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Inning 3

Taijuan came out in the third looking kind of fatigued, or something ... well, a bit listless.  Maybe somebody said something in the dugout that annoyed him.

He threw three very forgettable fastballs to the Royals' #8 hitter, lefty 160-lb Jarrod Dyson.  The last one, 94 MPH, was a braindead 0-2 pitch right down the middle ... he got away with a skied fly ball, just because of the release point, the angle, and the "hidden velocity."  Taijuan Walker's fastball has not one but MANY "secret weapon" aspects to it.

SABRMatt and Spec Tater had an interesting little conversation about pitchers who maintain low ISO's ... you can measure this in many ways, such as BABIP against, HR rate, and so forth.  I'm really warming up to Spec's pet ISO stat...  

Anyway, the most common reason for a pitcher to consistently draw weak swings is a great change-speed game that --- > keeps batters back on their heels, confused.  But Nolan Ryan did that too, because hitters were trying so hard not to strike out!  :- )  They went to their pepper swings.

Question comes up, will Taijuan be able to combine a high K rate with a low SLG, like Kevin Brown did?  That's another post... don't sweat Taijuan's K rate, though, that one we can sneak-preview.

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It's not clear to me how a tiny guy like Dyson will ever be able to defend himself against Taijuan's straight-up power game.  If he has absolutely nothing to fear in terms of HR's or ISO, what's to stop him from just coming in 97 MPH any time he gets behind in the count?

He did it here:  on a pitch wherein Taijuan should have been nibbling and picking, he just shrugged, said "ohwell whatever nevermind", hucked it down the middle, Escobar squared it up and nothing happened.  An NFL running back, Larry Csonka, said he loved to watch his blocking guard Larry Little come around the corner on a power sweep and draw a bead on a cornerback.  "Larry loves to chop them down," Csonka gloated.

It's got to be the most helpless feeling in the world, for a banjo hitter to face a huge man like Taijuan who can just come down the tracks like a freight train.  There's no way to sting the pitcher and no way to wobble his rocking chair.

............

Taijuan threw nearly all fastballs to the #9 hitter, speed burner Alcides Escobar ... he tried one 73 MPH curve, rolled it badly, and left it high.  Unfortunately, Taijuan threw only 7 curves and only 2 changeup/splitters on the whole evening.  See Appendix C ... :- )

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The first time through the lineup, the Royals were 0-for-8 with a walk - mostly just blonks and pool-cue shots.  But Taijuan, feeling very uncomfortable with his curve ball, and completely unwilling to chance his splitter, was devolving in front of our eyes.  The Devo guys woulda been proud, but at age 60+ they've gotten too stupid to engage such concepts.  I would know.  Such delicious irony ...

Alex Gordon came up second time 'round, and swatted the first strike real hard.  But at Nick Franklin for a groundout.

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Appendix C

It was now perfectly obvious that, the second time through the lineup, the Royals could COMPLETELY ignore any semblance of an offspeed game.  That's problem one -- you are NOT going to throw ANY fastball by a batter under those circumstances.  (In inning 1, he had thrown fastballs by hitters for two strikeouts, because the Royals hadn't yet made the in-game adjustment.)

Problem two is that Taijuan also could not command his fastball or cutter.  He could control them, but not command them -- he could throw strikes, more or less, but could not hit the mitt.

Despite this, the Royals only hit two or three balls hard the whole game.  Again we were reminded of the young Bartolo Colon.  The fastball and cutter are so unusual that they pose problems under any circumstances.

Yes, we know we owe yer a breakdown on the pitches themselves.  Hold yer horses, amigos.  For now, the takeaway is:  Properly set up, the fastball will be overwhelming.  Taijuan's pure fastball is a considerably better fastball than Felix Hernandez' ever was.

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