It’s no fun to lose, especially the closer you get towards winning a championship. It’s so disappointing to Mets fans to be down 3-1 in the World Series, especially since the series could easily be 3-1 in the other direction. The hardest thing of all is listening to the insufferable national broadcast. Because they don’t have a history with either team, they latch on to one or two story lines and everything gets fed through that filter, whether it makes sense or not.
We keep hearing about the relentless Royals. Hey, hats off to the Royals for being a win away from a World Series victory. They’ve come through when they needed to and it’s easy to see how the “relentless” angle has taken center stage. But in a complex world, the answers are rarely so simple and the lack of showing the other half of the story is a little exasperating.
Yes, the Royals are cashing in during key moments. But another part of that is that they are getting pitches right in the heart of the strike zone. It’s a lot easier to be clutch when the other team keeps feeding you pitches either belt high or in the middle of the plate and sometimes even both. If the Royals were hitting pitches on the black, then they would completely deserve the accolades. But at some point, we have to examine the pitches they are hitting.
Here come five images, all captured in Game 2 during the four-run fifth inning against Jacob deGrom. The Royals strung a bunch of hits together, but let’s look at the location of these pitches.
Belt high
Bellybutton height, dead middle
Thigh high, dead middle
Thigh high, all plate
Bellybutton height, dead middle
And it’s not just deGrom. This already has a bunch of images but let’s look at a couple from Jeurys Familia, too. The first one is the game-tying home run in Game 1.
And here’s the pitch that turned into the hit that drove in the go-ahead run Saturday night.
Both of those were right down Broadway.
Again, kudos to the Royals for getting the big hits when they need them. But let’s also see these as examples of Mets’ pitchers not hitting spots and leaving balls in good hitting zones. It’s at least as much poor pitching as it is good hitting.
I kept waiting for Familia to throw his trademark pitches that drop down. What happened to those? BTW, I still think Collins needs to go…..
Yeah, enough with the quick-pitches and more with the splitters.
The quick pitch is a stupid gimmick. Pulling it out in the WS is like running the Statue of Liberty play in the Super Bowl.
The long and short of it we give away far too many 0-2 and 1-2 hits. Pitch counts rise on endless foul balls then we give way to hittable pitches. Howie on the call last night was livid at the 0-2 hit to Perez and again later to Perez again. It’s a huge problem to throw hittable strikes like this.
Don’t forget MH middle middle offering to Escobar on the first pitch he threw
When I looked at that pitch, my subjective view was that it was not middle-middle. To me it looked knee high and outside 1/3 of the plate. That’s the only Harvey one I looked at. Should have looked at the inning they tied it up 3-3
I remember reading a quote by Catfish Hunter – who preceded Greg Maddux as a control artist – and Hunter said the last thing to master is control. He said being able to put the ball exactly where it needs to go every time is very difficult. I believe our pitchers are probably exhausted, running on fumes even, so it makes it even harder for them; considered starting Niese for Game 6 two games ago, but now you have to go deGrom.
The Royals starters are not exactly lights out, but of all the times for Murphy, Cespedes, Duda, and d’Arnaud to slump collectively, now????????? Actually, if Murphy wasn’t the Babe, we may not be here. Cespedes has probably been negative WAR this series with his disgraceful CF play, Duda is totally psyched out at the plate, and d’Arnaud’s defense really needs to be considered this off season and monitored before trading Plawecki. TdA needs a lot of work defensively.
No doubt that it’s not easy to throw it exactly where you want to each and every time.
And I do believe the Royals should get some credit for fouling off some pitches. But whether it’s execution or the game plan — the Mets shouldn’t get a free pass here.
I love the in game freezes. Great post Brian. Too many hittable 2 strike pitches.
You’re right on it, Matty and Brian.
I am tired of seeing hittable pitches on an 0-2 count.
The Royals have taken the strike out weapon away from the Mets pitchers and they are floundering. The Mets have dynamic young arms but they are still learning the art of pitching.