One of the main (baseball-related) story lines for the Mets National League Championship Series (NLCS) against the Cubs was high-end pitch velocity. Specifically, the Cubs as a team hit poorly (.228 BA according to Baseball Savant) as a team against pitches 95mph and above. The Mets, as a team, threw 2,510 pitches at 95mph or above in 2015. The next closest team was the Indians with 1,650. That’s nuts, and seemed to be a match made in heaven for the Mets.
Indeed, Mets pitchers absolutely dominated the Cubs in their NLCS matchup. Clearly, the Mets pitched to the narrative and blew away Cubs hitters with their elite velocity. Hang on a second, though. Is that what actually happened?
The Mets rotation of Matt Harvey, Noah Syndergaard, Jacob deGrom, and Steven Matz certainly has elite velocity all around. Did they truly use it to their advantage to exploit a seemingly glaring weakness in the young Cubs lineup?
Yes and no, it seems. Below you’ll find the pitch-type percentages for each of the Mets starting pitchers in the NLCS compared to their percentages over the 2015 season. The pitch types are, in order, hard, breaking, and off-speed.
Harvey
2015: 61%, 27%, 12%
Game 1: 55%, 33%, 12%
Syndergaard
2015: 62%, 24%, 14%
Game 2: 60%, 25%, 15%
DeGrom
2015: 62%, 26%, 12%
Game 3: 43%, 33%, 24%
Matz
2015: 68%, 22%, 10%
Game 4: 67%, 17%, 16%
An important caveat here is that, of course, for each game of the NLCS we’re talking about roughly 100 pitches for each of these starters (except for Matz’s 76). Additionally, Matz had all of six starts in the regular season before going down with an injury. Still, we can get an idea of their overall game plans in each game and if they deviated at all from their typical approach.
Interestingly, it seems as though Harvey changed his approach just a bit, throwing less hard stuff and more breaking balls. Not a drastic change, but enough to perhaps throw off a lineup looking for heat. Syndergaard held true to form, using his heater at about the same consistency that we’re used to seeing. Likewise, Matz stuck to the script in his outing.
Where we see true deviation is in deGrom’s start in the third game. Just look at those numbers! He essentially became a different pitcher in terms of his approach to their lineup. There was some talk about the Cubs not being comfortable with the cold weather in New York during the first two games of the NLCS. There was also some big talk about how much better they would do in the warmer weather in Chicago against the hard stuff. Well, deGrom didn’t give them the chance, and it completely boggled them once he settled down.
To be fair, that may not have been the plan going into the game. Much like his Game 5 start against the Dodgers, he again didn’t have his best stuff and seemed to have trouble locating his fastball early. In fact, per Newsday’s Anthony Rieber:
“I talked to Travis [d’Arnaud] and I noticed that they were hitting the fastball pretty well,” deGrom said. “So I said, ‘Hey, let’s try to throw some off-speed up there early on and see if we can get some early contact’ and that ended up working for me.”
Whether he intended to change it up or did so as a result of struggling with his heater, deGrom threw the Cubs for a loop because of his high-quality secondary stuff. That’s an important fact to remember going into the World Series.
You’ll hear a lot about how well the Royals hit elite-velocity. In fact, they led the league in batting average (.284) and were second in slugging (.473) against velocity 95mph and above. The thing to remember is that this Mets rotation doesn’t consist of simple flamethrowers. They’ve got devastating secondary pitches and know how to use them. They’re just plain good. But you knew that already.
Let’s go Mets!
There’s a reason that people say “Pitching wins Championships.” It’s because guys like Syndergaard, deGrom, Harvey, and Matz always come along to stop guys like Bryant, Rizzo, Soler, and Schwarber.
It’s a common theme since the beginning of the 1960’s. From Jim Palmer and Dave McNally shutting down Pete Rose and Johnny Bench to Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling shutting down Tino Martinez and Bernie Williams.
Run prevention will always be more important in the playoffs, it just works that way.
The Mets are going from facing the team with the highest K% to the lowest. But the Royals are not a very good HR team. It will be a completely different challenge than the Cubs. But I’m going to keep believing in Harvey, JDG, Noah and Matz until they prove otherwise.
Yeah it’s a pretty jarring change between the two teams. There will be less room for error and the tightrope walking that, say, deGrom did several times would not be as easy to escape (relatively speaking) as it was against a team like the Cubs. Still, like you, I have faith in them making the adjustments.
As I do in Warthen getting them prepared. Is anybody else amazed at how Warthen has gone from goat to G.O.A.T over the span of a few years? Of course, he’s not working with Mike Pelfreys anymore, but he’s done a fantastic job.
Terrific analysis. The difference betweeb pitchers and throwers is the ability to adapt to a particular team and make in game adjustments. Warthen and d’Arnaud credited with the assist on this.