Confidence in changeup paying dividends for Sanchez

Steve Phillips

TSN Baseball Insider

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Aaron Sanchez continues to impress in his return from a season lost to blister issues.

I said last week that I was enthused by what I had seen from him in his first couple of starts this season. Sure, he needed to shake off some rust, but overall the ball was coming out of his hand free and easy.

He followed those first two bumpy starts (0-1, 5.40 ERA) with an absolute gem, taking a no-hitter into the eighth inning against the Baltimore Orioles on Tuesday night. He was confident and efficient, needing only 98 pitches to get through eight innings.

The most impressive part of Sanchez’s outing though was the use of his changeup. Forty-two of his 98 pitches were changeups – by far the highest percentage he has ever thrown. He used it 19 per cent of the time in his first start against the Yankees, then 32 per cent of the time against the White Sox in his second start. Against the Orioles, he was up to 43 per cent.

The use of the changeup will help Sanchez further neutralize big left-handed hitters, getting them to spin off the ball as they see fastball out of his hand, only to be fooled by the drop in velocity.

His changeup will be effective against right-handed hitters as well, who have to look for his 97 mile-per-hour sinker if they’re going to have any chance to hit it. As they look for that pitch, they will be fooled by the slower changeup that moves similarly to his sinker. It drops and fades toward the right-handed hitters’ batter’s box. 

Sanchez is a groundball pitcher because of his two-seam fastball. He’ll get more swings and misses now with the increased use of the changeup. Plus, if hitters do put the changeup in play it will likely be on the ground due to its sinking, fading action.

I interviewed Sanchez at spring training and I asked him if he got better while missing time last year. He humbly said he didn’t know how he could have, but he did. The quality of his changeup and his confidence in using it is already paying dividends.

I saw this once before in one of my former Mets’ pitchers, Paul Wilson. He had missed time recovering from Tommy John surgery but worked a lot on the feel for the ball while he was rehabbing. His changeup became his most effective off-speed pitch.

The changeup is a feel pitch, not a power pitch. Sanchez spent a lot of time feeling the baseball last year with his blister situation. He experimented with different grips while trying to work around the situation. All of the experimentation seemingly has aided in his ability to add and subtract velocity with the baseball.

His confidence is growing. So is the recognition that he’s one of the best young pitchers in the game.

Tempers are already flaring

It sure seems early in the season for tempers to be flaring. Normally, players get hot-headed when the weather warms up. But on Wednesday there were two separate incidences of fighting on the field.

The Rockies and Padres had a skirmish that started after the Padres had grown frustrated by their batters getting hit four times in the first seven games the two teams played – including outfielder Manuel Margot getting plunked in the ribs on Tuesday night, sending him to the disabled list. 

Padres’ pitchers finally retaliated on Wednesday after Rockies starter German Marquez plunked Padres outfielder Hunter Renfroe, making it five unanswered beanings. So, in the bottom of the third inning, Padres’ pitcher Luis Perdomo threw behind Rockies third baseman Nolan Arenado and Arenado charged the mound. Five players were ejected for fighting. 

In the Red Sox and Yankees game on Wednesday, Yankee first baseman Tyler Austin slid hard into second base on a sac bunt that led to a forceout. He kicked out his leg aggressively on the slide to break up an attempt of a double play. His spikes were up a bit and he nicked Red Sox second baseman Brock Holt. It wasn’t a dirty or illegal slide, just aggressive. But because Holt chirped at Austin, the benches and bullpens emptied.

When Austin came to the plate again, Red Sox reliever Joe Kelly hit him in the back with a pitch and everyone swarmed the field again. The second on-field confrontation led to four ejections.  Kelly got a six-game suspension for his part and Austin got five games.

The commissioner needs to do more about on-field violence. Intentionally throwing at players on the other team should be punished. If someone gets hit by a pitch in the face or head and suffers a severe injury, do you think the commissioner will be pressured to punish beanballs aggressively? Absolutely he would. If a star player gets severely injured in a brawl, do you think he would take action? Of course he would. So why wait?

I know the amount of on-field violence has been reduced ever since umpires were allowed to start issuing warnings to pitchers and managers when tensions rise on the field. There is also a “heads up” program where umpires are alerted to past confrontations that have led to problems.  Warnings can be issued before a game starts if warranted. Once a warning is issued, umpires almost always eject a pitcher if there is another obvious or borderline pitch thrown toward a batter.

Just because we are better than we once were doesn’t mean that the game is in the right place.  Baseball needs a zero-tolerance approach. Umpires need the wherewithal to judge intent. If they believe a pitcher intentionally throws at a batter, then, rather than issuing a warning, an ejection should be immediate. The current policy of issuing a warning is meant to stop retaliation. The first-strike offender is what needs to be addressed. That takes away the desire for vengeance. 

Baseball needs to add a third-man-in policy. If a player leaves the dugout, bullpen or his position on the field he should be immediately ejected and face suspension. The most serious injuries in brawls often times are caused by or suffered by someone other than the initial combatants. Players come running from the dugouts and bullpens and need to keep their heads on a swivel as they are prey for an angry out-of-control opponent. They’re always vulnerable to a sucker-punch that could cause catastrophic damage. 

Finally, the penalties need to be a real deterrent. Kelly and Austin got six and five-game suspensions respectively. If the penalties were three times that their behaviour would have been much different. Make it 18 and 15 games and I bet Kelly doesn’t throw the pitch the next time and Austin doesn’t charge the mound. 

It is time to stop the nonsense before we have a major tragedy.

Meet the Mets

There is a saying in baseball that you can’t win a division in April, but you can lose one. The New York Mets are trying to prove that wrong. They’re off to a 10-1 start and have the best record in baseball.

There were seven teams in baseball that most analysts thought were head and shoulders better than anyone else when the season began: the Yankees, Red Sox, Indians, Astros, Dodgers, Cubs and Nationals. Then there was a group of about 10 or 11 teams that are rebuilding and aren’t really threats to go to the playoffs. The rest of the teams are in the middle and are fighting for a wild-card spot.

Coming into the season the Mets were one of the teams in the middle. They also had the biggest potential to swing in either direction. In the last couple of years, everything that could go wrong has gone wrong for the Mets. They lost David Wright, their captain, to a debilitating back injury. They lost starting pitchers Noah Syndergaard, Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom, Zach Wheeler and Steven Matz for long periods of time to injuries. Slugger Yoenis Cespedes has had leg problems and young stud outfielder Michael Conforto dislocated his shoulder last year while swinging.

But the Mets have a new manager in Mickey Calloway this season and mostly health players.  So far, so good, but the season is quite young. I picked the Mets to finish second in the NL East to the Nationals and to finish just out of the wild-card race. 

If I had to make my predictions over today spotting New York a 10-1 start, I would still pick the Mets second in the division and finishing just out of the wild card. The Mets still have 151 games to play.

What I can predict is best considered by what I have experienced. The Mets have an injury-prone team and that isn’t going to change. They will have injuries and if they happen to the wrong guys things could go badly quickly. This is a team built around starting pitching. The loss of Syndergaard or deGrom for any significant time could be their demise. The loss of Cespedes or Conforto (returned April 5 from shoulder surgery) could crush their offence.

The true test of a team isn’t whether they can win 10 of 11 games; it’s what happens when the losing comes. What goes up in baseball also comes down. It is called baseball gravity.  Every team will go through streaks.  I would always prefer to start with a streak like the Mets have had but I know the losses are coming. I once heard someone say, “All clubs are going to win 60 and lose 60 games. It is the other 42 that will decide the postseason.” So, whether the Mets 10 -1 record is part of the other 42 remains to be seen.

For now, I’m going to stick to my analysis that they are too injury prone with their pitching to win the division. They lack team speed which will make it hard to manufacture runs. They lack range in the infield and are below average in the outfield defensively.

For the first 10 games none of that has mattered, but over the next 150-plus games it will. How much remains to be seen. 

Spitting Seeds

- Marco Estrada was removed from his start against the Orioles on Wednesday night after feeling a pop in his back. He wasn’t himself as he missed his spots in the strike zone and Baltimore took advantage of it. The Jays need to be very careful with Estrada. It’s far better to miss a start or two now to get his back under control than it is to push him to pitch leading to underperformance and then potentially a significant injury. Estrada is a big part of the spirit of the Jays. 

- With the news that Josh Donaldson has been placed on the disabled list a few concerns come to mind. The Jays have decided to rehab the shoulder inflammation in Dunedin, which suggests to me that this will likely be more than a 10-day stay on the DL. The fact that he can’t be with the team and get his treatment means it is likely they need to settle down the inflammation before they rebuild his arm strength. That will take some time. He will likely need a few rehab games as well. The more concerning aspect of this is that with Kendrys Morales on the disabled list with a hamstring strain, the DH role is available. The fact that Donaldson’s shoulder inflammation is troublesome enough that hitting isn’t an option is surprising. If this was minor, then they could rehab his shoulder while keeping his bat in the lineup. My experience tells me that the Jays’ reluctance to consider this option means that the shoulder isn’t responding to treatment. They need to be more aggressive to avoid a catastrophic loss of playing time. The Blue Jays don’t have much margin for error offensively. Donaldson is their most important player. They cannot overcome a 30-day absence, so better to be conservative now. This will also give the Jays a look at Teoscar Hernandez since Randall Grichuk has struggled significantly so far. 

- Roberto Osuna is now the youngest pitcher ever to reach 100 saves.  He reached the threshold at 23 years and 62 days. There is a lesson in this. There had been talk over the last three years that maybe the Jays should move the young righty into the rotation. I’ve always believed that if a pitcher is thriving in a role that the role mattered almost as much as the quality of his pitches.  General managers get greedy sometimes, thinking, “If we get 70 great innings out of Osuna as a closer, what if we make him a starter? We could get 200 great innings then.” It just doesn’t work that way. Osuna has the stuff and the makeup to be a dominating closer.  Could he be a starter? Maybe, but I’m not taking the chance with his arm or emotions to try it. 

- One thing that seems pretty clear for the Blue Jays early on so far is that Curtis Granderson should be the leadoff hitter, at least, against every right-handed starter. He won’t maintain his .478 OBP for the season but he is by far the best option right now. Devon Travis is still trying to figure himself out, so trying to do that and fit a role is too much. I also liked the move to put Steve Pearce in the leadoff spot against lefty Cole Hamels earlier in the week.

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Steve Phillips was general manager of the New York Mets from 1997 through 2003, helping lead the club to a National League championship in 2000 and its first World Series appearance since 1986. His analysis appears each week on TSN.ca, TSN Radio and SportsCentre. Follow Steve on Twitter at @StevePhillipsGM.