Games » Arizona Diamondbacks
Jun21Why Ned didn't pull Hochevar
Lee Judge
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Ned Yost said that he finds the pitching performances of Luke Hochevar puzzling. Good. I’m glad I’m not the only one.
On Tuesday night, Luke did the thing he does so often: dominates long enough to make you think he’s got no-hit stuff and then comes apart. Ned and I aren’t the only ones who are puzzled. Luke’s not sure why it happens, either. Is it fatigue? Is it concentration? Is it pitch sequence or location? Or could it be as simple as hitters getting multiple looks at him and then adjusting?
So if this is a recognizable pattern, why doesn’t Ned go get him as soon as it starts? It’s the same reason Ned let Alcides Escobar continue to go to the plate when everyone was screaming for a pinch hitter: Ned is looking down the road and thinks Hochevar needs to be more than a six-inning pitcher. Luke is getting his chance to figure out how to maintain his early-game excellence, but Ned said the opportunities to pitch deeper into a game won’t keep coming forever.
At some point, the future is now, and Hochevar needs to figure it out by then.
One thing he has figured out
Luke did an interesting thing in the fourth inning to the Diamondbacks’ Kelly Johnson: Luke sped up his windup and caught Johnson off-guard for a strikeout. If there’s a runner on, Hochevar couldn’t do this. It would be a balk, but if the batter has his feet set and the bat in position, Luke shouldn’t get called for a quick pitch (rule 8.01 (b)).
Hochevar starts his delivery with his normal rhythm, then speeds up the last half. I’ve seen him do it only a few times, but it’s there if you look for it.
Gordon goes long
Alex Gordon hit a home run on the first pitch of the game, and afterward I asked him whether he was looking for any pitch in particular. Alex said he had only been hitting leadoff for a while, but every so often he would hack at the first pitch. That keeps the opposition from just laying one in there thinking the lead-off hitter always will take the first pitch. Alex decides when to do it based on past experience or the patterns of certain pitchers. When it’s lefty on lefty, Alex doesn’t want to fall behind on a hittable fastball and then have to deal with breaking stuff. On Tuesday night, he got the fastball he was looking for and parked it.
A single short
Alex completed the hardest parts of hitting for the cycle: home run, double and triple. He lined out in the fifth inning and was on deck when the game ended. I asked Chris Getz how aware the Royals players were that Alex needed a single for the cycle, and Chris said very aware. When Chris came to the plate in the ninth, he considered bunting for a hit just to get Alex to the plate one more time. But Chris said that with the Royals down 7-2, that might have gotten something started with the Diamondbacks that neither team needed.
(One of those unwritten rules: You don’t bunt for a hit when you’re down by a lot. Why? I don’t know. You need runners, but if it’s going to set something off with the other team, it may not be worth it.)
Chris did have an interesting point, though. The Arizona third baseman was playing in. If bunting was inappropriate, why were the Diamondbacks defending against it? Veteran ballplayers will look for cues from the other team. If we’re up by a lot and shouldn’t steal, but your pitcher keeps throwing over, you must think a steal is the right move. So we’re going. Chris said the first baseman was playing back, and he might have had a shot, but Chris decided against it. That’s the problem with unwritten rules: No one is exactly sure what they are.
It’s me, not you
I asked Eric Hosmer whether he was getting different pitches now. He started hot, and traditionally pitchers want to see whether you can hit a big-league fastball. That’s why you see so many guys have a great first trip around the league and cool down after that. The process of adjusting to hitters has been sped up considerably by video. Pitchers no longer have to see you in person to know what you can do.
Eric said that his current problem was anxiety to perform. He feels he’s pressing a bit, and pitchers recognize this. I asked him whether pitchers would then give him marginal pitches and see whether he will chase. Eric said “definitely,” but at least he knows he’s doing it. So maybe an adjustment isn’t too far away.
Speaking of adjustments …
Ned Yost said he’s been pondering lineup changes but hasn’t reached a decision. Ned was asked about Jeff Francoeur, and Ned threw out the stat you guys read last week: Frenchy leads the team in hard-hit outs. Even so, sometimes you change things just to give hitters a fresh start. It may be a phony mental thing. (Mike Aviles used to change his batting gloves any time he went hitless. Clearly the gloves were faulty. With a new pair, he was good to go.) Same with a change in the lineup. I’ve seen it work too often to dismiss the idea.
Ned is thinking of moving Escobar up and Melky Cabrera down to an RBI position.
He doesn’t know either
I asked Alex Gordon about getting hit by a pitch Sunday, “You sounded as confused as anyone.” Alex, Royals broadcaster Joel Goldberg and I spent the next 10 minutes trying to decipher what was going through Cardinals manager Tony La Russa’s mind, and we never quite figured it out. All I can say is if you’re sending a message, it’s not too effective if nobody can figure out what the message is. We’re the Cardinals, and you’re not?
I’m not predicting anything, but ballplayers have long memories. Keep that in mind if you see a Royals pitcher drill a Cardinal batter next season.
Don’t call before noon
That’s the rule with professional ballplayers. And if they had a late flight the night before, you can move that deadline back. When you leave the park and head for home, ballplayers are just getting off work. They have a lot of adrenaline built up, and it’s almost impossible to go right to sleep. So they go out to dinner, have a beer, whatever, until they can wind down and get to bed.
So a talk-radio guy who called the team’s St. Louis hotel at 10 a.m. Saturday and asked for Eric Hosmer had no shot. Stunts like this (the guy’s trying to get attention by waking up a sleepy ballplayer and doing an ambush interview) are why pro athletes have to put up some kind of wall between them and the public. If they don’t, someone will abuse the privilege.
And that reminds me: Pretty soon I’m going to write about the correct way to ask for an autograph. I see a lot of fans ask at inappropriate times and then get upset when the ballplayer doesn’t sign. Asking at an appropriate time in an appropriate way doesn’t guarantee a ballplayer sign, but it improves your chances.
At last: dinner with a cartoon character
(If you want to believe that mascots are real, stop reading now.) I almost forgot this one: On the last road trip, I had dinner one night in the St. Louis media dining room with the Cardinals mascot Fredbird and his handler. It turns out there are two Fredbirds at every game. (I have no idea whether the same is true of Sluggerrr … and is that right number of r’s?). The Fredbird costume is too damn hot to stand for long, so one guy goes for two innings while the other guy rests.
They each need handlers to get through the crowds. The mascots are supposed to be at assigned places at assigned times, and they’ constantly are getting stopped to pose for pictures and sign autographs. The handler plays the bad guy and moves the mascot along and acts as a seeing-eye dog because those costumes make it hard for the man inside to see. I wanted to make fun of a guy who handles cartoon characters, but that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing for the last 30 years.
What Ned saw
Everybody else saw the results Alcides Escobar was putting up early in the season, but Ned Yost saw something else. I asked Ned what made him believe Alcides eventually was going to hit. “Hand-eye coordination, athleticism and the ability to adjust,” Ned said.
Ned said he saw the same thing in J.J. Hardy when Ned was in Milwaukee and took a bunch of criticism for sticking with Hardy. It’s easy to look at stats and make pronouncements about what’s there. It’s much harder to watch a player and see what might be there.
Y’know, there is some slight chance that the people who have played and studied this game all their lives know more than the rest of us.
Part 2: Decision-making as the third-base coach
In this second of a two-part series, Lee Judge finds out how the Royals' Eddie Rodriguez goes about making decisions on the fly as the third-base coach. 6/14/11 (Video by John Sleezer/The Kansas City Star)
Gordon
Hochevar
Francoeur
Lee, I know the answer to you Sluggerrr question but if I told you I'd have to kill you. I shadowed Sluggerrr on career day in 8th grade and got some inside information. He is probably one of the most secretive mascots in sports and doesn't like giving out his tricks.
Lee, you raised question in my mind regarding the mystery of Luke's mid-game meltdowns. I am pretty sure he does not know how to bear down at the first signs of trouble like Zack was able to, but I also wonder if his physical conditioning is marginal. Perhaps this is as simple as him working harder to increase stamina in the weight room? He has really good stuff when he is fresh, so it seems logical that he may just be getting tired, which may cause him to lack focus and the ability to crank it up to get the third out when adversity starts to stir???
He has huge upside potential, so if it is just a conditioning thing, I hope the trainers kick his butt to get him into a workout regimen that will develop some stamina.
Perhaps Luke is hugely less effective when pitching in the stretch than in the windup. That's why he either cruise or cruise after a opposing homerun, but crumbles with runners on base.
A lack of stamina though wouldn't really explain outings like the one in Baltimore where Hochevar was great, awful, then great again afterward.
The prevailing theory, but no one claims to know for sure, is that it's a neck-up problem.
Remember the game where he pitched great for three innings, blew up for one, and then pitched great again for three more?
That would seem to indicate it's not fatigue. And the players' conditioning is monitored closely. I was talking with Francoeur last night when the coniditoning coach came by to check on his workout schedule.
The stretch theory is also worth looking at. Lots of pitchers dominate until they get a runner and then either the mechanics of pitching from the stretch or the split-focus of worrying about a batter and a hitter get to them.
Hochevar's clearly got the stuff and you can see why the Royals want to give him every chance to figure this thing out.
But Ned Yost indicated Luke is running out of time.
Josh: I don't want to know Sluggerrr's inside tricks: I prefer to believe there's an actual friendly lion roaming around the ballpark.
Although...we had a cartoonist convention in Orlando and Mickey Mouse showed up and was prancing around at a cocktail party. After a few beers, Bill DeOre of the Dallas Morning News and I went over to talk to Mickey and Mickey made it clear he was not allowed to talk.
So we then decided to make Mickey talk through a variety of threats and armlocks (not so tough without you handler around, huh, Mick?). We never did make Mickey talk, but we did make whoever was in the costume laugh.
(You should never supply cartoonists with alcohol and mascots at the same time.)
Lee...any idea how the sum of our top players in your season grid would rank with the rest of the league? Interesting that Esky is right near the top and Getz is a hot streak away from top 3 or 4.
Big mistake by Treanor and Luke to throw a fastball to Wily Mo, but otherwise Luke's problem are no mystery IMO. He just loses concentration and starts throwing very hittable pitches and then, instead of recovering after just one bad one, he lets it keep going. There is no reason for him to throw the one bad one in the first place, and certainly no reason, once he has thrown one, to not throw another. This guy can throw really good pitches for inning after inning after inning. Time for him to grow up and take that last step and be able to recover after just one bad pitch. You can do it Luke. We need you, and you need us.
George: No, I've got absolutely no idea about how other players rank. What I'm doing isn't useful for comparing players from different teams. Even if you had someone else scoring other teams there's so much that's subjective in the system that I'm not sure it would work.
The up side is that since I'm paying no attention to other teams I can pay a lot of attention to this one.
Once again, I think the points awarded are subjective, but the patterns of play are revealing. At this point I can tell you Melky Cabrera is a very good baserunner, that Tim Collins walks too many lead-off batters and Alex Gordon strikes out looking more than anyone on the team (he also has more 8+ pitch at-bats than anyone on the team also).
I think the website is very good about informing readers about how the Royals play, but that's all it does.
As for Getz and Escobar: the players that do well in this system are the ones that score points in a variety of ways. Most people would think Billy Butler is one of the Royals best players and he is...if you're just talking about hitting.
The system points out that he gives you next to nothing on defense. The recognition of defense is one of the reasons players like what I'm doing. (Although, the vast majority of them have never visited the site. They just appreciate someone paying attention to take-out slides and moving runners over.)
Hochevar was cruising against the Red Sox for four innings last season (if I recall correctly) then got lit up.
I asked Tim Bogar, Sox third-base coach, what happened. He said once Luke got hit he started trying to throw fastballs past the Boston Red Sox: not a very good game plan.
Luke himself acknowledged his tendency to do that and I thought that was another step forward, but the blow-up inning seems to keep happening.
I love the "unwritten rules" of baseball. Don't turn and face the ump when arguing balls and strikes. Take the first pitch after back-to-back shots. There's lots of little ones that almost nobody would notice, I would imagine.
But as I recall, the White Sox came back on one of the best closers in the game earlier this season while four runs down (maybe it was three) with two outs in the bottom of the ninth after two weak ground balls to the second baseman to start the inning. And yet somehow it is wrong to try to bunt for a hit to get something going in a game where you are down 5 in the ninth?
One of the reasons I love baseball is because there is no clock; no matter how small the chance the game is not over 'til the last out. And there are "unwritten rules" that kept Chris Getz from trying his damndest to get on base in the ninth?
I get it when you are up a bunch and bunting for hits in the ninth; there is a 'rubbing it in' factor there. But "don't bunt 'cause we already have you beat and you will make us mad if you make us try too hard" is, to me, just plain stupid.
But I'm not a player and don't have to play 162 games a year. But I am the dope that shells out a couple hundred to take my kids to a game and for that, frankly, I would appreciate it if they would try to come back even to the last out.
"He said once Luke got hit he started trying to throw fastballs past the Boston Red Sox:"
Do the Royals, or teams in general, have some protocol on pitchers shaking off catchers? I would think that Matt Treanor or Brayan Pena would notice this tendency and try to call pitches and locations to work around it. Wonder if Hoch or Davies, both known for meltdowns, have a tendency to shake off more pitches during the meltdowns than normal, going away from the game plan and to a "comfort zone" pitch that is predictable and probably overthrown, which would straighten it out.
Matt: I agree, some of the unwritten rules don't make a lot of sense and it was clear Getz was unsure if he'd done the right thing.
It just gets confusing: how much do we have to be up before we stop trying? And do we watch you getting closer and closer before we try again?
And if we're losing, how much do we have to be losing by before we go into station-to-station mode?
Why not play 9 as hard as you can? it's not your team's fault if my team isn't playing very well.
It would sure simplify things.
Jim: There doesn't seem to be a set pattern for who's in charge of calling pitches.
If it's a veteran catcher with a rookie pitcher (or vice versa) the veteran will usually be in charge.
The catcher and pitcher go over a game plan before they take the field and adjust as they go along (we thought he'd chase that slider, but he's spitting on it).
Usually, the pitcher has final say, though. The thinking is that a pitcher who has no confidence in the pitch he's about to throw isn't going to throw a very good one.
Lee- the future is definitely bright! With that said, do you care to project a little towards the future?? What do you project for a starting lineup in let's say 2014??? Do we keep Escobar over Colon? I'm saying YES! Here is my guestimate, let's see others: 1. Giovatella- 2nd 2. Gordon- LF 3. Hosmer- 1st 4. Butler- DH 5. Moustakas- 3rd 6. Myer- RF 7. Starling- CF 8. CATCHER- Pena??? 9. Escobar- SS
SP 1. Crow 2. Duffy 3. Paulino 4. Hochever 5. Odorizzi
RP Collins Adcock Teaford Holland Jeffress Coleman Wood
Closer Soria
Assumptions: 1) Starling signs- he will! 2) Where will Montgomery and Lamb be developmentally and health-wise? 3) WE NEED A CATCHER!!! Gallagher won't be ready at this point. Take the money saved from Melky, Frenchy and/or trades of Colon, Cain, Robinson and get a top-line catcher, and possibly put up a stud pitcher (ala Grienke trade, for a TOP #1 pitcher! Who wouldn't want to pitch in the K with this lineup??? Or use the money saved from above and get this pitcher through Free Agency) 4) Our young pitchers will develop like Saberhagen, Gubicza, Appier, Jackson, Busby, Leonard, and Split did!
With that said, the stacked talent should make for exciting years at the K!!!!
I agree that the 'message' of throwing at Gordon is confused. But I still don't understand why the umpires didn't issue warnings after he threw behind Alex the first time. That's just an open invitation to hit him hard, which is what he did. This is the kind of thing that makes it hard to respect LaRussa.
Jeff: I try to stay out of GM issues. I'm barely qualified to sit here and watch a game and tell you what I see.
Lee- you don't give yourself near the credit, but I understand you can't get into speculation in your position, otherwise we lose all your great insights! Keep up the good work. Tried throwing you some bait to see if you would take it! :)
Jeff: Thanks, that's kind of you, but I've tried to keep the focus of this thing very narrow: a look at how these particular guys go about the game.
GM stuff really does get complicated. There are so many other issues other than who's talented and who would be a good fit. Putting the pieces of the puzzle together is complicated and largely beyond me.