Games » Tampa Bay Rays
Aug21The best pitchers duel of the year
Lee Judge
The Kansas City Star
The Rays’ David Price has 16 wins and 4 losses, an ERA of 2.28, a 98-mph fastball and is considered a Cy Young candidate. Royals manager Ned Yost said there are probably six true No. 1 pitchers in the American League, and Price is one of them.
Tuesday night, Price lived up to his reputation. He pitched eight innings of scoreless baseball, giving up three hits, all singles. He didn’t walk anybody and struck out eight. It was the kind of performance you expect from a Cy Young candidate.
And Luke Hochevar was every bit as good.
Luke also pitched eight innings of scoreless baseball, gave up one hit, walked three, but struck out 10. If you’re one of those people who can’t understand why the Royals keep Hochevar on the roster, remember this game. Luke can be maddeningly inconsistent, but when he’s right, he can pitch like this.
Game notes
• Billy Butler got a 3-0 green light in the seventh inning. When a pitcher is dealing, it may be easier to get one big hit than three small ones. In fact, Price never allowed two base-runners in a single inning. Seeing how hard it would be to string together three singles, Yost let Billy take a shot at the cheap seats. Billy got the hittable fastball Ned was hoping for and hit it deep but still flew out to the Rays’ leftfielder, Desmond Jennings.
• This was one of those cases where a walk would have helped Billy’s stats, but not his team. Not all walks are equal. Billy Butler on first with two outs probably would require three more hits to get him around the bases. It was an unlikely event in this game.
• In the ninth inning, Tampa Bay’s B.J. Upton hit a weak ground ball between short and third. At the last second, Mike Moustakas cut in front of Alcides Escobar, caught the ball, fired to first and barely got Upton. Third basemen want to take every ball they can from shortstops. If a ball is hit between the two, it means the third baseman is moving closer to first and the shortstop is moving away.
• There was a scary moment in the ninth. The Rays’ Matt Joyce hit a ball toward Johnny Giavotella. Eric Hosmer broke to his right, saw Gio would make the play and retreated to first. Kelvin Herrera, who was on in relief, did his job — covering first on all balls to his left, just in case the first baseman couldn’t. Both Herrera and Hosmer made it to the bag, but Kelvin reached in front of Eric to take the throw.
• My initial reaction was to give a mental mistake to Herrera. His foot was not on the bag, and he tapped his chest after the play (the universal baseball sign for “my fault”). But after the game, Hosmer said the mistake was his. He didn’t call Herrera off once he made it back to the bag. (This is an example of why it’s hard to know for sure what has happened on a baseball field if you can’t talk to the players involved.)
• With two down in the 10th inning, Jeff Francoeur hit a grounder in the hole to Rays shortstop Ben Zobrist. Zobrist bounced the throw to first, and Carlos Pena couldn’t handle the hop. The ball got past Pena, and that moved Frenchy into scoring position. (That play ought to make Royals fans appreciate Eric Hosmer’s defense even more. Hosmer has 54 outstanding plays in our system, and most of them were bad throws that he handled, saving his teammates dozens of errors.)
• Hosmer was at the plate with Francoeur in scoring position, and the game on the line. It looked as if the Rays’ pitcher, Joel Peralta, tried to exploit Eric’s youth and inexperience. After facing a pitcher throwing in the upper 90s, Hosmer saw a 79-mph curveball off the plate, and an 83-mph splitter off the plate. Hosmer showed good plate discipline, didn’t chase and was rewarded with an 82-mph splitter in the zone and dumped it into center field for the game-winning RBI.
• It was a bit surprising that Peralta threw a strike to Hosmer with right-handed Johnny Giavotella on deck. Gio is still making the adjusting to the big leagues and is hitting .202. He also struck out twice in this game.
• When you watch a game on TV, there are things you can’t see well (defensive positioning, for instance) and things you can see better (like the catcher’s set up and signs). When Greg Holland was closing out the game, you could see Salvador Perez look down at the batters’ feet as they set up in the box. Catchers want to know if the batter has changed positions in order to handle a pitch more effectively. Sal would then look up at the batter as he flashed the signs to the pitcher. Catchers also want to know if the batter is peeking back to check the catcher’s positioning.
• It’s not a sure bet, but if the catcher sets up in the middle of the plate, it probably is a breaking pitch. If he moves to a corner, it probably is a fastball. Pitchers rarely control their breaking stuff well enough to hit corners — unless the catcher wants a breaking pitch thrown off the plate.
• After the game, Yost said the plan was to stick close to Price, try to get him out of the game and make it a battle of the bullpens. That is exactly what happened, and the Royals won the battle.
A conversation with Brayan Pena
Last Sunday morning, I stopped Brayan Pena in the clubhouse and asked what he had seen from Bruce Chen the night before, a game that Bruce won against the Chicago White Sox. If you want to know about a pitcher’s performance, you can ask the pitcher or the catcher. The guy on the receiving end also has a pretty good idea of how well a pitcher was throwing.
Brayan said the recent run of good pitching performances pushes all the pitchers. They see teammates pitch well, and they want to do the same. They used Chen’s fastball more often in order to speed the hitter’s bat’s up. Once that’s accomplished, then you can use the off-speed stuff effectively.
Brayan said that Jason Kendall told him to be unpredictable. Everyone is looking for patterns. Does the pitcher go to an off-speed pitch after throwing a fastball for a strike? Does he always do the same thing 0-2? What about 1-2? Is he starting everyone with the same pitch?
But if being unpredictable is good, what about Aaron Crow?
He pitched to Paul Konerko and Alex Rios in the eighth inning Saturday night, threw eight pitches, and seven of them were sliders. He also struck out both batters. Brayan was calling slider after slider in those two at-bats. What happened to being unpredictable?
Here’s the difference: Crow had a nasty slider that night, and the swings Konerko and Rios were taking told Brayan to stay on that pitch. They weren’t picking it up and were chasing pitches out of the zone with off-balance hacks.
A starter needs to think about facing a hitter three times in a game. The more experienced pitchers might have three game plans — one for each at-bat. The pitching pattern in each at-bat is dictated by what happened in the previous at-bat. If they can get away with it, many starters like to add a pitch in each at-bat. For instance, variations of the fastball the first time, mix in a breaking pitch the second time and save that change for the third AB. That way the hitter is always seeing something new.
A reliever is only concerned with one at-bat. He brings his best stuff now.So Crow could just keep throwing his best pitch that night. He didn’t have to worry about facing Konerko or Rios a second time. They would not have a chance to make adjustments to the slider between plate appearances. But if Crow were to face them a second time in the series, then he might have to pitch them differently. Good hitters will make some kind of adjustment, and they would be unlikely to just keep flailing at sliders out of the zone.
So starters have to think about facing a hitter three times in a game. Relievers might have to think about facing a hitter three times in a series. Like I said, everybody is looking for patterns. The first player to recognize one will probably win the at-bat.
Royals Jeff Francoeur and Lee Judge discuss performance levels
Kansas City Royals outfielder Jeff Francoeur and Lee Judge have a discussion on performance levels, and differences between Francoeur's 2011 and 2012 seasons. 8/17/12 (Video by John Sleezer/The Kansas City Star)
Hochevar
Hosmer
Holland
Joel Kallem
10 months agoSay what you will about Hoch (and he earns some of the negative comments), this game shows why the Royals are so reluctant to let him go. No pitcher is going to be 100% in all his games, but when the “good” Hoch shows up, he is awesome. Just need to have him do it on a more regular basis.
Also neat to see Hos come through in the end in front of family. Hopefully, this two hit game will get him started for the rest of the year.
Salvy was terrific as always.
Josh Cooper
10 months ago“If you’re one of those people who can’t understand why the Royals keep Hochevar on the roster, remember this game.
One excellent game does not make up for four-five very poor ones. And that seeems to be the ratio we get from Hoch.
But for this game, Hoch looked like the one I would want to start opening day for us. So, I’ll give him a round of applause, but still hope he is non-tendered at the end of the year.
Chuck Smith
10 months agoExcept he has 9 of the last 12 as quality starts.
Except, tonight, you could use Nuke in a good way.
Hoch had two bad outting in a row in July, but you have to go back into May to find back to back bad starts.
I’m getting more and more excited about Nuke!
Daniel Wesley
10 months agoNo doubt “Good Luke” can be really good. The problem is that he just doesn’t show up often enough to be an asset for the team. He’s getting too old to hang on to in hopes something ‘clicks’ permanently.
Luke still has a career 5.25 ERA. 6.1 K/9. 3.0 BB/9. His overall body of work still doesn’t justify a spot on next year’s rotation considering the raise he’ll command in arbitration and the other opportunities available to us.
Daniel Wesley
10 months agoChuck, Luke has tantalized us in years past and always failed to live up to future expectations. He’s about to turn 29… too old to “get exited about” long term considering his career long inconsistencies.
Josh Cooper
10 months agoNot to mention how many times we’ve seen “good” Luke when it doesn’t matter if the Royals win or not. Sure, it might matter to the teams we beat, but it doesn’t mean anything to the Royals. We need him to be this good in April and May, not finally turning it on in August and September when we are 13 back.
Greg Tatro
10 months agoHoch is a fifth starter at best. Even with all the quality starts he is a 5 ERA pitcher…which is a bad MLB pitcher.
Aaron Reese
10 months agoHoch had excellent command of his fastball in this game, which he really hasn’t had…ever. He’s been sequencing off-speed pitches and hard stuff to protect himself from getting hit hard. He didn’t even need to in this game and that was pleasantly surprising. He also, thankfully, reintroduced his cutter against Yost’s wishes. Batters were falling over themselves to make contact on it. Great outing.
Thayne Griffin
10 months agoWhat a W. Taking into account both starters, this arguably may have been the best pitched game of the entire MLB season (I think one no-hitter had Hellickson give up two hits and one run or something…pretty good one too).
Mark Swanson
10 months agoLee, What is Luke’s overall statistics with Salvy as his catcher?
Jim Fetterolf
10 months agoDiscussions of Luke’s career ERA just remind how useless average stats can be. Any given game Luke can put up a 0 ERA or a 10. Much better indicator of his production is either a chart of quality starts or Game Scores.Much handier stats for a pitcher with both the best and worst starts of the year for the Royals, and probably last year too. Any given night Luke can be Zack or SOS.
Josh Cooper
10 months agoAnd with the ratio we get either Zack or SOS, I’d be far happier to just get a middle ground between the two every night.
Lee Judge
10 months agoMark: I don’t know if anyone has the stats broken out that way: pitcher and catcher combination, but you’d think someone would pay attention to that. I’ll try to remember to ask Eiland when they get back in town.
Speaking of Eiland: when they were in St. Louis, Dave and I talked about “core pitches” for the first time. 4-seam fastball, curve and change-up. The theory was that Luke would get in trouble and start throwing lots of sinkers, cutter and sliders—all around the same speed. The core pitches gave him “separation” in speed.
I don’t think Luke has stuck with that game plan consistently, but it’s been Eiland’s contention that when he does, Luke has success. So maybe tracking Luke’s progress since the road trip to St. Louis would also be informative.
Not many people can do what Hochevar did last night, that’s why he’s still around. That kind of performance is rare and everyone keeps trying to find a way to make that pitcher show up on a more consistent basis.
P.S. I follow the games on MLB.com as I watch them. They seem to have trouble telling cutters from sliders. No wonder—it’s a matter of degree. Hold the fingers on top of the ball and you’re throwing a 4-seamer, start moving the fingers off-center and you’re going from two-seamer to cutter to slider.
Brendan Woodbury
10 months agoIf you love scoops, you’ll love Carlos Pena. He’s running away with the MLB lead, about 50% more than Hosmer (who’s second in the AL).
I’m not sure about the exaggerated motions that both of them use. And, although I don’t consider it dispositive, neither of them shows up as above league average on Dewan’s Good Fielding Plays / Misplays Saved metric. Hosmer is league average and Pena is two runs below average.
Brendan Woodbury
10 months agoLee -
MLB.com uses the speed and rotation/break of the ball to automatically classify pitches, but every year there are revisions to the algorithm to try to get it closer to what we think of when we think of pitch classifications. If the classification looks off to you, trust your eyes.
Lee Judge
10 months agoBrendan: My eye isn’t good enough to spot the difference between cutters and sliders, but if Bruce Chen tells me it was a cutter and MLB tells me it was a slider, I’m going with Bruce.
Aaron Reese
10 months agoLee, when you talk to Dave Eiland, could you also please ask why he thinks Hoch’s changeup is a “core pitch?” It’s his worst pitch with the least movement and gets smacked over the wall a lot. Hochevar also barely throws it. Only 3-6 times a game. That’s hardly “core.” The only hit against him in this outing was off his changeup.
The stuff about changing his speeds is absolutely true. If you go over every batter Luke has faced since June 14, when he first started really mixing speeds, there is a drastic drop in batter performance when he changes speeds frequently within the at bat, whether or not he has good command.
When Luke’s gotten beat up, look at the at bats and the speeds of his pitches. He doesn’t introduce enough curveballs, keeping everything around the same speed. Batters don’t need to adjust much to the speed of a 92mph fastball compared to an 87mph slider. That was a great job by Eiland to pick up on that, despite what he says about Luke’s changeup.
Lee Judge
10 months agoAaron: I can answer some of that: The change-up gives Luke the greatest separation in speed from his best fastball.
I imagine (but don’t know) that Dave wants Luke to throw the change more often. If a pitcher doesn’t use a pitch much, it won’t be very good when he throws it. The more he throws it, the better it will become. I’ll ask Dave if that’s what he’s after when the team gets back.
And I just heard that Luke was throwing a cutter last night when the TV crew was identifying it as a slider. Whatever it was, he needs to keep it in the mix.
Jeff Frost
10 months agoFirst- great job Luke! He does have 9 quality starts out of his last 12. He is coming into his own. How can you just toss him out of the rotation when he HAS developed a lot more consistency. If he would stay away from his one implosion inning in his bad starts, he would be even better. Sometimes it just takes time! I think we GOT to keep him!
I’m still confused about last night. That pitch sure looked a lot more like a curve than a cutter or a slider. Luke does have a nice curve, but whatever it was, it was definitely working last night!
Let’s get the series! That would be 6-1-1 in the last 8 series, all against Playoff potential teams! Go Royals! OK- back to Game Day!
Terry Payne
10 months agoI can’t imagine Hoch going for arbitration, unless he goes lights out the rest of the season.
And I can’t imagine the Royals offering him anything more than a 1-2 yr contract, if they try to sign him at all.
However, the team may not have many more options than to go after him. Unless they sign a quality FA or 2 (unlikely) or trade for a quality SP, which would almost certainly involve a top prospect (also unlikely.
I like the way Hoch and Salvy went right after Upton following that SB attempt. A pitchout seemed certain on a 0-2 count, but Hoch nailed the corner and punched him out. A double brainfart on Upton’s part after his calling timeout as the baserunner broke for 2nd with a big lead.
KC Guy
10 months ago“I’m still confused about last night. That pitch sure looked a lot more like a curve than a cutter or a slider.”
If you ever watch a cutter and a slider come off of most pitchers’ fingers, while they’re definitely thrown differently, they actually have some pretty similar spin. So, if Luke gets either more or a tighter spin on his cutter than he’s really supposed to, it could act a lot like a slider instead. Which is maybe why he would have more difficulty throwing the slider and cutter in the same game — they’re much too similar..
Luke Healy
10 months agoIs Francoeur back to his performance levels last year? He seems to be taking a lot more pitches, which has helped his obp—the biggest difference from this month from the rest of the season. But in August he’s still only hitting .255 with a .418 slugging percentage. That’s better than the previous two months, which were really terrible, but still not really near the level of last season. And not really near the kind of production you should expect from a corner outfielder. His defenses numbers are down this year as well, except for his arm, which has always been there. I like the guy but I just don’t think he’s turned it around. If he expects to play at all next year he needs to put in some major offseason work—but even then it might be too late for him.
Aaron Reese
10 months agoHochevar’s pitches are all pretty hard to categorize. His four-seam fastball breaks like a two-seam fastball, his two-seam fastball breaks like a sinker, and his cutter breaks like a slider.
Gaines Arnold
10 months agoIt seemed that the announcers, fans, well…evrybody knew it was Hosmer’s mistake instead of Herrera’s. And, unbelievably, that was without talking to the players themselves.
Lee Judge
10 months agoGaines: Got to disagree…if Hosmer called the bag and Herrera stepped in front of him to cut off the throw without having his foot on the bag, it was Herrera’s mistake.
Hosmer didn’t call the bag so Herrera cut the ball off not knowing where Hosmer was. Herrera then tapped his chest, like I said, the universal baseball sign for “my fault.”
Until Hosmer admitted he he didn’t call the bag, nobody knew for sure.
Terry Payne
10 months agoLuke - agree completely re: Frenchie’s chances next year. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to see him be traded to a contender in desperate need of a right-handed bat/4th outfielder/pinch-hitter. Problem is Royals won’t get much for him now, but at least they’ll be able to dump his salary.