Game 2: Mariners at Astros
Hisashi Iwakuma vs. Lance McCullers, 5:10pm
Hmmm. It’s one game, and the M’s faced a recent Cy Young winner last night, but it’s tough given the excitement of the day to see the M’s throttled so thoroughly by Dallas Keuchel et al. And it doesn’t get any easier tonight, with the M’s facing another elite ground ball pitcher, righty Lance McCullers.
Dave had a great article on the guy last week at Fangraphs, noting why he was picking him to win the AL Cy Young this season. He’s struggled to stay healthy, and missed time last year with various arm ailments, but has been incredible when he’s able to take the ball. He’s got a sinking 94-96 MPH fastball that gets plenty of ground balls thanks to his low 3/4 arm slot and natural armside run, but his bread and butter is a borderline-unfair curve/slider thing that’s thrown very hard (around 85-86). This would seem to make him susceptible to platoon splits, as sinker/slider guys are often torched by opposite-handed hitters, but McCullers has, thus far at least, run reverse splits. The credit for that goes to his high-spin curve that has the horizontal break and velocity of a great slider, but the vertical depth of a curve. It essentially checks every box: batters swing and miss it all the time, when they DO contact it, it goes for ground balls (as Dave mentioned, McCullers gave up just 5 HRs in 14 starts last year), and he’s able to control it fairly well. Batters have *slugged* .209 off of it in McCullers’ two-year career, but lefties have fared even worse, with just a .186 SLG% against the thing.
You might think that after recurring arm troubles have cropped up, he’d throw less of it. Instead, when he came back from early-season shoulder problems (!), he started throwing his breaking ball all the time. He ended up using it more than his fastball – a full half of his pitches last year were curves. Batters have squared up his fastball reasonably well, and his change looks good but hasn’t been effective as of yet. So he responded by throwing a blizzard of a pitch that no one’s figured out. Makes some sense to me.
Besides health, the big red flag with McCullers has been control. Maybe it’s the swerving run on it, but McCullers’ command of his fastball trails his curve command, and thus he’s posted high walk rates both in the majors and on the farm. If the M’s can be patient and work their way into good counts, they’re more likely to get his fastball, and obviously more likely to get on base. That’s going to be important, as we didn’t get to see too much of the M’s new-and-improved baserunning last night.
Soooo, this is Hisashi Iwakuma’s first start since…whatever that was happened in Peoria the other day. I think I’m more nervous about Iwakuma right now than Yovani Gallardo, and I’m not exactly confident in the newcomer. A healthy Iwakuma becomes one of the better middle-of-the-rotation arms in the league. An unhealthy Iwakuma is going to try to face this Astros line-up with 86 MPH “fastballs” and a lot of guile. No one combines command, competitiveness and pitching smarts like Iwakuma, but there’s a velocity floor below which no one can be effective in today’s major leagues. Iwakuma is getting really, really close to it. If it’s not health and just mechanical foibles, that’s not a whole lot better: Iwakuma minus command would actually be worse than Iwakuma WITH command and an 84-85 MPH fastball. He’s at the point in his career where everything has to be working, and on every pitch. Fingers crossed.
1: Segura, SS
2: Haniger, RF
3: Cano, 2B
4: Cruz, DH
5: Seager, 3B
6: Valencia, 1B
7: Martin, CF
8: Zunino, C
9: Dyson, LF
SP: Iwakuma
The M’s have, as expected, moved Drew Smyly to the 60-day DL and with a spot open on the roster, have picked up Evan Marshall off of waivers. Marshall’s pitched in portions of three seasons with the Diamondbacks, and throws a good 95 MPH sinker along with a splitter-style change-up and slider/cutter (both around 86). Despite the velocity, he’s not been a strikeout guy – he’s a ground ball machine. It’s an intriguing arsenal, albeit one that hasn’t been sufficient to allow him to reliably stay on anyone’s active roster. Walks are a big part of the reason why, and that’s something he’ll work on down in Tacoma for a while.
I don’t care what Sims and Blowers say, Kyle earned that E5. Glad it didn’t hurt, and that it was Seager who started the ensuring double play.
that 2 – 0 pitch to Correa was a strike… seriously the umpires are starting early with these horrible calls.
This is not a fun start to the season.
I think the real issue is the matte finish on the teams batting helmets. Fix that little problem and things will definitely start coming together.
I’ve had to work the last two evenings. This is all my fault. I’ll be sure to watch tomorrow!