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Pitching
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Yes and no - bullpen had to cover a lot of innings, and that has a cascading effect down the road
DCTribefan
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Zach Meisel in The Athletic has a column on McKenzie. Here are a few cuts:
1. McKenzie is 23 years old and still, technically, a rookie.
2. He skipped the Triple-A level en route to the majors when the Indians needed another arm during last summer’s 60-game mad dash.
3. From Sept. 1, 2018, to April 1, 2021, McKenzie logged a grand total of 33 1/3 innings.
McKenzie’s annual walk rate:
2015: 7.0 percent (rookie ball)
2016: 6.8 percent (Low A/A ball)
2017: 7.9 percent (High A)
2018: 7.7 percent (Double A)
2019: Did not pitch
2020: 7.1 percent (MLB)
2021: 20.8 percent (MLB)
When the batter is ahead in the count, McKenzie has turned to his fastball 74.8 percent of the time. [They know it's coming and punish him].
Opposing batters have amassed a .204 average against him.
Perhaps no statistic better reflects McKenzie’s season than this: With two strikes, hitters are just 3-for-62 against McKenzie, with 44 strikeouts. But all three of those hits are home runs.
“When he’s ahead in the count and in pitcher-advantage counts, he really does attack the strike zone,” pitching coach Carl Willis said. “When he falls behind, there’s not as much consistency in attacking guys, challenging guys, in the zone.”
This year, his whiff rate ranks in the 87th percentile in the league. His strikeout rate ranks in the 83rd percentile. So, his repertoire can work, even if his fastball velocity has dipped and occasionally fluctuates during his starts. - Zach Meisel, The Athletic 5/24/21
My comment:
He's Bob Feller in his prime when he gets two strikes on a hitter. 3-for-62 with 44 K's? Insane numbers.
But when he gets behind he comes in with the fastball and the hitters are ready to pounce. For Tristan it's all about getting ahead of the hitters as much as possible, and more importantly, learning how to get back into the count when behind without getting rocked.
The good news is he's already an elite strikeout pitcher (83rd percentile) with loads of swing-and-miss (87th percentile). What a great place to start. They just need to work on him staying aggressive when he gets behind in the count and throwing his breaking stuff for strikes. He needs to attack hitters with his breaking stuff when he's down in the count and don't give in and groove a fastball because he's afraid of walking another hitter. But he has to be able to find the zone.
1. McKenzie is 23 years old and still, technically, a rookie.
2. He skipped the Triple-A level en route to the majors when the Indians needed another arm during last summer’s 60-game mad dash.
3. From Sept. 1, 2018, to April 1, 2021, McKenzie logged a grand total of 33 1/3 innings.
McKenzie’s annual walk rate:
2015: 7.0 percent (rookie ball)
2016: 6.8 percent (Low A/A ball)
2017: 7.9 percent (High A)
2018: 7.7 percent (Double A)
2019: Did not pitch
2020: 7.1 percent (MLB)
2021: 20.8 percent (MLB)
When the batter is ahead in the count, McKenzie has turned to his fastball 74.8 percent of the time. [They know it's coming and punish him].
Opposing batters have amassed a .204 average against him.
Perhaps no statistic better reflects McKenzie’s season than this: With two strikes, hitters are just 3-for-62 against McKenzie, with 44 strikeouts. But all three of those hits are home runs.
“When he’s ahead in the count and in pitcher-advantage counts, he really does attack the strike zone,” pitching coach Carl Willis said. “When he falls behind, there’s not as much consistency in attacking guys, challenging guys, in the zone.”
This year, his whiff rate ranks in the 87th percentile in the league. His strikeout rate ranks in the 83rd percentile. So, his repertoire can work, even if his fastball velocity has dipped and occasionally fluctuates during his starts. - Zach Meisel, The Athletic 5/24/21
My comment:
He's Bob Feller in his prime when he gets two strikes on a hitter. 3-for-62 with 44 K's? Insane numbers.
But when he gets behind he comes in with the fastball and the hitters are ready to pounce. For Tristan it's all about getting ahead of the hitters as much as possible, and more importantly, learning how to get back into the count when behind without getting rocked.
The good news is he's already an elite strikeout pitcher (83rd percentile) with loads of swing-and-miss (87th percentile). What a great place to start. They just need to work on him staying aggressive when he gets behind in the count and throwing his breaking stuff for strikes. He needs to attack hitters with his breaking stuff when he's down in the count and don't give in and groove a fastball because he's afraid of walking another hitter. But he has to be able to find the zone.
33Y0
Jobu Needs A Refill
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Great find! Interesting read and perspective.
i know i show up late every day, but i do really good work when i'm here ---- you're fired (or, we're sending you down to nelsonville)
@Wham with the Right Hand
Talking about Clase.
"His fastball is very hittable when he elevates it. He gave up a line drive single to left and Haase's line drive to right. He doesn't have many strikeouts considering how hard he throws. The key for him is keeping his fastball down in the zone and getting ground balls while being able to get his changeup close enough to the plate that hitters chase it.
If he ever gets to where he can get that 91 mph changeup with sinking action in the zone consistently he'll be all but impossible to hit. I don't think I've ever seen anybody hit that pitch hard, or even hit it at all, especially when they're geared up to swing at 101."
****************************************************************************
This is the exact wrong approach and is what gets old school pitching coaches relegated to the dust bins of history.
If Clase throws his FB down, it eliminates his ability to throw breaking pitches at all. So you might as well not bother having him trying to learn how to throw them.
By the nature of breaking pitches speed differential, you have to start them higher (gravity pulling them down longer) for them to end up in the zone. To tunnel them with a FB, you have to have the FB end up at the top of the zone. If he throws FBs down, then any breaking pitch he throws will be able to be identified as up in the zone relatively to his FB. So hitters will just spit on anything starting in the lower 3rd of the zone, and swing off speed on anything above. Want to see sliders and change ups fly off the bat .... just pursue this strategy. Because you will let hitters zone him and smack CHs or SLs at about 91 and spit on cutters at 101.
Old school data analysis there Wham. There are reasons his FB down creates such a high ground ball rate. But assuming that means he should throw it there exclusively is just to simplistic an assumption.
Talking about Clase.
"His fastball is very hittable when he elevates it. He gave up a line drive single to left and Haase's line drive to right. He doesn't have many strikeouts considering how hard he throws. The key for him is keeping his fastball down in the zone and getting ground balls while being able to get his changeup close enough to the plate that hitters chase it.
If he ever gets to where he can get that 91 mph changeup with sinking action in the zone consistently he'll be all but impossible to hit. I don't think I've ever seen anybody hit that pitch hard, or even hit it at all, especially when they're geared up to swing at 101."
****************************************************************************
This is the exact wrong approach and is what gets old school pitching coaches relegated to the dust bins of history.
If Clase throws his FB down, it eliminates his ability to throw breaking pitches at all. So you might as well not bother having him trying to learn how to throw them.
By the nature of breaking pitches speed differential, you have to start them higher (gravity pulling them down longer) for them to end up in the zone. To tunnel them with a FB, you have to have the FB end up at the top of the zone. If he throws FBs down, then any breaking pitch he throws will be able to be identified as up in the zone relatively to his FB. So hitters will just spit on anything starting in the lower 3rd of the zone, and swing off speed on anything above. Want to see sliders and change ups fly off the bat .... just pursue this strategy. Because you will let hitters zone him and smack CHs or SLs at about 91 and spit on cutters at 101.
Old school data analysis there Wham. There are reasons his FB down creates such a high ground ball rate. But assuming that means he should throw it there exclusively is just to simplistic an assumption.
Please excuse my overly simplistic take on this, but can pitchers not throw fastballs both up and down in the zones? Honest question, I don't get in depth with baseball as much, if at all. I guess I'm meaning, I think I understand the concept of tunneling, can a pitcher operate from two sets of tunnels? Like, specific to Clase, high fastballs and breaking pitches in one tunnel and low fastballs and changeup in a second tunnel, that way batters won't exactly know what's coming depending on where the pitch starts. Or am I completely out of my realm here and should just go back to lurking and screaming to my disinterested girlfriend about how launch angles are ruining the watchability of baseball and pitchers using stick to improve spin rates are doing to no-hitters what Russ Westbrook is doing to triple-doubles in basketball?
MattyFos.
Let's go Brandon!!
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Idk much but I watched a Trev Bauer YT video breaking down why Bieber is such a great pitcher and a lot of it was because of his tunneling and speed range. He overlayed 4 pitches 93-4s, 90chan, 85sl and a 80curve or something like that. With the 4 pitches overlayed you couldn't tell from anything Bieber was doing. His delivery was identical. 3/4 pitches were identical until about halfway to the plate when they started breaking. The outlier was the change which he missed low and outside. Bauer said had he hit his spot on the change the ball would have shadowed the other 3 pitches.
So I'm assuming its very difficult to "tunnel" those pitches perfectly. But even if you tunnel 2 one way and another 2 another way then the battery sits on a 50/50 once he recognizes the two approaches
Alabuckeye
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Plesac to the DL with a fractured finger
Interesting, thanks for the reply. So it sounds like, with Clase specifically, that he is going to want to "tunnel" all his pitches higher like @jup mentioned? I guess my reasoning for that conclusion is that he'll have full use of his pitch repertoire, even though that will likely cause his change to end up in the middle of the strike zone. Going by your post and what Bauer said, even if it would normally seem to lessen the efficacy of his change by putting it more in the hitters strike zone, it theoretically would keep it just a difficult to square up on because there essentially wouldn't be anything to tip off the hitter as to what pitch is coming, i.e., having a 25% chance of a hitter guessing right is better than 50%? I hope I'm understanding, this is all pretty interesting to me.
MattyFos.
Let's go Brandon!!
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That was my take away as well. The change up doesn't necessarily need to be high in the zone though. He pointed out Biebs change is usually spotted on the lower right quadrant. So Clase can still keep it low just needs the proper movement on it to get there. But that tunneling is most important. It blew my mind seeing Biebs pitches nearly identical 4
7/8 frames into the pitch and Bauer said most pitches take like 15 frames to reach the plate. But biebs body was 100% in sync with each pitch.
Check it out when you get a chance. Worth the time for smooth brains like us.
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I understand the tunneling theory but my observation is that Clase's fastball isn't that hard to hit. FanGraphs has his contact percentage on pitches in the strike zone at 83.7%. So five out of six swings at pitches in the zone are hit. Even the outside zone swings make contact nearly half the time (46%). He throws 79% fastballs.
So if Clase throws a fastball nearly 80% of the time and 84% of his strikes are hit, don't we want to at least make sure those balls are outs? How best to do this?
Clase throws a sinking fastball from what I've read and it certainly looks that way on direct observation. His ground ball percentage this year is 70.8%, which I think qualifies him as an extreme ground ball pitcher. When he throws that sinking triple digit fastball at knee level it's a ground ball almost every time. When he throws it up in the zone it gets turned into line drives, even by a minor league lifer like Eric Haase as we saw Monday night. Clase threw another high fastball earlier that was drilled into left field for a hit.
So tunneling is a wonderful thing but Clase is having a lot of success throwing low smoke and I'd be seriously concerned if he decided to start throwing high fastballs, especially since his fastball is not that hard to put the bat on. I don't recall Corey Kluber throwing many high fastballs. He and Bieber throw a lot of low breaking stuff and get the hitters to chase pitches below the knees and off the outside corner. Then, when the hitters are used to seeing every pitch break down and away, they come in with a straight fastball at the knees for called strike three. That's also tunneling, right?
Hitters who are used to seeing Clase's fastball coming in at the knees swing and miss at low breaking balls they read as another low fastball. And sometimes they swing and miss because the pitch is just so different in velocity and movement from what they're geared up to hit that they can't adjust their swing in time.
Watching from the center field camera I never see Hedges or Rivera calling for a high strike when Clase is pitching. Every target is down. Maybe they think his stuff plays better down in the zone? Maybe they don't think tunneling is the be-and-end-all and not every single pitcher should be throwing high fastballs and low breaking stuff?
I hope the Indians change his approach and start having him throw high heat and tunnel his breaking balls off it before Karl Willis gets confined to the dust bin of history.
So if Clase throws a fastball nearly 80% of the time and 84% of his strikes are hit, don't we want to at least make sure those balls are outs? How best to do this?
Clase throws a sinking fastball from what I've read and it certainly looks that way on direct observation. His ground ball percentage this year is 70.8%, which I think qualifies him as an extreme ground ball pitcher. When he throws that sinking triple digit fastball at knee level it's a ground ball almost every time. When he throws it up in the zone it gets turned into line drives, even by a minor league lifer like Eric Haase as we saw Monday night. Clase threw another high fastball earlier that was drilled into left field for a hit.
So tunneling is a wonderful thing but Clase is having a lot of success throwing low smoke and I'd be seriously concerned if he decided to start throwing high fastballs, especially since his fastball is not that hard to put the bat on. I don't recall Corey Kluber throwing many high fastballs. He and Bieber throw a lot of low breaking stuff and get the hitters to chase pitches below the knees and off the outside corner. Then, when the hitters are used to seeing every pitch break down and away, they come in with a straight fastball at the knees for called strike three. That's also tunneling, right?
Hitters who are used to seeing Clase's fastball coming in at the knees swing and miss at low breaking balls they read as another low fastball. And sometimes they swing and miss because the pitch is just so different in velocity and movement from what they're geared up to hit that they can't adjust their swing in time.
Watching from the center field camera I never see Hedges or Rivera calling for a high strike when Clase is pitching. Every target is down. Maybe they think his stuff plays better down in the zone? Maybe they don't think tunneling is the be-and-end-all and not every single pitcher should be throwing high fastballs and low breaking stuff?
I hope the Indians change his approach and start having him throw high heat and tunnel his breaking balls off it before Karl Willis gets confined to the dust bin of history.
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