Jacob deGrom, Pitch-Tipping, and Last Night’s Fifth Inning

Before the World Series, Tom Verducci wrote an article about the Royals’ advance scouting. Specifically it discussed the scouting done by third base coach Mike Jirschele on Jose Bautista’s throwing habits. There was also a suggestion that the Royals had picked up on David Price tipping his changeup. They used both pieces of information to beat the Blue Jays. So it appears the Royals are pretty good at this advance scouting stuff.

Fast forward to last night’s Game Two against the Mets. Starter Jacob deGrom gave up four runs in the fifth inning on a walk and five singles. Following the game, which the Royals won 7-1, Adam Rubin of ESPN spoke to two people he identified as ex-Met players who suggested deGrom had been tipping his pitches.

From Rubin’s article:

As for deGrom, one ex-Mets player speculated he may have been tipping pitches.“I can’t figure it out yet, but they have something on deGrom out of the stretch,” the retired player indicated. “They better figure it out or they can’t win this series.” Another ex-Met saw the first ex-player’s comment and added: “He must speed up on his heater and a tad slower with other stuff. But I think it’s in his facial expressions — seriously.”

Interesting! The conspiratorial answer often is, after all. The fact that the Royals just did this to Toronto — and to such good effect, too — adds plausibility to the discussion. Even so, I’m not sure I agree. I went back and re-watched the inning to see.

But before we even get to that fateful inning, it should be noted that the Royals went through the first four innings of the game with just one hit (predictably a single) — this, too, in spite of the fact that deGrom was forced into the stretch in both the third and forth innings. Though they did work deGrom for a few walks, there was no suggestion they were on to him. This wasn’t a case of hard contact with nothing to show for it. The BABIP gods were napping during this game, or at least indifferent towards Kansas City’s efforts.

Let’s first address the specific concerns brought up by the secret ex-Mets, then we can move on to the inning itself. The Royals’ hits came on a fastball, two sliders, a curveball, and a changeup. That’s quite the menagerie. That likely means that if deGrom were tipping his pitches, whatever the nature of the tip, it would have to be more general in nature. For example, he does something different when he throws a fastball. That would differentiate the fastball from the off-speed pitches, though it wouldn’t differentiate the off-speed pitches from each other.

Oddly, the hardest hit ball for the Royals was likely Lorenzo Cain’s line drive to center field which was caught. Cain’s at-bat is interesting, though because, it lasted six pitches and included both fastballs and off-speed pitches. deGrom first threw him three fastballs, then two curves, then Cain hit the last pitch, another fastball, hard to center. I timed deGrom’s wait time between when he came set on the rubber and when he began to throw the pitch to see if there was a difference between the fastball and off-speed set times. Here’s what I came up with.

First pitch: fastball: 3 seconds
Second pitch: fastball: 3 seconds
Third pitch: fastball: 3 seconds
Fourth pitch: curveball: 2 seconds
Fifth pitch: curveball: 2 seconds
Sixth pitch: fastball: … longer than 2 seconds, but not quite 3, or just barely 3

There seems to be a general pattern there, where deGrom holds set a bit longer for fastballs. The next batter, Hosmer, saw two pitches, both sliders. The Fox broadcast didn’t show deGrom coming set on the first pitch. On the second, however, they switch to him after coming set and the wait time appears to be at least three seconds. That also was the slider Hosmer hit up the middle for a single.

The next two at-bats following Cain’s were two pitches in length. Hosmer saw two sliders and Morales saw two changeups. Both batters swung and missed at the first pitch and singled on the second. The next at-bat with both fastballs and off-speed pitches was Mike Moustakas’s. Moustakas saw eight pitches, six fastballs bookended by two curveballs. I timed all the pitches and here’s what I came up with:

First pitch: curveball: 3 seconds
Second pitch: fastball: 2 seconds
Third pitch: fastball: 3 seconds
Fourth pitch: fastball: 4 seconds
Fifth pitch: fastball: 2 seconds
Sixth pitch: fastball: 4 seconds
Seventh pitch: fastball: 3 seconds
Eighth pitch: curveball: didn’t show

Obviously my counting is inexact, but then Royals hitters’ would be as well. We can say relatively definitively that deGrom didn’t speed up when throwing his fastball and slow down when throwing off-speed pitches as is alleged, nor did he do the opposite.

As for the next charge, that deGrom was tipping his pitches through facial expressions, that’s much more difficult to verify on film. Often, once deGrom had received the sign, the Fox broadcast would cut to the center-field camera, rendering it impossible to get a look at his face before the delivery. So it’s possible deGrom was tipping fastballs off by, say, opening his mouth when he was about to throw one. That would allow Royals hitters to sit back and wait on off-speed pitches without fear of getting blown away by a 96 mph fastball.

I don’t believe this was deGrom’s whole problem, though. He got both Morales and Hosmer to swing and miss at off-speed pitches to start their at-bats, suggesting that, even if he were tipping his pitches, the Royals were still vulnerable to well executed off-speed pitches. But I want to look at something else. Here are the pitch plots for a number of the Royals hitters against deGrom that inning. See if you can spot any patterns.

Rios v deGrom

Escobar v deGrom

Cain deGrom

Hosmer deGrom

Morales deGrom    Mustakous v deGrom

You can’t tell movement from a pitch plot, but the location of a number of those pitches is just bad. First off, none of the pitches the Royals hit were down in the zone. At most they were over the middle and often higher up than that. The slider that Escobar hit was particularly awful. deGrom had him 0-2 and threw a flat slider at the top of the strike zone. A better hitter hits that one 420 feet. Now look at the pitch to Hosmer. It’s a second straight slider, but again not a good one and not nearly as good as the first one. It’s over the middle of the plate as well. Look at Morales. The first to him was a changeup and you can see why he swung and missed. It falls off the table. The second pitch was also a changeup and look where that pitch ended up in comparison. It stays on the table waiting for a bat to meet it for tea. No wonder Morales hit it. If you’re going to double up on off-speed pitches you want to make sure the second one isn’t crappy because you’ve already used up the element of surprise.

It’s entirely possible deGrom was giving something away, some piece of information that made it easier on the Royals. Even so, none of the Royals’ hits were huge smashes. You’d think if they could figure out what would be coming they might hit a double now and again, but all five hits were singles. There are other, more common sense questions. For instance, if the Royals knew what pitches were coming, why did they have Escobar try to bunt? Why did they swing and miss at off-speed pitches low in the zone? If you know it isn’t a fastball, you likely don’t swing at off-speed pitches in the dirt.

Put all of this together and to me it looks like deGrom was getting hit because he was throwing some very bad pitches. He also managed to throw those bad pitches at inopportune times. There’s never a good time to throw a flat slider up in the zone, but on 0-2, when the batter is looking to protect the, plate you’re virtually guaranteed it’s going to get hit. Similarly there’s never a good time to throw a weak changeup, but throwing it immediately after throwing another changeup means the change in speeds, about the only thing a weak changeup has going for it, is going to be easier for the batter to handle. After all, he’s just seen a changeup!

I can’t say whether deGrom was tipping his pitches or not, but if he was, I’m not sure it had a huge effect on the outcome of the game. Or at least, not nearly as large an effect as the quality of the pitches he threw. One takeaway for deGrom after this might be to mix his pitches better, and probably also make sure he holds his mouth the same for each pitch type. But most importantly, pitch-tipping or not, deGrom needs to throw his off-speed pitches better. If he does that there’s no reason, regardless of pitch-tipping or not, that he can’t have success.





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Harold of the Rocks
8 years ago

Anything but just admit that the Royals are good…

Juan
8 years ago

Oh FFS, there are multiple articles near the top of the queue on this site talking about how good the Royals are. There’s even one by Dave Cameron of all people with a title stating one aspect of the Royals’ play “Deserves More Praise.” But that’s not enough; never mind whatever other interesting aspects of the past two games deserve investigation, apparently every article is required to assuage KC fans’ neurotic inferiority/persecution complex in some hopeless attempt to fill the hole in their diminished lives.

Pepto McBismol
8 years ago
Reply to  Juan

It’s just bad form to constantly nibble at these “*wink wink* something’s going on…” narratives. It’s just bad form, low class, and beneath the conversation in professional baseball. I was floored to hear commentary DURING THE WORLD SERIES suggesting through a wink/nod joke that the Royals must be stealing signs. In spite of the fact that the quality of commentary is at an all time low, I was just floored. It doesn’t get more disrespectful than that. Again, floating narratives suggesting that a WS team is cheating is just bad form. If you have a problem understanding that, that’s on you. I can’t believe anyone would get their undies in a wad over a fan having an issue with these kinds of articles.

Look, it’s one thing to joke around about something magical going on when a team is dialed in. It’s a whole other matter to suggest the catcher is cheating for using pine tar when every sane catcher in Major League Baseball does it and it’s well known. It’s a whole other matter to suggest from the booth – IN THE MIDDLE OF A WORLD SERIES GAME – that the Royals are stealing signs, especially with no evidence and not so much as a charge from an opposing team. Especially when the Royals have a history of rallying big, even on the road (see Houston v Royals Game 4). I’d love to hear the explanation on how a team manages to pull off stealing signs on the road in a hostile environment in the playoffs. It’s a whole other thing to constantly float narratives that “Oh, they must have just found a way to hack the gibson.” This stuff is just childish and disrespectful. Everybody knows the Royals love to hit fastballs. They’ve been doing it since before last year. If you pitch one and accidentally hang it or throw a meatball, it’s going in the grass. That’s what happened. You have a very low margin for error living by the fastball against this team.

Did you check out the ESPN Mets-Royals Preview? Yeah, like 5 sentences are Royals related. Every other word spoken about these guys is something negative, when they’ve been kicking butt all year long and doing it the right way. This is wrong, and a fanbase with any class wouldn’t have stood for it. Nobody’d want this kind of stuff said about their team…FFS.

…all that notwithstanding, this is an interesting analysis 😀

Mark
8 years ago
Reply to  Pepto McBismol

No one who knows baseball thinks that a hitter benefitting from a pitcher tipping pitches is cheating. If a hitter can gain that advantage, it’s simply observant baseball and smart scouting. So yes, we all know that the Royals are good. But quit crying that they’re being disrespected when the article is in fact specifically pointing out that they don’t appear to be benefitting from tipped pitches.

Pepto McBismol
8 years ago
Reply to  Pepto McBismol

Why don’t you learn how to read and save the lame attempts at insulting for someone who respects you as a human? I clearly said at the end of my post that this analysis is interesting. I’m simply speaking WRT this guy up top acting like there’s something wrong with a fan being tired of the negative narrative for no reason.

Jon
8 years ago
Reply to  Pepto McBismol

“Why don’t you learn how to read and save the lame attempts at insulting for someone who respects you as a human?”

Pot, meet kettle…

You know what’s even more tired than insinuations that the Royals are stealing signs? Oversensitive Royals fans and their “woe is me” attitude. Buck up. When a pitching staff that generally whiffs batters left and right generates almost no swinging strikes, analysts are going to float possible narratives. They get paid to talk, and not everything out of their mouths is going to be rational or substantiated. It’s a not some widespread, national conspiracy to make what the Royals are doing less legitimate.

Also, any time some foreign substance is spotted during a game, it becomes a talking point. When a catcher is clearly rubbing dark gunk on his hands, with no attempt to conceal it, it’s going to be mentioned, no matter what team he plays for. Stop whining about it.

Ullu ka Patta
8 years ago
Reply to  Pepto McBismol

I seem to remember the Royals/Jays broadcast and coverage being packed with speculation about Toronto’s sign stealing – in fact in game 1 they talked about how Volquez needed to change his signs because the guy at second base had been there too long and would be feeding signs to the batter.

So long story short, get over it. There is no bias against the Royals (incenditally, I find that the coverage of KC is usually very positive – the narrative is ‘scrappy team with heart’ or some equivalent nonsense), and if people are talking about pine tar and sign stealing it’s because we talk about it when we catch every team doing it.

Jon
8 years ago

Great advanced scouting and the ability to detect “tells” in a pitcher are not mutually exclusive from being a good team. If anything, the two are interrelated.

There’s also this line, at the end of the article, which you might have noticed had you actually read it: “I can’t say whether deGrom was tipping his pitches or not, but if he was, I’m not sure it had a huge effect on the outcome of the game.”

So…

Matty Bum
8 years ago

Are you a Royals fan? If so, nobody likes you. If not, then please work on your reading comprehension.

Either way, shut up.

MATTY bum hATTER
8 years ago
Reply to  Matty Bum

Are you a Met’s fan because I guarantee you nobody outside of Queens likes you.

Ullu ka Patta
8 years ago

Hah, as I was reading this article I was thinking to myself that if he leaves it at ‘Degrom threw bad pitches’ there will be a legion of whiny Royals fans demanding their team’s due.

Thank you and the posters below for proving me correct – you have almost become parodies of yourselves at this point.