Rotation Review: Grading Each Starter Thus Far

All 4 starters who began this season in the rotation have now pitched – and two of them have pitched twice. How did they look, and what might we expect in the future? Travis Smith gives them each a grade and offers some analysis of what he observed.

Felix Hernandez: B

Night and day. Opening Night was an A-grade, but Wednesday afternoon was a C-. I'll start with the bad: Felix' performance against the Giants was simply awful. (Duh). What appeared to happen was that, in the early innings, he was trying to pitch around the Giant hitters and wound up walking them instead. When he pitched to contact, they rolled over or popped the ball up. However, as the walks continued to increase, circle the bases, and eventually score, The King dug himself deeper and deeper into a hole – and then the San Francisco hitters changed their approach. The 4-run cushion allowed them to recognize that Felix now had to pitch to contact if he was to keep the Ners in the game at all, so (instead of waiting out at bats and walking), they sat on the early fastball and absolutely destroyed it. If Felix can feel more comfortable pitching to contact early in the game, he'll do far better.

This leads me into the good: on Opening Night, we saw a brand new King – and a King that I'm excited to see (hopefully) develop throughout the seas-on. Instead of relying on fastballs and pitch-ing to strike batters out, Felix felt comfortable using off-speed pitches in the zone. The Cleveland hitters didn't K – but they didn't make great contact, either. Part of this came from pitching to contact, part of this came from the fact that he is now using three different wind-ups: a drawn-out wind-up, a normal wind-up, and a quick pitch. As the velocity on his fastball continues to drop, Felix will have to continue straying from the heater (which he threw only 13 times on Opening Night) and rely on deception techniques to effectively pitch to contact. Johnny Cueto – who bested Felix on Wednesday – has been doing this for a number of seasons, and it's worked…so hopefully The King will be able to move past the horrors of San Francisco and continue to develop this new style.

James Paxton: B-

James Paxton looked decent in yesterday’s start against Minnesota, giving us flashes of his 2017 self with a 97 mph heater and great movement on his off-speed stuff. However, James Paxton’s issue is that he’s pitching as if he is his 2017 self. What I mean by this is that he is approaching hitters as if they do not quite take him seriously yet – as if they don’t recognize that The Big Maple has emerged as one of the top starters in the AL. This means that hitters are now targeting early fastballs, waiting to jump on a mistake instead of trying to work the count and raise his pitch totals. It took the Twins a few innings to do this – and even then, I’ll say that Pax really only made one mistake in the game – but the Indians were all over him from the get go. Paxton needs to be cerebral with his upcoming starts and not be afraid to go to off-speed pitches early to keep hitters off-balance and guessing…because the league appears to now know that James’ fastball is the real deal.

Mike Leake: A

Leake appears to have picked up right where he left off last season: struggling in one inning (normally early), but cruising through the others. Dave Sims has him quoted as a guy who "wants to go as far as he can" in each game" – and seeing as he's the most stretched out of all of our starters right now, the fact that he went 7 innings against one of the best lineups in the AL is a great sign (let alone the fact that he only gave up 2 runs and won the game). I also thought Servais was premature in yanking Mike in the 6th on Saturday; no offense to Ichiro, but the two extra base-hits Leake gave up were probably catchable balls, and with a 5-0 lead I would have preferred to see him stick with the starter for at least another batter or two. Regardless, Leake has shown that he's a horse – and perhaps even more interesting, he is yet to have a so-called bad start on the Ners (the most runs he’s given up is 3). Bottom line: Mike Leake is 2-0 in 2 starts, and I'm very excited for his next few outings.

Marco Gonzales: A-

The Muse has now made an offer to the Seattle Mariners to purchase sole possession of the Marco Gonzales' changeup. More people need to take notice of this thing. Marco will not blow people away like other change-throwing lefties such as Johan Santana – nor will he pinpoint slow pitches à la Jamie Moyer or Greg Maddux. Instead, he relies on his change to move, diping away from lefties and cut into righties…and in his first start of the season, that thing was working. Gonzales did give up the three run dinger in the 7th inning – but up until then, he was mowing down a good Giants lineup in a way that we would be extremely lucky to have from our 4 starter for the rest of the season. Meanwhlie, Marco (like Leake) worked into the 7th inning. Let's see what Marco gives us tomorrow against Kansas City...but how nice would it be if the bottom of the rotation continued to go deep in games -- especially if the top continues to not be able to escape the 5th?

#Pitching #TeamOverview