The Metropolitan: Double your pleasure
The Mets play two tonight. Plus: We dive deep into Jake's new arsenal
Good Morning,
Today we’ll preview today’s doubleheader against the Phillies and talk about a fascinating new discovery about Jacob deGrom’s repertoire this year.
But first: If you enjoy this free newsletter, please consider sharing it with others:
And with that, let’s recap last night’s lack of action.
🌧 MORE RAIN: This time, the Mets didn’t take any chances, postponing yesterday’s game with the Phillies early in the evening, avoiding any embarrassing starts and stops like they had on Sunday. After having their entire opening series postponed due to the Nationals getting COVID, they have now had two rain-outs in their first homestand. While many teams have already played 9 or 10 games, the Mets have played five. Considering their struggles, maybe it’s not a bad thing.
🗓 LET’S PLAY TWO: That means we get our first 7-inning doubleheader (pause for a collective groan at the new rules) starting at 4:10 PM EST today. Taijuan Walker will take the ball in the first game. And after manager Luis Rojas indicated Marcus Stroman wouldn’t pitch again until after his normal five days of rest, the plans shifted and Stroman will start the night-cap at 7:10 PM, after all. The Phillies will throw Chase Anderson and Aaron Nola, respectively.
SILVER LINING: Would you rather see the teams play two 9-inning games today, or would it be more enjoyable to avoid seeing the likes of Jeurys Familia and the back of the bullpen? If each starter can toss 6 innings today, that means only two innings are needed from the beleaguered bullpen.
STRO: Stroman will become the first Mets pitcher to technically start two games with only one day in between since Orel Hershiser in 1999, per Jacob Resnick.
IF YOU GO: Tickets for yesterday’s rained-out game will not be valid for the doubleheader, but can be used as credit toward future 2021 or April 2022 home games. If you have tickets to the original game scheduled for today, you can attend both ends of the doubleheader.
🏥 ON THE MEND: Manager Luis Rojas told reporters that Carlos Carrasco will soon fly to the team’s alternate site in Brooklyn to begin doing fielding work, and “is doing really good right now.”
💰 PAYDAY: Umpire Joe West won a defamation suit against former Met Paul LoDuca after the catcher said on a podcast that former Mets teammate Billy Wagner bribed West into giving him a bigger strike zone by letting him use his 1957 vintage Chevrolet. West was awarded $500,000 plus interest by the New York Supreme Court.
📊 STAT OF THE DAY: In a tidbit no one ever expected to hear, Twitter user Daniel Marcillo revealed something eye-raising last night: Jed Lowrie has played more games than the Mets this year.
🎓 METS ALUMNI: Former Met pitcher Eric Hillman is helping the less fortunate on his 55th birthday (April 27), by walking 55 miles to raise awareness and money for children who need help reaching their nutrition goals. Click here to offer your support (hat tip: former catcher Todd Pratt).
Jacob deGrom’s new Spiderman pitch
🧓 by Jeffrey Bellone
Life is supposed to be about trade-offs. At least it is for most of us. Eat more things that taste good, and realize the consequences the next time you weigh yourself. But for Jacob deGrom, it seems as if the normal rules of life don’t apply. He keeps getting older, but somehow keeps throwing the ball harder. And this season, his fastball is getting fat on horizontal movement without sacrificing any of its vertical hop.
While it has only been two starts, the Mets’ ace has continued a trend that started in Spring Training by throwing his four-seam fastball with significant more run (movement toward the arm-side) than he ever has before. In fact, he averaged more horizontal movement in each of the past two games than he has in 107 of his previous 109 starts.
This might be why he has upped the usage on his four-seamer this month. Hitters gearing up for a 100 MPH fastball don’t expect a pitch like that to suddenly dart from left to right. And they definitely don’t expect it to rise at the same time.
It’s almost like deGrom has added a completely new pitch to his repertoire, especially when he can seemingly tinker with the amount of movement he generates, making the same pitch look slightly different.
Watching Jake’s fastball in flight is like watching Spider-Man swing vertically and horizontally through the Manhattan street grid in the movie-inspired video game where gravity is an observer instead of an acting force.
But just like Spider-Man doesn’t actually fly, fastballs don’t truly rise; the ones described as such simply drop less than a typical pitch. This “rising” action is created by optimizing backspin on the ball. Besides grip and wrist orientation, a pitcher best facilitates rise with their arm slot. Generally, pitchers with an arm slot that is more over-the-top have an easier time creating efficient backspin and reducing drop than those who throw from a slight angle.
This is best visualized using a clock. As you can see in the graphic below, all else being equal, a right-hander usually trades “rise” (vertical drop) for “run” (arm-side movement) by altering the pitch’s spin direction (or tilt) from 12:00 or 1:00 toward 2:00.
For deGrom, his fastball had a spin tilt around 1:00 last season (as labeled “A” in the graphic above). As expected, his spin tilt is a little lower through the first two starts of his current campaign, but only slightly to around 1:15 (more on this in a bit). For a normal pitcher, all else being equal, by changing the spin tilt from 1:00 toward 2:00, it would result in more armside movement at the cost of vertical drop. You can see this depicted in the scatter plot above with the point labeled “A” shifting to the point labeled “B”.
We can illustrate this concept using every Mets fan’s best friend, Edwin Díaz. He has added nearly 15 degrees to his spin direction since 2018 (or about 30 minutes from 1:00 toward 2:00 using the clock scale). And his horizontal movement (left graph below) has skyrocketed at the expense of his vertical movement (which is depicted relative to similar fastballs at his velocity to better showcase the downward trend).
But if we look at this same relationship for Mr. deGrom, we find a completely different story. Despite adding significant horizontal movement to his fastball over the past few seasons, and particularly this season, his vertical movement remains well above league average relative to his release point and sudden increase in velocity.
Let’s now return to our graphic from earlier and add an extra point. Instead of moving from “A” to “B” on the scatter plot below, deGrom has somehow moved from “A” to the blue circle. He has done so without a drastic change in his release point and with only a slight variation in his spin tilt.
What does this all mean, in plain English? Looking at the available data on his fastball, deGrom has improved two key metrics: velocity and spin efficiency. By throwing the ball faster, it has less time to respond to gravity, which helps its raw vertical movement metric. And by throwing the ball with more active spin (94% compared to 89% last season), he is also boosting the overall movement on the pitch, both vertically and horizontally.
However, none of these changes are drastic, which leads me to believe he is also doing something the data isn’t capturing, and that is changing his grip and/or wrist orientation upon release. By manipulating how the ball comes out of his hand, he can defy some of the conventional indicators of horizontal versus vertical movement to produce a pitch that rises and runs like an athlete training for a marathon.
BOTTOM LINE: At 32 years of age, with multiple Cy Youngs on his mantle, Jacob deGrom continues to evolve in ways that even the fanciest of metrics have trouble explaining.
⚾️ Cubs bullpen coach Chris Young tested positive for COVID-19, and the club placed Jason Adam, Dan Winkler and Brandon Workman on the injured list “out of abundance of caution,” per Robert Murray. (NOTE: The Mets travel to Chicago next week.)
⚾️ Rays starter Tyler Glasnow threw 7 2/3 innings of shutout ball against the Rangers last night, striking out 14. Unlike others with similar pitching lines, he got the win.
⚾️ Astros pitcher Zack Greinke threw a 51 MPH pitch in last night’s game against Detroit. It was called a strike:
🔗 A disjointed early season continues for the Mets, by Anthony DiComo, MLB: “[P]layers have tried to make the best of [so many postponed games], using clubhouse resources to stay as ready as possible. For hitters, those include indoor batting cages, virtual reality sets, curveball machines, high-velocity machines and more. ‘The biggest thing is to simulate game speed,’ Rojas said. ‘We can keep everyone ready. We can have a script of things, so we keep everyone active in every area. But to simulate game speed when everyone else is playing, that’s our challenge.’ Rojas believes the disjointed schedule may have played a role in the Mets’ sluggish start.”
🔗 Stroman “stepping up” for the team, by Justin Toscano, Bergen Record: “We want the guys to be out there being the best version of themselves," Rojas said. "For him to come and talk to us about feeling good and going out there and pitching in a doubleheader scenario like we’re having now, I think it’s great to hear. I’m glad he’s stepping up for the team and doing this."
And… former Mets manager Terry Collins reveals how he would help Michael Conforto shake out of a slump:
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