5 takes: Nick Martinez is elevating and Kevin Gausman is Bronson Arroyo now
Plus, a busted infield alignment and why we need to see more slide steps
Welcome back, and thanks to everyone who signed up over the past few weeks! Today’s post isn’t another 2,000 words on back-picks, but it is still scout-y. Read on for notes on some Spring Training games that you probably didn’t watch.
1. Nick Martinez is trying to elevate
Here’s a stat that you may or may not have heard of: 2-strike conversion. This is a rate stat that compares (a) your strikeout total to (b) the number of hitters you faced that reached a 2-strike count. The pitchers who were best at converting last year did so a little more than 50% of the time (Spencer Strider, Shohei Ohtani, Shane McClanahan, Max Scherzer, etc.). The worst converted around 30% of the time: last year’s bottom five featured pitchers like Madison Bumgarner (33%) and Zack Greinke (27%).
The examples above suggest that there is a definite “it is what it is” component to 2-strike conversion. Pitchers who possess better swing and miss “stuff” are going to get that third strike more often. But there’s also a game-planning component to 2-strike conversion that pitchers have more control over. The pitch you choose to throw and location you try to throw to both matter.
To get that third strike more often, it helps to work strike-to-ball. This means throwing pitches that (to a hitter) initially look like strikes, but end up far from the strike zone. The more pitch movement, the better. Working the opposite way (ball-to-strike) or attacking within the strike zone is usually a great plan to get a hitter to two strikes, but you’re more likely to put a hitter away if you expand once you get there. You’ll occasionally see a strikethrower “unlock” more strikeouts simply by adopting this type of mentality.
Yesterday, I flipped on the Dodgers-Padres game to watch two starting pitchers who probably could have converted more 2-strike counts in 2022 by making different choices: Noah Syndergaard (34%) and Nick Martinez (39%). I’ll focus here on something I saw Martinez working on to potentially improve that number.
Martinez, despite drawing more swing and miss last year than the average pitcher and despite having multiple above-average offspeed pitches, converted a below-average amount of 2-strike counts into strikeouts. He’s a classic example of a pitcher who stayed too close to the strike zone when he had room to leave it.
A quick summary of Martinez’s mix: he’s got a cutter (well, kind of a cutter-slider hybrid) that can range from 84-90 mph, a bigger curveball, and a plus changeup. With all of that to work with, he relied on two unremarkable fastballs (a flat 4-seam and 2-seam with some run and sink) 42% of the time in 2-strike counts.
Here’s a 1-2 cutter from last year that shows what Martinez can achieve when he stays away from the zone. Note the target his catcher gives him; it’s in the left-handed batter’s box:
Martinez only used the cutter in 14% of 2-strike counts to right-handed hitters last year. He tried a few yesterday along with a few changeups (his favorite 2-strike pitch to both left-handed and right-handed hitters). But what jumped out to me the most were Martinez’s attempts to execute his 4-seam fastball to an elevated target.
It’s an odd choice, and it might be something Martinez just wanted to work on to stretch himself in an inconsequential setting1. Martinez's 4-seam fastball is arguably his worst pitch and it lacks the type of carry a fastball needs to thrive above a hitter's belt.
How did it go? Kind of a mixed bag. Martinez tried it first against leadoff hitter Mookie Betts. After Betts wouldn’t bite an 0-2 breaking ball and a 1-2 changeup, Martinez tried this:
The pitch is well-executed, and Betts pops out. The next 2-strike elevated heater target is to Max Muncy. This pitch isn’t executed, though. Martinez misses low and Muncy lines it to right field:
The common miss for a target like this one is right where this pitch ends up: it’s a middle-middle fastball, exactly the kind of pitch that ruins a 2-strike count for a pitcher. The rest of Martinez’s attempts yesterday follow this pattern. One executed, another missing over the plate.
Even if it may not make sense for Martinez to try this combination as often as he did yesterday, these additional reps might eventually give him a pitch he can use to target specific hitters. Freddie Freeman, for example, has only a tiny hole against the fastball (up and in).2
The margin for error on this pitch is small. If Martinez wants to rely on it in 2023, he’ll have to execute it more consistently.
2. Tap, tap, tap
Kevin Gausman is one of those pitchers who was targeted by the new “balk crackdown.” He used to tap his front foot rhythmically before officially starting his delivery, which would have presented problems for a clock operator. Gausman adjusted his delivery to get rid of the tap, and it looks significantly different now.
The difference is in the leg kick - it’s slower and uses a flexed lead leg now. It’s hard to pick up that difference on video, so here are a few screenshots that are synced up to the start of his delivery. On the left, September of 2022. On the right, a pitch from Friday. Both pitches came with a runner on first.
In his old delivery, Gausman would bounce from the final tap into a high leg kick, almost as if he were using the momentum of the tap to move into the kick. The new delivery still has the high leg kick, but the removal of the tap stunts any early momentum and slows him down. The difference is about a tenth of a second (taking him from 1.5 seconds to 1.6 seconds), but that’s significant in the context of base-stealing.
Contributing to the slower kick in the new delivery is this Bronson Arroyo-ish straight leg lift (shown in the middle frame above). The balk enforcement change was sprung on Gausman recently, so we’ll see if that straight leg lift is just something he’s playing with.
20 pitches into his first inning on Friday, Gausman was noticeably tapping once again. So, it’s all a work in progress.
3. About that slower delivery
Kevin Gausman allowed 18 stolen bases last year - that’s more than all but four other pitchers. Why does he give up so many? He’s slow to the plate.
With the rule changes, a lot of pace-related numbers have been thrown around (and rightly so). The amount of time a pitcher takes before he starts toward the plate is relevant. But in the context of base-stealing, the amount of time a pitcher’s actual delivery takes (the moment the front leg lifts to the moment the pitch reaches the catcher’s glove) is more important. With runners on, pitchers go to a stretch delivery that typically takes 1.2-1.4 seconds (pitchers who use a slide step can get under 1.2 seconds). Anything over 1.4ish seconds becomes a liability.
Last Friday, Gausman gave up a leadoff single to Josh Lowe. Gausman then took 1.6 seconds to deliver the first pitch to the next hitter. To a runner, that’s as good as saying “you can have second base.” So Lowe runs on the next pitch (the one shown in the screenshots above), and Gausman is a 1.6 again. Lowe is 80% of the way to second base before catcher Rob Brantley can even get a throw off.
You can’t be a 1.6 to the plate and thrive under this new set of rules. When you’re a 1.6, the runner doesn’t even need a good jump to take a free bag - see Lowe below:
If Gausman isn’t able to speed things up, we could see him pass Noah Syndergaard’s 2019 total of 42 stolen bases allowed.
4. But just being quick isn’t good enough
We move from Gausman, a 1.6, to his opposing starter Drew Rasmussen, who is a 1.2-1.4. Rasmussen’s quicker stretch delivery puts him in a much better position to control the running game than Gausman’s does.
But even if you are lightning quick to the plate, you have to pose some kind of threat to the runner. We’ve covered the importance of pickoffs in recent posts. Short of throwing over, though, looks to first base can be enough to discourage a runner.
Rasmussen doesn’t even glance over at Bo Bichette here. Bichette, feeling ignored, bounces out to a tremendous jump and a no-contest stolen base.
5. Where’d the infield go?
Here’s a question that hadn’t occurred to me prior to last week: how will teams adapt to the two-to-a-side infield restriction while covering for a stolen base attempt?
Below, we have Luis Rengifo slapping a ground ball to the left side on Friday. There is 1 out and the count on Rengifo is 3-2. The runner was stealing, so the shortstop had broken to the second base bag for a throw. I drew the arrow/starting position (the “X”) as a guess at where the shortstop might’ve been standing before the runner broke; what’s more important is where he ends up, though:
This is old school baseball. Before left-handed hitters were shifted, these giant holes in the infield were there for the taking. That’s not to say that this same ground ball would’ve been an out with a shift on; the same area probably would’ve been vacated, but the third baseman would’ve been the one breaking to the bag instead:
Here’s the thing, though. If you’re restricted to two-to-a-side against a left-handed hitter and the shortstop is likely going to have to cover the bag, does it make sense for the third baseman to shade more aggressively toward second base as well? Something like this (the imagined starting “X” positions below) would accommodate stolen base coverage and double play feeds a little better:
Now, a tighter third-baseman-shortstop split could create too much congestion. But this spacing isn’t far off from what you’d see between middle infielders in a right-handed hitter shift. That new alignment came with some growing pains (two infielders going for the ball and none to the bag, etc.), but those were largely worked out over time.
The spot where Max Muncy started here (basically where he’s standing in that screenshot) just isn’t a place most left-handed hitters hit the ball. Each additional step he can take toward second base puts him in a better position to make a play.
One unconventional compromise: if the third baseman isn’t going to start as close to second base as I’ve drawn that “X” above, he could follow the shortstop as the shortstop breaks.
And a final reminder about eye contact
Thanks for reading. I’ll close with an obligatory Max Scherzer update after he turned the dial up to 11 on his pitch clock manipulation last week.
Scherzer’s work has already been covered by Sports Illustrated, ESPN, FanGraphs, etc. The only thing I’ll add to the discussion is a comparison between the hitter who got a balk called against Scherzer (Robles, on the left) to one who fell victim to the quick-pitch (Adams, on the right). As a reminder, a pitcher can’t start his delivery until the hitter signals readiness by looking up. To counter Scherzer, delaying eye contact is a must:
See you next week.
The fact that Martinez faced this Dodgers “A” lineup at all is a little surprising; if the WBC weren’t looming, we might see the Padres start Martinez in a minor league game or against a different major league club to avoid giving a division rival an extra look at him.
This was actually a 1-0 count, but the target mirrors the other 2-strike count attempts of the day.