not that he’s just a command guy now — he still throws hard — but a lot has changed over the last few years. With more than a month left in the season, Duffy has already recorded the highest WAR figure (2.9) of his career.
What happened? What allowed him to refine his command, to establish a more ideal pitch mix? Duffy recently helped answer those questions, relating all the “aha” moments that led to a completely different, and much more successful, arsenal — an arsenal I address pitch by pitch in what follows.
The Fastball
This year is the closest Duffy has ever come to throwing more sinkers than four-seamers. There’s always a ground-ball benefit — “I started getting more ground balls, more weak contact,” said Duffy, who is currently enjoying the highest ground-ball rate of his career — but this change was more about command than outcomes on balls in play.
When Duffy first came up, the refrain was that he’d go as far as his command would take him. “I thought I had to be so fine when I was younger, because I struggled with the strike zone so much,” Duffy remembered. “Then I figured out that it was all about repetition. You can’t expedite it; experience will give it to you.”