Flamethrowing Torch, Part II

Last night, Eric detailed the virtues of Max Scherzer and laid out the case for why he should be a member of the D’backs rotation. This morning, I’ll expand on that a bit, using a graph of the Pitch F/x data from his Sunday start to look at what he was throwing at the Dodgers.

The first thing to notice is that there are way more little dots above the 95 line than there are below. He was throwing some serious cheese on Sunday. His average fastball was 96.1 MPH, and he sustained it for 94 pitches. His last fastball of the night clocked in at 97.1 – not exactly the telltale sign of a guy who was fatigued.

Scherzer wasn’t exactly interested in changing speeds, either. As Eric noted, he throws the fastball a lot, and Sunday was no exception. 63 of the 92 pitches that Pitch F/x registered were fastballs – Scherzer’s modus operendi is apparently “hit it if you can”, because he’s not messing around with secondary pitches all that often.

That isn’t to say those pitches aren’t any good, however. Scherzer got 21 swinging strikes in the game on Sunday, but 9 of them came on either his slider or his change-up. Considering he only threw 29 offspeed pitches (if you can call an 88 MPH slider an offspeed pitch), getting 9 swinging strikes is fantastic. He loves his fastball, and rightfully so, but the slider and change both have their uses. The slider, especially, can be a knockout pitch against right-handed hitters.

The key to Scherzer sticking in the rotation will be the development of that change-up. Like most RH pitchers with terrific fastball/slider combinations, he’s already death to right-handed hitters – they’re hitting just .160/.261/.222 against him this year. However, those pitches aren’t nearly as effective against left-handed hitters, and the numbers bare that out – LH hitters are hitting .322/.406/.424 against Scherzer.

On Sunday, Scherzer only threw 4 change-ups in the 39 pitches he threw LH hitters. He clearly doesn’t trust it yet, but if he’s going to stay in the rotation, he’s going to have to have at least a serviceable change that he can mix in against lefties. Otherwise, you’ll just see teams stacking the line-up with LH bats and getting a pretty huge platoon advantage.

His audition for the rotation went very well, but he showed both the reason why Arizona should be both thrilled about his abilities but also aware of his current limitations.