Chris Young Against the Core

You can detect the nervousness. The Royals stormed out to take a commanding series lead, but then Johnny Cueto’s own arm abandoned him, wrecking not only Game 3 but also a potential Game 7 as well. So there’s some discomfort there, some uncertainty, and now in a short while the Royals are going to throw Chris Young at the best offense in the league in the center of a homer-happy ballpark. If Young were a bad pitcher, he wouldn’t be in this position in the first place, but I don’t think he’s perceived as a trustworthy pitcher. So the thought is the Blue Jays are in a good place to go and tie this series up.

I don’t think we can help the way we feel about Young. He’s unusual and by no means overpowering, and everything we’ve learned about pitchers gives us reason to be skeptical. He puts the ball in the air. He doesn’t pound the zone. He doesn’t miss a ton of bats. Young’s whole game is suppressing quality contact, and being skeptical of that is like Sabermetrics 101. Yet Young, for his career, has posted a better-than-average ERA. The same has held true of late, following his career revival. Young has a real chance this afternoon, our own doubts aside. As always, it’s just going to take precision.

The ballpark environment is a certain factor. It’s worked to Young’s benefit that he’s spent the bulk of his career playing for teams that call pitcher-friendly ballparks home, and a team like the Blue Jays wouldn’t make a point of acquiring a pitcher of Young’s type. That is, except for Marco Estrada, who the Blue Jays literally just got last offseason, and Estrada is about as close to Young in style as it gets. The two are extreme fly-ballers, neither of whom generates a bunch of strikeouts, and while Estrada used to have some contact problems, this year he was better at home. He allowed fewer dingers at home. So it’s clearly not a given that Young will get hit around, now that fly balls are more dangerous. If you’d like a small and unconvincing sample, Young’s started eight career games in Colorado. He’s allowed three home runs. No matter where you are, the fences are far away.

Looking at the upcoming game specifically, we know that Young is a fly-ball pitcher. One of the most extreme fly-ball pitchers in the sport’s history. At the same time, if you look at the core of the Blue Jays lineup, Jose Bautista is an extreme fly-ball hitter. Edwin Encarnacion is only a slightly less extreme fly-ball hitter. In such match-ups, we know that the advantage goes to the fly-ball pitcher, and then you throw in the fact that Young is also right-handed. Those fly-ball tendencies can work against the hitters, if they end up swinging just under the pitches. Young wants to allow fly balls, quite often. He just wants them to go 300 feet instead of 400.

It’s of some interest to look at a previous match-up. On July 11, Young faced the Blue Jays in Kansas City, and while those Blue Jays weren’t exactly the same as these Blue Jays, the core was identical. Young still had to navigate through Bautista, Encarnacion, and Josh Donaldson, each of whom he faced three times in the start. Now, Young lost. He allowed three runs in six innings. But we know he’s a thoughtful pitcher, because he has to be to survive, so we can examine how Young pitched against the meat of the order.

That day in Kansas City, Young had his lowest-ever fastball rate in a game he started. He threw a fastball barely a third of the time, coming with almost two-thirds sliders. Young also had his highest-ever groundball rate in a game he started, keeping 11 of 18 balls in play on the dirt. So, again, you just can’t know what’s going to happen. Against the Jays’ three best hitters in particular, Young worked nine plate appearances, with one strikeout, five grounders, a fly ball, a line drive, and a pop-up. How did Young attack the lineup core? See if you can manage to decipher his strategy:

It’s fairly uncomplicated. Young’s right-handed, and the three hitters are all right-handed. Against them, Young threw 27 pitches, and only two of them were inside from the middle of home plate. All three hitters excel turning around the inside pitch, and Young recognized that, and recognized his own stuff, and stayed the hell away. It’s also remarkable that the two inside pitches were both taken for called strikes, so those were two missed opportunities, both by Bautista. One was a first-pitch slider that Bautista didn’t like. The other was a 1-and-0 fastball, and based on Bautista’s reaction, he didn’t know why he didn’t pull the trigger.

That’s one of the things that Young does — he’ll try to confuse you, and because of what he’s throwing, hitters aren’t going to be happy with themselves if they don’t do enough. If you let me get into Bautista’s head for a minute, he might’ve watched that fastball and thought, if I see that again, I need to beat the hell out of it. So then Young got Bautista in swing mode, and this was the following pitch:

Bad swing, bad result, ending up in a bad count. The next pitch was a slider further away, and Bautista couldn’t do anything but tap it to the second baseman.

Of the 27 pitches Young threw to the three hitters, just nine were fastballs. The first time through, four of eight were fastballs. The second time through, three of eight were fastballs. The third time through, just two of 11 were fastballs. Again, almost all the pitches were away. Donaldson didn’t see a single inside pitch out of nine. Encarnacion didn’t see a single inside pitch out of seven. Bautista saw two inside pitches out of 11, and he watched them both. To Bautista’s credit, he seemed to make an adjustment the third time, and he stayed with a two-strike fastball and lined out to center. And in Encarnacion’s second at-bat, he did this to an 0-and-1 slider:

That was the big blow. Those were two of Young’s three runs. And this gets to what this afternoon’s game could come down to. Encarnacion was out ahead of the pitch. If it were one inch more outside, it’s off the end of the bat. Even still, the ball barely got out, on a very hot day. The wind was blowing strong, right to left. By the narrowest of margins, a fly out to the track became a two-run dinger, and from that point the Jays didn’t give up the lead. On that pitch, Young had just enough working against him. He tends to have just enough working for him.

If the last game is any indication, Young will once again stay away. He’ll make the Blue Jays try to beat his pitches, and he’ll try to surprise them with just enough pitches in to maybe keep them ever so slightly off the pitches outside. If the Jays guess right on an inside pitch, that’ll be a problem. If Young catches just too much of the plate away, that’ll be a problem. At some point, though, it’s on us to stop doubting Young’s ability to be precise. You just can’t make his repertoire work by accident.