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Dr. D's Jaw Snaps Shut So Fast You Can Hear His Teeth Click
After Elias' March starts, and after his first few reg-season starts, we pegged his ERA in the 100'ish range. He's got guts, we sez, and a lively fastball he throws to attack locations. But the curve looks rudimentary -- he can't throw it for strike consistently, and it's a little mushy. As well, the change is for show, approximately a Paxton-level changeup. From 2013.
It is a Bill James axiom, however, that "With most good young starting pitchers, strikeout rate will increase in the second and third year." Check Justin Verlander for a fast example. It ain't rocket science: they gain pitchability. They simply gain an intuition for when hitters will bite, and when they won't.
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Elias seems to be gaining in pitchability at the rate of about one month per game. We're not just tossing that comment off; you can see through his pace, rhythm, locaion, and his strut off the mound that he is missing bats by method, not luck.
Take, for example, the pitch on this video starting at 0:23. He has an 0-2 count on Alfonso Soriano, and he throws the pitch to break at the back foot. He figures Soriano will swing, and Soriano does swing, and Elias is walking off the mound as he swings. You'd have never seen that three games ago.
By the way, that was a 3-pitch K.O. of Soriano with this MLB(TM) pitch sequence:
When you get to 0-2 and 1-2, the back-foot slider is a lethal weapon.
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Check the same "get off the court, meat" vibe on the pitch at 0:45.
And at 0:58. Isn't that sweet?
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The Arsenal
Also, in March, we'd heard about flashes of an Erikkkk Bedard curve. We turned on the TV and we never saw one. That's okay. With the "effectively wild" 92-95 fastball, and the ability to show offspeed stuff decently, he was still a fair ways ahead of Garrett Olson and Luke French.
However, during the Yankee game? Here was that rumored wipeout curve ball, Front-and-Center Babeh.
Take the FIRST pitch shown on the Yankee video; that's an Erikkkk yakker, and it's thrown (properly) to start in the zone and to break down below the knees.
Derek Jeter has always had a gorgeous way of "tracking" the flight of the ball with his CG, and look at the position he is left in by this Elias hammer:
Elias didn't particularly "set up" this pitch. It's Jeter's first AB -- never saw Elias -- and the first three pitches were fastballs. On a 1-2 count, this garbage swing occurred on the merits of the pitch's break alone. (At 1:20 is a back-foot slider that embarrasses Jeter, and the finish is even worse from the standpoint of Jeter's balance.)
You want to see Elias' very best strikeout curve, based on the flight of the ball alone? Against Brian Roberts? Slide the video to 1:08 and you can die happy.
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By the way, he threw a nice deadfish change, second pitch on the vid, to whuff Carlos Beltran. (Beltran was looking for a fastball low-away; he got a change lower-away and ---- > That's What You Gonna Get, Sherm.
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Three Scenarios
The 100 ERA+ Livan Hernandez scenario. This is what we thought we already had, before the last coupla starts.
With nothing but a 93 MPH fastball, and an awesome mound presence, you can pile up 2-3 WAR in this league. Which sets a guy up for some paychecks.
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The C.J. Wilson scenario. Let us hypothesize that, in Elias' first 5 starts, he has made a discovery. This discovery would be, "Hey, if I get ahold of the laces real good on my curve ball, and start the pitch in the zone, and let it break out of it ... you know what? These feebs are going to strike out on that pitch."
If Roenis Elias suddenly groks, "Hey, I just need to get to my curveball in the count, and really snap it, and I'm going to make $100M," then ....
We're not talking about a great curve here. We're just talking about having a nice crisp curve, and the knowledge of where to locate it. (To go with the exceptional fastball.)
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Derek Jeter's take?
"He's not a typical lefty where he's up there trying to trick you," said Derek Jeter, who struck out twice against Elias in a 1-for-4 night. "He gets it up there pretty good, and when he gets ahead, he's got a strikeout pitch. He was better than us today."
In Jeter-speak: Elias' fastball is plenty good enough for a "Here It Is, Hit It" approach. This results in the repeatable 1-2 counts (sandwiched around the occasional singles, of course).
There's a big difference between a pitcher who is trying to figure out a way to get to two strikes, against a particular hitter --- > and a pitcher who goes at them with a system that will force a 1-2 count unless they do something about it.
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We're not rushing anything here. Elias had a 4.5 walk rate going into the game, and he is a rookie left hand starter. He doesn't have to be the finished C.J. Wilson starting now.
It's just that, over the first five starts, his development has appeared to be in Fast Forward.
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The Erikkkk Bedard scenario. Do you want to muse for a moment that Roenis Elias really can throw a curve like the one he threw on May 1?
Hey, his fastball was 93.6 MPH last night. That's 13th in both leagues, right OR left.
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I don't know what Roenis Elias is going to be, but the last two games, he has added some interesting possibilities to the equation.
BABVA,
Dr D
There is something really fun in watching a guy that relishes the big stage. The guy that feeds off the energy and rises to the occasion.
And I love, love, love that Elias isn't afraid to throw inside. He could be as murderous to LH hitters as RJ was with those breaking pitches hitting the inside edge. They had no chance.
Credit to Zunino, too. He saw that the breaking ball was working from both arm angles and called 41 of them.
I like his attitude. When he sees Hamilton he'll probably think "I'm gonna own you dude."
Do you guys think it was Zunino calling for the pitches to be thrown from different arm slots, or was it Elias just choosing them by himself?
Either way we have a couple of impressive rookies playing BIG on the big stage.
No......Great point, Griz (BTW, my soon to be HS graduate daughter is set to become a Montana Grizzly in the fall). many kudos to Kid Zunino for calling a great game. Zunino and Elias owned Soriano and Jeter, who could be their granddads. Well, dads, anyway. Zunino puts the right number of fingers down at most of the right times.
Anyway, Doc is dead on: The Cuban zurdo* has figured out that he belongs on this stage. And with figuring that out comes just a bit of pavonearse*! On the biggest planetary beisbol* stage he went all Cuba Libre (not the cocktail, mind you) on the Yanks. Heck, that's the kind of shutdown performance on the Yanqui that Castro wished he had come up with in October of '62!
The guy is good, transitioning to pretty good. The slider is wicked and I love the inside/outside intent on his FB. Like any young lefty, he will have some struggling starts, but we've seen way more than enough to not be panicked by them and to understand such is the way with young lefties.
I like the arm slot change, too.
I like the kid. And I like that McClendon rock and rolled with him out of ST. I thought Wedge made the right call last year with Maurer, this one appears to have worked out some better.
* Thank goodness for on-line English to Spanish dictionaries
It felt like last year the Mariners would play .500 for stretches, then have a losing streak. The problem was they never seemed to have the hitting or pitching at the same time to create the winning streaks to match. So far this year it seems like they have a much better chance to rattle off 5 or 7 wins in a row, especially when they get Paxton and Kuma back. I don't think this team is headed for 95 wins, but I do think the Mariners can match their losing streaks with winning streaks this year, which is a big step forward. They seem to be getting there, and that is encouraging. I think the players are relatively close to realizing that they can be good too. I could actually see this team going on an Oakland A's style rampage through a month if they could somehow get Paxton/Kuma back and stretched out along with 3 or 4 hitters heating up at the same time.
... because he landed in High Desert and survived admirably. If you can post an ERA under 4 as a starter in the Cal League, with HIGH DESERT as your home park, you get my notice. Failing to do so doesn't disqualify you... but that ain't easy to do.
Elias had the 7th best ERA in the Cal League (over 100 IP) in 2012. He then posted the 8th-best ERA in the Southern league the year after. That doesn't count people who put in half-seasons in either league (Taijuan only threw 84 IP in AA, for instance) but it still ain't nuthin.
It's the ability to limit hits that shows up in those performances. Roenis gave up 8.3 per 9 in the Cal League, and under 8 per in AA. He's under 8 in the bigs.
He can walk some guys without getting hurt because it's difficult to put the ball in play hard against him. He's given up some HRs, but that was again in High Desert for the most part. His HR numbers in AA were low.
I figured he was a 2015 project for the Ms, but they threw him into the mix early. I thought it might bother him. It is NOT bothering him, and as Doc says, he's getting more swagger with every outing. The walks could be an issue, but a lot of power lefties have early walk issues, and curveballers especially. As long as he isn't coughing up hits, it's completely survivable.
Having a second killer lefty in the rotation would be terrific. RH Felix / RH Kuma / LH Paxton / RH Walker / LH Elias would be a nice whipsaw to throw at every opposing lineup. Kuma and Felix back-to-back is such a contrast of styles that it works out in our favor as well.
I would hate to catch that starting 5 at any point in its rotation. I figured Elias could hold down the fort, process what he's learned in another minor league stint or out of the pen, and give us a decent option for next season.
I'm having trouble seeing how we get him out of the rotation at this point, even with as well as Young is pitching. That's a good thing. If there's a longer delay with Paxton or Walker, we've got a kid with, stuff, moxie and pitchability.
Love it.
~G
Cool, Moe. If you make your way to Missoula, let me know. I'm a couple hours north but that's still home. They have a fun LowA diamondbacks affiliate, the Osprey, with a beautiful ballpark if you make a summer trip. Really fun football team/stadium, too.
We were in Bigfork/Kalispell for 5 or 6 days a couple of summers ago. My best friend's daughter got married there and I had the honor of performing the wedding. She and her husband were both track athletes for the Grizzlies. Beautiful country up there.....