Game 14, Astros at Mariners

Yusei Kikuchi vs. Jose Urquidy, 7:10pm

Not sure it’s possible for the M’s to feel better coming into tonight’s game. Justin Dunn just threw one of his best starts as a major leaguer, walking but 2 in 5 very good IP, and that effort helped the M’s sweep a double-header that lifted them to first place in the AL West. Now, they’re back at home for one of the warmest, nicest days of the year.

So, how did Justin Dunn do it? I mean, the short answer is just that he threw strikes. We can complicate the picture, and I will, but really: it’s all he really needs to do. But why is THAT? Why can he be reasonably sure his 92-95mph fastball won’t get blasted once he starts throwing it in the zone? That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out. In his career, batters have a .162 BABIP against Dunn. When he finds the zone, good things happen.

How’s it possible to put up a .162 BABIP? Well, tiny samples and all of that. Let’s just do the requisite throat-clearing about tiny samples, as it’ll apply to everything in this post. We’re dealing with pitchers without much of an established MLB track record, so we’ll just have to see how he looks going forward. But right now, it sure looks like batters aren’t picking up the ball out of Dunn’s hand all that well, and have in essence been bailed out by the fact that Dunn’s had no idea where the ball would end up either.

It’s not a ton of weak contact, either. They’ve hit the ball about as hard as the league average, it’s just that they keep finding gloves. Some of that’s due to the fact that Dunn’s been a fly ball guy, and has pitched in some parks (like T-Mobile) that are relatively friendly to fly ball pitchers. But Dunn doesn’t just need to stay in pitcher’s parks: he’s been elite at eliciting pop-ups. The league-wide rate of infield fly balls is 9.9%. Dunn doubles that; he’s got a career mark of 18.8%. His fastball is a big contributor to that mark, but he’s able to get them on sliders, too.

Again, though: why? A fastball with a ton of rise and pure backspin might get you some pop-ups, just because it moves differently than batters expect – batters get used to a certain amount of “drop” on a pitch, and if a pitch stubbornly refuses to drop that much, batters will probably hit underneath the ball and sky them. But by spin or vertical movement, Dunn’s fastball doesn’t look at all like the hypothetical back-spinning rise ball (for real-world examples think of ex-Mariner Chris Young or recent opponent John Means). It’s got a bit more rise than average, but there’s simply no metric that jumps off the page as a clear contributor to this phenomenon. But if you put a few together…

Justin Dunn reminds me a bit of Freddy Peralta. As I talked about in a Cactus League game this spring, Peralta came up throwing nothing but 91mph fastballs by people. It made no sense. Even now that he’s mixing in more sliders, he’s still able to rely on what looks like an underwhelming fastball to miss bats. The key isn’t freakish spin or movement, it’s how his lower arm slot gives hitters a bunch of mental cues about how the ball will behave, and then the ball does something totally different. The movement pattern on Peralta’s heater has shifted a bit, but at least in 2019, it moves pretty much the way Dunn’s does -a bit of horizontal movement and some above-average rise. Dunn, too, has a lower 3/4 delivery, though to be clear, not anywhere near as low as Peralta’s. But maybe that bigger gap between what “should” be a pitch with no rise and a lot of run is what allows Peralta to get a ton of whiffs, while the smaller gap gets Dunn mishit popups.

Whatever it is, I’ll take it. It’s also notable that both guys *also* get pop-ups on their sliders, despite some sink. The horizontal break is probably enough to get a lot of opposite-field contact, and oppo contact is more likely to be in the air. It’s not a bad combo, but Dunn’s got to work on something for left-handed bats. Dunn gives up walks to everyone, but he *really* walks lefties. Interestingly, so does Peralta. Anyway, Dunn’s response has been to throw a lot more curveballs.

His curve is now his primary breaking ball, and given that he doesn’t really throw a change, it’s got to be a pitch to target lefties. There’s even less to go on here, but it’s an interesting slurvy pitch that looks a ton like…Peralta’s slider. It sweeps across the zone horizontally, and if he can control it, it could be a good pitch. All of Dunn’s offerings are showing increased spin this year, but that’s largely because he’s throwing harder. The curve hasn’t really increased in velo all that much – about 1 MPH or less – but it’s been the biggest gainer in RPMs. Clearly, he’s doing something different.

Today, the M’s face the Astros Jose Urquidy, a formerly-overlooked prospect who reached the majors in 2019 and ended up pitching well enough to make the postseason roster and starting a world series game. His fastball clocks in at 94, and he’s able to throw it for strikes consistently – through the minors and now in his 80 MLB innings, he’s posted very low walk rates, and he gets swings on over 50% of his fastballs (which isn’t that common). But his best pitch has been a well-disguised change-up that gets armside run and drops about 6″ more than his fastball. It averages around 84-85, and has been a true weapon against lefties – he throws it 30% of the time vs. left-handed bats.

And that’s produced some of the strongest reverse splits I’ve ever seen. Over time, you’d expect them to even out, but even at about 40 IP against both lefties and righties, lefties can hit a ton of HRs in a row, and it still won’t be close. Lefties have a .203 wOBA against him, compared to righties’ .361. A lot of this is BABIP-driven, to be sure, but it’s been *so* consistent in each of his three small yearly samples, I wonder if the M’s would think about trying to get as many lefties in there as possible?

He’s missing more bats, but when righties put the ball in play, they’re hitting it hard; I guess Urquidy is the anti-Dunn (not Dunn?). Some of this may be that he’s actually moved away from the change this year, and is now throwing more of his low-80s/high-70s slider. That pitch has worked out pretty well for him, as it has a higher whiff rate than his fastball, and he’s able to use it against lefties and righties alike. He used to throw a curve, but at this point, the two pitches look remarkably similar – Pitch Info still thought he mixed them both in about equally, but MLB is coding essentially all of them as sliders now.

Something to watch for: Pitch Info shows that his release point is far, far lower for his slider than for his fastball. Essentially, if he’s throwing a fastball, the arm angle should be fairly noticeable to the batter. Anything slower starts off lower. This was always a problem for Marco Gonzales’ change-up, and it’s not one he ever really “fixed” except by throwing more of his curve and cutter. Let’s see if we can see it on the broadcast, and if M’s hitters look like they’re picking up breaking stuff out of Urquidy’s hand.

1: Haniger, DH
2: France, 2B
3: Seager, 3B
4: Marmolejos, LF
5: White, 1B
6: Trammell, CF
7: Moore, RF
8: Murphy, C
9: Crawford, SS
SP: Kikuchi

Not the most defensively-skilled OF the M’s can throw out there, but there are 4 lefties, and injuries make things tough.
Anthony Misiewicz is back from the Covid IL after a few days off. Robert Dugger and Erik Swanson head back to the alternate site (this is the same physical site). Dugger had been the 27th-man for the double-header yesterday, while Swanson was called up when Misiewicz was IL’d.
A number of Astros starters went on the IL for Covid protocols yesterday. Because they may simply have been near someone who’d tested positive, it wasn’t clear if they’d play tonight – there’s no time limit on the Covid IL. A few negative tests and some quick contact tracing might be all they needed for the league’s OK to play. It doesn’t appear that happened, as I’m looking at this Astros line-up and…there are some new faces here. Jose Altuve, Yordan Alvarez, Alex Bregman are all out, so welcome…uh…Taylor Jones as the DH tonight. The 6’7″ DH had a couple of games last year, but doesn’t have much of a prospect pedigree; he wasn’t on the list of FG’s top 33 Astros prospects. Tough to be in a system like that, especially as a 1B/DH. Making his big league debut will be Alex de Goti, who’ll play 2B. De Goti, too, wasn’t ranked as a prospect, nor even given a mention. He’s been a contact-oriented middle infielder for several years, but has never been on the 40-man until a bunch of starters broke protocol. Good for him, though. Playing RF will be Chas McCormick, who actually (barely) cracked the top-20 Astros prospects. He made the Astros out of spring training, but has played somewhat sparingly, with only 11 PAs thus far. Aledmys Diaz, a long-time vet who’s a pretty darn good bench player, gets the start at third.