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San Diego – On the brink of disaster, Yu Darvish knew just what to do to save his Saturday night start. He was going to get his way out of trouble. With loading rules, two sides and a complete count of Mookie Betts from Dodgers in the second half, Padres The ice cutter cuts 88 miles per hour. Bates sways and misses. Starting on that court, Darwish has only thrown eight fast balls between his last 40 throws. The Dodgers, the most scoring team in baseball, only hit one and not run in six runs against Darvish as the Padres won, 3-2, in 10 runs.
That moment and that game define Major League Baseball in 2022. Three weeks later, the game looks like nothing we’ve seen before for the following reasons:
• There are fewer hits in the average MLB game than ever before.
• For the first time in known history, secondary pitches are thrown more than speedballs.
Spin is in, and Darvish is king of Spin. Although Darvish can throw at up to 97 mph, he throws a 60/40 mix from non-fast to fast balls.
“I think the most important thing is that everyone here in the majors, or everyone who plays baseball for that matter, plays the game because they love baseball,” says Darwish. “For me, I love baseball because I really love baseball. I love throwing pitches out of speed. Growing up, that was my passion.”
When Darwish was asked to describe his greatest joy on the hill, Darwish said, “When I have a pitch out of speed in my mind, and when I throw that throw you get the reaction I want from the hitter. They sway a little bit sometimes. That’s the reaction. And just that Being able to throw my ground out of speed the way I want to is something I really enjoy.”
Darvish may have grown up loving non-fast pitches, but most shooters today have learned that throwing fewer fast balls is the way forward. They study the analytical charts and shape the turnover in the promotion labs to excite the hitters. Bowlers are taught by coaches who haven’t played in the majors and trust data more than tradition, follow the information, and the information tells them that hitters can hit even elite fastballs better than they can come up with turnover. The old school way of challenging hitters with fast balls is dead.
The percentage of fastballs in MLB (not including breakers) held steady through 2019. The rapid decline since then has brought it below 50% this season for the first time in recorded history – to 48.4%.
Six years ago, 28 of the 30 teams threw more than 50% of the fast balls. This year only eight teams shoot fastballs with the majority of their courts – and those eight teams that play by old school fastball standards are 49-76. Seven of those eight teams have losing records.
Throwing fewer fast balls is the secret sauce behind rays (38.7%, lowest in the MLB for the second year in a row), the Dodgers (43.9%, second lowest) and brave (44.7%, fourth lowest). This is why OriolesThe display of ads has been greatly improved. They dropped their fastball usage from 50.8% (18th) to 44.2% (3rd place).
It’s also true that average speed crawls. This is because more pitchers are hitting the limits of human capabilities, not because people are pushing the ceiling higher. (You wouldn’t see anyone throwing a baseball at 110 mph, for example, but you would see more bowlers hitting 100 mph.) As elite speed became more popular, hitters were modified to hit it. What they didn’t solve was rotation, movement, and shifting gears.
Why have secondary playgrounds become the primary choice this year? Follow the data. This snapshot of the past decade is as simple an answer as it gets:
Go to follow
Average MLB Hitting vs. Pitch Types
| year | Fast Bulls | Not Fastballs |
|---|---|---|
|
2013 |
.276 |
.226 |
|
2014 |
.272 |
.226 |
|
2015 |
.278 |
.226 |
|
2016 |
.280 |
.226 |
|
2017 |
.279 |
.228 |
|
2018 |
.270 |
.223 |
|
2019 |
.276 |
.227 |
|
2020 |
.268 |
.222 |
|
2021 |
.265 |
.223 |
|
2022 |
.255 |
.209 |
In the game of diminishing strikes, running on his ground becomes even more important. This is also another reason why non-fast balls multiply: they are better at limiting fast balls. Fastballs make up 48.4% of the pitches but 55.3% of the home runs.
Power hitters are especially feeling the effects of this trend. San Diego’s Luke Voit saw 56% of non-fast balls when he drove the majors in races at home with the Yankees in 2020. Now he sees 66% — and hits 0.071 against them.
In 2019, while Joey Gallo was still with Notice, saw 49% of the non-fast balls and made the All-Star Team. Now he sees 65% of his non-fast balls and hits them with 129. The Yankees The left fielder hasn’t made Homer yet.
Against the Dodgers on Saturday night, Darvish threw two types of fastballs (four stitchers and a sinker) and five types of secondary pitches (cutter, slider, split, curved and curved joint). He finished the night with twice as many non-fast balls as fast balls (60-30).
Darvish may throw more types of minors than anyone else, but his seasonal average of 60% non-quick balls is nowhere near the MLB lead. leaders are BrewerCorbin Burns (92.7%, majority from cutouts and curves), Darwish’s teammate Joe Musgrove (62.8%) and Cory Klopper (62.5%) from Rice. Burns’ curveball is so bad that the hitters have been 7 for 116 (.060) against it over the past two seasons.
The .181 rackets generally hit against Darvish—including the .082 in three starts if you remove the clunker in San Francisco. “It was very cold,” he says. “I didn’t feel like baseball. Everything went in the middle.” Otherwise, it sums up why batting has been difficult this season.
“He spins baseball better than anyone I’ve ever seen,” says teammate Sean Manya. “I would say he and Sonny Gray are the two guys I’ve played with and they are on another level with what they can do with a baseball spin.”
Musgrove says, “A lot of what he can do has to do with how he feels about baseball. It’s the difference between a pitching coach telling you to move your fingers a certain way and the feeling. With Yu it’s what it looks like and not what it actually looks like.”
“For example, my gliding idea is to be on the side of the ball as long as possible and let the cup of my hand take over. Letting the knuckle out of my fingers is what spins the ball. It talks about guiding the ball toward the home board while directing pressure to the side of the ball. So it pushes it out. “It has the power out but it’s spinning in that direction. So he’s going to clear it out later. So we get a similar action but our thought process is completely different.”
“He’s so deep in everything he does. He’s gone into all these subtle changes in wrist position and subtle tweaks in the finger.”
AP Photo / Derek Tuscan
For those who don’t have a dervish supernatural touch, the merchandising lab works wonders. The Dodgers reshaped 30-year-old Andrew Heaney’s crushing ball, for example, by focusing on spin properties to give him more ball sweep. Two starts before landing on IL, Heaney throws over 50% non-quick balls for the first time in his nine-year career. Blows 2 for 20 for breaking the renovated playing field.
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Secondary pitches aren’t the only reason why the attack has declined this month. The hitters didn’t get their usual plate looks in the short spring training. Also, MLB expanded its nominees lists from 26 to 29 through May 1 due to the shutdown, and nearly every team rushed to fill the spots with more bowlers. The result is more pitch changes and less stressful pitchers.
“The third time is real,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts says, noting how the hitters’ OPS increases when they face a third start. “And now when you take that out of the equation, you now have to play matches for the next 4 rounds. But the bottom line cost is that you now put a lot of pressure on the painkillers. But now, when we carry a surplus of painkillers, there is no cost.
“When we get to May 2, when there will be 13 bowlers, we’ll have to kind of have a beginner. … This is where all the slugs and beginner ERAs go up. It’s not always necessary, but this is where you can cut back on pen roles. “.
If Roberts is right, offense will start to bounce back in May, which the game desperately needs. Getting out of the lockdown with a 16-man crew to quell crime is not the way to build momentum. 7.63 Score per team game this season is the lowest ever. But even comparing this month to all of April, rather than the full season total, the offensive numbers are still the worst in a generation or two (even with DH in both leagues for the first time in April!):
The hit average (.232) matches last April as the worst April since 1968, and the sixth lowest on record.
The slowdown (.368) is the worst since 1981.
• OBP (.308) is the worst since 1968.
• OPS (.676) is the worst since 1981.
• BABIP (.283) matches last April as the worst in 30 years.
A limit of 13 bowlers per team should help get the game out of that offensive malaise. But the trend of emphasizing spinning over fast balls isn’t going away. Darwish summarizes what happened to the promotion. In the first seven MLB seasons, from 2012-18, Darvish threw 50% of the fastballs. In the four seasons since then, he’s been throwing only 33% of the fastballs. With his stuff and the way he uses it in this modern game full of twists and notifications, Darvish isn’t just the King of Spin. He is also the greatest boxer with 216 matches (1611) the game has ever seen.
More MLB coverage:
• The Mets’ turnover is thriving – not even at full strength
• Newsletter of five tools: Ohtani, Pujols, other notes from the first two weeks
• Bud Black is the right manager to lead the Rocky Mountains to their peak
• Freddy Freeman is right where he belongs
• Inside the mind of Juan Soto, the best MLB hitter
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