Pitching to Contact with Zack Greinke and Denard Span

I hadn’t planned on talking to Zack Greinke about the game he’d started the night before, but then, for the second time in his career and the first time since his rookie year, he went six innings and recorded only one strikeout. It was a win for the team, but maybe not his finest game, that one against the Giants on Tuesday night. So I had to say something. “They make a lot of contact,” he grumbled, “but it wasn’t ideal.”

When I asked him if anything was different, he shrugged. “Against guys like Denard Span, Ben Revere, Buster Posey, I’m not going to spend a lot of pitches going for the strikeout. They make too much contact.”

We’ve heard this sort of thing before, of course. Pitching to contact is even espoused as a general philosophy by some organizations. But it’s a little surprising to hear from this pitcher, who regularly strikes out 200 batters a year, even if he’s told us before that pitching to FIP — pitching to limit the walks and increase the strikeouts — just led to hard contact in the zone.

He also gave us a name! Denard Span, he of the 3.7% career swinging strike rate, good for 11th-best overall since he’s been in the league. Span, because of his contact-oriented skill st, has forced Greinke to approach him differently.

So let’s look at Greinke’s plan against Span this past Tuesday and see what he was trying to do.

First At-Bat
Pitch 1: 90.5 mph Four-Seam (Called Strike)

Span didn’t love this opening salvo, high and over the plate. He expressed some displeasure at having to cover that far out:

Now he’s got that outside part of the plate in mind.

Pitch 2: 87.5 mph Changeup (In play, out(s))

This was a pitch-to-contact pitch. It’s a high changeup, in the zone, and you might call it a hanger except for the decent movement. Recent research suggests that the height of a changeup in the zone is perhaps the most important aspect of the pitch, but that’s probably because a ton of changeups are thrown for whiffs and ground balls.

Well, Greinke got the ground ball, but on a pitch that was decently high. In fact, on pitches an inch below that changeup and above, Greinke’s average launch angle allowed is 14 degrees, which is right in the middle of the line-drive angle range. The league’s is 11.4 degrees. Span’s launch angle here wasn’t actually recorded, which bugged the pitcher after the game, but it was certainly negative. Maybe because Span was thinking about that high pitch for the first strike?

Second At-Bat
Pitch 1: 90.4 mph Four-Seam (Called Strike)

That’s just paint on the inside corner. That might seem like just getting strike one but there’s a little more to it. It’s not that Span is aggressive and might swing at that pitch — Span’s 23% first-pitch strike rate is right around league average — it’s that even if he did swing, that’s not a good spot for Span in the zone.

Sean Casey talked about how a stance can tell you something about a hitter’s weakness, and Span’s extreme pigeon-toe stance is indeed born of a desire to “stay closed” as the outfielder told me. He doesn’t want to fly open on pitches inside and roll them over. But, he’s still not great on inside pitches. They’ve had the lowest exit velocity of any quadrant according to BaseballSavant:

Basically: Greinke just wants to get in there on him, but not in a predictable fashion.

Pitch 2: 87.3 mph Changeup (Ball)

Totally designed to look like that first pitch inside but end up down and away. Technically, this pitch ends up in Span’s happy zone, low and away, but not in a way that he likes. This change is high enough to think that Greinke might have actually intended to throw this for a called strike, but it dives a ton and ends up below the knees.

Pitch 3: 88 mph Changeup (Foul)

So Greinke tries again. This time, the change is thrown higher, so that it would be a strike if Span lets it go. Span can’t let it go, but he’s early on the pitch. Greinke almost got the weak grounder he wanted, though.

Pitch 4: 85.2 mph Slider (Foul)

I’d like to say that Greinke threw this slider in the zone for the same reasons that he was throwing his change in the zone, but if you look at the catcher’s setup, that’s not likely. Greinke was probably supposed to bury this one, for a swing and a miss. That’s okay: once you get Span to two strikes, you probably do want to throw something that might get a miss, even if your overall goal is weak contact.

Pitch 5: 91.6 mph Four-Seam (Ball)

Here, we may have a difference of opinion. I say this is a purpose pitch, not designed for a whiff. Span has swung at similar four-seamers from righties less than 10% of the time this year:

Reasonable minds could differ on this one, though. Perhaps Greinke was aiming for this one to be high and tight but in the zone. Certainly looks like a pitch designed to “move the eye level up,” though.

Pitch 6: 91.2 mph Four-Seam (In play, no out(s))

See why we can differ on opinions? Because this second one is perfectly placed. Strike if he doesn’t swing, nibbler if he does. But does Span swing on this one because it’s a strike? It’s three feet off the ground and off the inside of the plate by almost seven inches: it might not have been called a strike. But maybe that other pitch made it look more like a strike?

Oh, and ignore that Span reached on error. That pitch was again hit so weakly and at such an angle that Statcast didn’t pick it up and record an exit velocity on it. It wasn’t supposed to be a hit.

Third At-Bat
Pitch 1: 87.7 mph Changeup (Called Strike)

After starting his first two plate appearances with fastballs, Greinke changes it up, literally. But it doesn’t necessarily represent a change in approach. This is just another changeup in the zone, notable only because it’s the third of four changeups in the zone, when the pitcher has averaged only one in three changeups in the zone against everyone else.

Pitch 2: 91.3 mph Four-Seam (In play, out(s))

Well, that spot should look familiar. Just another four-seam up and in, this time a 78 mph pop up with an 89 degree angle. 89! Almost literally straight up in the air.

In the box score, this looks like three balls in play, all weakly hit. Just ten pitches to a player that was later removed for injury reasons, and so maybe not indicative of all that much beyond one pitcher’s approach to one (perhaps slightly hurt) batter on one day.

But that approach was designed for contact, it looks like. And it included four seam fastballs up and in and high changeups in the zone. Looks like it worked pretty well, too.