Yu’s Sliders (And Those High Fastballs)
Yu Darvish debuted yesterday. His first pitch registered 95 MPH and the flashbulbs popped. Then things went south in Texas.
Four singles, three walks, a wild pitch, and 42 combined pitches later, his first inning finally went into the books. With it went much of the mania surrounding his arrival in the states. Was this pitcher, despite being about 50% better relative to the Japanese league than the last great Japanese import, going to suffer the same control problems that plagued Daisuke Matsuzaka before him? Was he a nibbler without an out pitch?
At the risk of being an apologist, even in this small sample there were mitigating factors.
For one, the platoon advantage was in full effect for the Mariners. They loaded their lineup with left-handers to counter the debuting righty — Miguel Olivo and Brendan Ryan were the only righties on the Mariners’ card to begin the game. Though Darvish has a large repertoire, his best pitches, or his ‘out’ pitches if you will, are his two sliders. We know that sliders have a platoon split. Even if still managed to throw 20 sliders by the end of the game (eight in the first inning), it’s possible that the pitch had a reduced efficacy against the southpaw-laden lineup.
There may have been some luck at play in that first inning. Sure, a few of the balls were hit hard, and Darvish deserved his fate on those hits. But Ichiro Suzuki dumped a ball in the outfield just a step past a converging Adrian Beltre and Elvis Andrus, and Olivo was fooled on a ball and still poked it to shallow right. Turn those singles into outs and things would have gone a little differently.
Darvish still walked four batters in his 5.2 innings. 59 of his 111 pitches (53.2%) were strikes, and that would have been below average last year in the AL (63.2%). It did seem like the Ranger had lost the zone.
A five-pitch sequence late in the first inning might provide us a window into the thought process of an accomplished pitcher trying to learn the peculiarities of a new strike zone.
Darvish threw five straight high fastballs at one point. All five were called balls. Munenori Kawasaki, who had trouble with Darvish back in Japan, was content to watch four of them into the catcher’s mitt. But, obstinacy aside, those pitches were still remarkable. Take a look at a picture of his pitches from the first inning (left) compared to a plot of all his pitches (right). Take particular notice of pitches that would be high and tight to a left-hander, and you’ll probably see those five pitches clustered together:
That bit of hard-headedness takes a turn when you look at how he avoided the spot later in the game. According to Patrick Newman of NBPTracker.com, the high fastball “got him swinging strikes” in Japan. If it was a weapon in Japan, Darvish would have wanted to use it in America. In order to get the batters to swing at it, however, he would have needed to get a strike call on at least one of those high fastballs. Unfortunately, Paul Nauert was behind the plate. Thanks to Jeff Zimmerman’s BaseballHeatMaps.com, we can see that he was not the man to be tempted by those high and tight fastballs to a left-handed hitter (blue means fewer strike calls than league average):
Darvish may have been locating those fastballs there repeatedly in order to show the umpire he was locating them there on purpose. The umpire returned the favor by refusing to make the call. Once Darvish knew he wasn’t going to get that pitch, he adjusted and pitched lower in the zone for the most part.
It wasn’t a stellar debut, and Yu Darvish walked too many batters. He still garnered ten swinging strikes on 111 pitches, for a 9% swinging strike rate that would have been a top-40 number among qualified starters last year. He settled down after a poor first inning and battled through a tough day. His team won. Most importantly, he certainly learned more about the American strike zone, and what sort of strategies he will have to employ when faced with lefty-heavy lineups in the future. It wasn’t a stellar debut, but it was a step forward.
With a phone full of pictures of pitchers' fingers, strange beers, and his two toddler sons, Eno Sarris can be found at the ballpark or a brewery most days. Read him here, writing about the A's or Giants at The Athletic, or about beer at October. Follow him on Twitter @enosarris if you can handle the sandwiches and inanity.
Pitch-sequencing to alter the umpire’s strike zone… Now that is some next-level stuff.
Or, SSS. Whichever.
Either way, it wasn’t a great start, but it was eventful!
So scouting and researching of umpires tendencies should play a part in every teams game preparation. Sad but true.
“Darvish may have been locating those fastballs there repeatedly in order to show the umpire he was locating them there on purpose”
… Does this not sound to anyone else like you’re giving him way too much credit?
No. It sounds more like you don’t understand pitching.
Disagree. His command was really poor. If those fastballs were intentional…. why’d he walk four guys?
Against Kawasaki in the first, I’d say that walk happened because Darvish and the umpire disagreed about where the top of the strikeszone was (and Kawasaki even ducked as each pitch delivered, doing his part to confuse the issue even further).
Darvish threw a pitch that I thought was a strike, and the ump called it a ball. Darvish then made sure by throwing 3 more pitches to the exact same spot, and the ump called all of them balls.
As an M’s fan, I was happy to see Kawasaki draw the based-loaded walk, but I as a baseball fan the entire sequence made me wish for robots calling balls and strikes.
“If those fastballs were intentional…. why’d he walk four guys?”
Isn’t that the question other posters are attempting to answer?
You’ve got to be kidding, right? Suppose Darvish might try to alter the strike zone, or prove a point, or whatever. NO WAY is he going to do that with the bases loaded. To the first batter in the next inning with nobody on base, maybe. With the bases loaded? Ha. You don’t understand consequences, do you.
Yes and a definite No to puffy. If anyone thinks a major league baseball pitcher and an ump are that deep into a meta game, I would say immediately you are giving both way too much credit.
Why is it ridiculous that Darvish would want to try and expand the strike zone ? All pitchers try to do that and to say that Darvish was not able to locate those fastballs in the same spot is to underestimate a professional pitchers ability to locate his pitches. This sound like more of how pitch sequencing works which is something fangraphs rarely deals with since there are assumptions used which don’t necessarily follow easily assimilated statistical trends.
His decision to abandon his original game plan was probably what lead to him having such a bad first inning.
Why would you call it a ‘meta game’ ? Sounds more like pitching to me as well as wanting to give more deception to his slider since his sliders go along the same flight path as his fastball which is slightly elevated, which he then either throws softer so it flys to the right or tighter so it has more late movement. By not calling the high strike the ump took away one of Yu’s better weapons since the top half of the strike zone was basically off limits.
It doesn’t need to be about “expanding” the zone either. It could just be a conversation. Is this a strike? No? Okay how about an inch lower? No? Am I not hitting this spot right? No? Okay, one last time, this is not a strike, correct?
I mean, it was pretty remarkable. He threw five straight high fastballs to one spot and he supposedly couldn’t control anything.
I would call it ‘defining the zone.’
Yeah, watching that first inning, he was really wild. There were several pitches he completely missed, including a wild one that advanced a runner.
As bad as it was, I think the metagame had to be secondary in his thoughts. Who stands on the mound wonder how to get the umpire to go his way when he can’t even figure out how to get his pitches going his way? His first thought had to be to throw strikes and not miss by several inches when he didn’t throw strikes.
I agree that he was wild, but there was something very intentional about those five straight high strikes. Both things could have been going on. Darvish could have said ‘I know this spot is a strike, I’m going to put the ball there until I know where the strike is.’ I know we’re getting into his head, but five straight strikes to the same three inches squared really stood out to me.
Even if he Darvish was capable of hitting his spot 4 straight times, he’d understand that the time to try and expand the zone ISN’T when the bases are loaded.
The walk to Kawasaki dropped his WE by 5 percentage points, and I doubt Darvish would’ve felt the need to get marginal calls against the 2B – Kawasaki was 3/27 off of him last season.
Four straight high fastballs just off the black may have made sense vs. Ichiro with 1 on and 1 out. Against Kawasaki with the bases loaded? I doubt it. This is just an accuracy/precision thing: he was very precise with those pitches, but he still didn’t have any accuracy.
Maybe he was being stubborn. That happens in sports.
I think it would be pretty presumptuous of Darvish if, in his first inning of MLB pitching, decides he is going to change the umpire’s definition of a strike. He could be that vain/headstrong/etc, but for him to have those thoughts seems a stretch. Now, maybe the strike zone in Japan is more of a by-the-book, knees-to-armpits area, whereas here very few umps call the strike between the belt and the letters.
Or maybe he was “nibbling” at the high strike.
Didn’t Glavine do this all the time? Keep throwing farther and farther outside until he found the Ump’s outermost strike call?
He and Maddux were masters of that technique. Find the corner and stretch it out, little by little, until the strike zone was horizontal.
Jamie Moyer is an expert practitioner of this as well.
Also Andy Petite and Jamie Moyer do that. They start on the far left and then work their way in until they find the extreme limit of the left side of the strike zone and then drop their pitches in there with those cutters to the far right which are right at the rhh shoe tops which also get called for strikes.
Whatever his motivation, he seems to have made the point. He’s going to love Cousin’s strike zone.
Not a stretch at all. I still remember a great story from an old revered umpire (Ron Luciano) about Catfish Hunter told at our annual little league banquet long ago when Luciano was asked who he thought was the best pitcher in baseball.
Luciano said he was behind the plate doing a Yankee/Twins game and the Yanks had staked Catfish to an early lead. The 2nd guy up for the Twins was a slap hitting SS and Luciano said Hunter decided to use this guy to figure out Luciano’s strike zone. Hunter started off by throwing a knee high pitch a few inches off the plate for a ball. The next pitch was just over the white in the same spot for a strike. The next pitch was 1 inch off the plate (knee high again) for a ball. The next pitch just nicked the edge of the black which Luciano called a strike. Luciano said that from that point on Hunter went to that exact spot whenever he wanted. Not over the white but just off the edge of the black and he did it with 3 different pitches. What Eno is suggesting Darvish did is child’s play compared to that.
Just like the Mariners and A’s got their Opening Day ignored by MLB, and the “real” Opening Day(s) are starting this week, MLB and fans should ignore this outing by Darvish.
He wasn’t pitching against a real offense, and he was in the bandbox in Arlington with his monster offense against a ragtag Mariner pitching staff to provide him a huge cushion. I mean really, beyond small sample size.. it’s just the M’s.
Your article is sound and there are some thoughtful approaches here, but save the detailed analysis and theories about chess games with batters and umps for when Darvish faces real competition, like the Tigers, Rays or Yankees.
But it was a real offense, and he will have to pitch in that bandbox often.
Does it piss anyone else off that a lot of people discount everything as SSS?
My tongue-in-cheek comment above notwithstanding, I agree with that sentiment. Just because we can’t make career projections off of one start doesn’t mean that it tells us “nothing”, particularly when looking at a pitcher making his MLB debut. It’s not statistical analysis, it’s scouting, and I hope by now the majority of readers here believe that scouting can tell us things.
Wouldn’t pitching in “the bandbox” make it harder on Darvish?
quiet, he’s rolling…
59 of his 111 pitches (53.2%) were strikes, and though that would have been above-average last year (45.3%)
Something of a nitpick, but you’re comparing two different things here. The 45.3% figure is the percentage of pitches in the zone, while the 59 strikes include all swinging strikes, fouls and balls put into play regardless of where they were pitched. The average strike% for the AL last year was 63.2%, so Darvish was below average.
Perfect, I thought those numbers were off. Thanks!
So… these charts have LHB standing on the left side of my page? Perspective is from the pitchers mound right?
Really interesting to me that he never threw to the up and away or down and in (to LHB). I guess thats probably something to do with facing 7 lefties though.. since those are traditionally the zones that everyone is told lefties are good at hitting. But shouldn’t he be able to more or less bury his slider into the batters back foot area? (or at least try to do it once in a while?.. i dont see many RHP try this ever)
Turn those singles into outs and things would have gone a little differently.
Wow! This is some amazing insight.
Dice-Y
or
Y-2K
I agree, we’ve seen enough. The book is closed on this guy and we should all move on.
I was more impressed with his breaking stuff than his fastball. The breaking pitches had real bite and were top of the rotation caliber. That fastball surprisingly isn’t and looked like the Mariners were getting good swings at it. He was clearly nervously wild before he settled down. He also kept throwing a Greg Maddux cutter that tailed away from lefties that was not effective at all.
I still doubt he ever puts up a 5 WAR season.
Why are you writing about this nebbish, when Zito pitched a four hit shutout yesterday and cause the earth to shift on it’s axis.
This is an interesting piece, but there’s no reason to say that platoons are a mitigating circumstance just because his best pitch is a slider. If he doesn’t have a reliable out pitch against lefties, he is going to see a ton of lefty-loaded lineups and is not going to be a particularly good pitcher in this league.
What is his SwStrk% if you remove Miguel Olivo, who embodies the swinging strike and is in no way indicative of the average MLB batter.
He sucked the first inning, sucked less the 2nd, then did all right… Projecting his future from that sample is ludicrous.