WS Coverage: Joe Blanton, Yankees Fall in Love with Fastball Early

It would seem the theme of this World Series will be reinvention on the mound. Cliff Lee, Pedro Martinez, and A.J. Burnett set the pace and last night Joe Blanton avoided making it a trend. Blanton is easy to get a read on. He is the same pudgy strike-throwing right-hander he was in Oakland; same high-80s fastball, same breaking stuff and off-speed pitch, same facial hair. Everything is the same, except now he strikes batters out instead of taking full advantage of the fielders. Nearly 20% of the batters Blanton faced this season had their plate appearances end with a K — a career high by a decent margin with his next highest mark coming in the half-season spent with Philly last year.

Team	Year	K%	uBB%
OAK	2006	12.1	6.4
OAK	2007	14.7	3.8
OAK	2008	11.3	5.8
PHI	2008	16.1	10.2
PHI	2009	19.4	6.5

This is surprising as Blanton’s fastball does not pop the glove and he uses it nearly 60% of the time, which can lead to some testy runs of ball-meets-sweet-spot action. Blanton’s secondary stuff is far more deceiving, or at least was this season. Last night, Blanton was facing not a National League opponent, but rather the best team in the American League (and likely all of baseball). He struck out seven, allowed five hits, four runs, and walked two within six innings of work. There’s nothing spectacular about that. With full knowledge of this you can see how the following pitch selection (all of his first inning tosses) may have been a poor choice considering the opponent and circumstances surrounding the game.

FF
FF
FF
CH
FF
SL
SI
FF
CH
SI
FF

That’s eight of eleven pitches that were fastballs. Derek Jeter and Johnny Damon lead off the game with back-to-back hits and both were the result of a fastball. I’m not saying work completely void of the heater; however, the Yankees possessed the highest weighted run value off fastballs in baseball and it wasn’t even close, meanwhile Blanton’s fastball is sub-par at best. To his credit, Blanton threw progressively fewer fastballs as the game wore on, but the damage was already done.

It’s impossible to peg the Yankees scoring runs on one pitch. And let me make clear: I am not saying throwing eight change-ups or eight sliders or four fastballs makes much of a difference in that first inning. I am saying Blanton pitched just as you would expect him to. That wasn’t such a good thing last night.