Game 16, Astros at Mariners
Nick Margevicius vs. Jake Odorizzi, 1:10pm
Yesterday’s loss was perhaps not a huge shock – Zack Greinke’s still pretty good – but still rough to see the line-up so utterly shut down. Chris Flexen was in and out of trouble, but ultimately pitched quite well, which bodes well for the M’s going forward. A bounce-back start from Nick Margevicius would do the same; Margevicius is critical now that James Paxton’s out for the year. If he’s replacement level or worse, that’s a pretty tough blow. If he can keep the team in games and take a step forward, that’s a pretty big lift from the #6 guy in the rotation.
Jake Odorizzi was out of a job for most of the offseason, after an ill-timed disaster of a season sunk the market for his services. The Astros, having lost Justin Verlander to TJ surgery and then Framber Valdez to a finger injury, decided they needed some veteran presence and signed him to a 2 year deal with an option year. Odorizzi was a big part of the 2010 deal for last night’s starter, Zack Greinke. After being drafted by the Brewers, Odorizzi was sent to Kansas City in exchange for a few months of Greinke. He was traded again in 2012, this time heading to Tampa, where he established himself as a dependable arm thanks to a diving split-finger pitch. A three year stint in Minnesota netted him every type of season: a great one (2019), a perfectly average one (2018), and an utter disaster (2020).
With a fastball at around 92-93, Odorizzi isn’t overpowering, but he has a very deep repertoire that includes a four-seam, a sinker, a cutter, a slider, a curve, and the splitter. Despite picking up the sinker and throwing such a diving pitch in the splitter, he’s put up some of the most extreme fly ball rates in baseball. That has, predictably, meant a lot of dingers as well. This is essentially the dilemma for modern pitchers, especially ones that learned to throw elevated fastballs to disguise curveballs and splitters – they look the same as fastballs until it’s too late for the hitter to react. But if they guess right, it’s easy to elevate the ball and give it a chance to leave the park.
It’s especially important for Odorizzi: over the 1000+ innings Odorizzi has thrown, batters are hitting only .225 on his four-seam fastball. But, they’ve hit 49 dingers. You can do the same with most of his offerings: his cutter limits batters to a .245 average, but a .448 SLG% thanks to 20 home runs. Add it all up and you’ve got a pitcher with a career BABIP under .280 and an ERA under 4, but who couldn’t get a job in the offseason because people were wary about HRs and a recurrence of last year’s disastrous HR/FB ratio. From the outside, watching the changes in the ball and MLB’s denial that they were happening, then buying the manufacturer, then attempting to dampen it… it all seems like a bizarre spy story, a very low-stakes cloak and dagger deal. It’s darkly comedic. I’m sure it’s not as funny to Odorizzi.
It’ll be interesting to see if he uses his sinker more, the way he was trending in Minnesota. Alternatively, he could use T-Mobile’s marine layer and humidor-stored balls to give him more confidence in his four-seam, which has had better results than the sinker. Part of it is how he uses it, though. Like a lot of pitchers, Odorizzi throws more sinkers to opposite-handed batters (in this case, lefties), and a balance with a slight edge to four-seamers to righties. The problem is that sinkers have very high platoon splits – lefties hit right-handed sinkers better than they do four-seamers. Of course, Odorizzi probably knows what he’s doing. In his career, he’s posted negative splits, though this likely has a lot more to do with that great splitter than with the variety of fastball he throws them.
1: Haniger, RF
2: France, DH
3: Seager, 3B
4: Marmolejos, LF
5: White, 1B
6: Moore, 2B
7: Trammell, CF
8: Murphy, C
9: Crawford, SS
SP: Margevicius
I must say, Evan White has been looking a lot better lately.
Well, the starting pitching depth has now been exhausted and it’s April 18th.
Hopefully the issue with Margevicius isn’t serious.
Ty France, again.
Two out of three from Houston and it has been a while since they took a series from them.
Marc, I’ve read nearly every post for over a decade, but never commented. Thank you for all of the great insights and time you put in to every post. You’ve helped make being a Mariners fan worth it all these years.