Writer’s Note: I’m writing this in the bottom of the sixth
Sunday night was Freddy Garcia‘s third start of the season against the Boston Red Sox. The first two games, one on May 15th and the other on June 7th, were not successful in any way. Garcia managed to last just 6.3 innings while giving up 10 hits, 5 walks, 5 strikeouts, 3 home runs, and 9 runs. Last night, Garcia tight roped his way through 5 innings, allowing 8 base runners (5 H, 3 BB), while striking out only 1 and giving up just 1 run.
In terms of pitch selection, this outing was pretty similar to the May game: About 30 fastballs (4/2 seamers) and a lot of sliders (39 last night, 35 in May) with the changeups (14 last night, 18 in May) playing a nice supporting roll. As he usually does, Freddy busted out a few splitters in each game (10 and 7 respectively).
Let’s take a look at the pitch locations for each game.
Here’s last night:
…and here’s May 15:
There aren’t a ton of differences there, but one thing that stands out is the location of the green squares (four seam fastballs). In last night’s game, there were fewer fastballs left over the middle of the plate, which helped Garcia avoid overly hard contact. We can also see that Garcia’s splitter was much more well located last night (70% strikes and mostly low in the zone) than it was in May (42.86% strikes with those ones landing for strikes ending up a bit higher than we’d like).
The prospect of a matchup between Freddy Garcia and the Red Sox lineup was one that none of us were really forward to. We’d seen what had happened in his last two starts against them and generally, soft tossing, relatively low strikeout guys who need to rely on their location and breaking stuff don’t have much success against lineups as potent as the Red Sox (just ask Twins pitches about the Yankees). Garcia’s location was a little better last night, though, and that helped him keep the Yankees in the game.
If you enjoyed this article, please consider sharing it!
2 Responses to Garcia’s mixing effective the third time around
Leave a Reply
TIQ IQ
Well, I, for one, was looking forward to it, and indeed, he had to fight for it, but he did that. I reckon his results were better than Senor Colon’s and certainly, on this occasion, better than CC’s. Pretty reliable dude, is the Chief. The perfect kind of pitcher to have when you want to break prospects into the rotation: holds down the fort, and shows them how to do it.
Freddy’s effective use of the split this year is exactly why I wish more pitchers would mix this pitch into their repetoire. It’s always been my favorite pitch, and it’s really ashame that the pitch has gone out of style since it’s powerhouse days of the 80′s. It can be a hard pitch to master control of. But once a pitcher learns how to mix it up for strikes, and balls, it can be one of the best, most versatile pitches in the game.