Game 2, Mariners at Twins
Logan Gilbert vs. Sonny Gray, 11:10am
The first late-morning start of the year for your undefeated Mariners sees Logan Gilbert make his first start of the year. Opposing him is veteran righty, Sonny Gray. These two teams are fairly evenly matched, even though they have different strengths and weaknesses, and I believe these two starters are microcosms of that.
Logan Gilbert comes from the Robbie Ray school, at least this far. He’s going to establish his fastball, try to induce a chase with his slider, and generally try to overpower batters. That approach has brought strikeouts throughout the minors and a solid number in MLB, but there’s a slight problem. When his slider isn’t on, and it wasn’t on very much in 2021, he’s vulnerable to really hard contact. At some level, this trade-off is worth it: Robbie Ray consistently gives up hard contact, and it (generally) hasn’t concerned him. As long as the strikeouts stay high, you’d take a few hard-hit balls, knowing some will still find gloves.
Part of the reason why you’d make this trade is that strikeouts are “stickier” than contact stuff. Strikeout rate is more consistent, more reliable than hard contact. Now, Ray is evidence that you can’t just expect hard contact to naturally come back to average, but for a guy like Gilbert, you’d absolutely rather have a high K rate than low hard hit or barrel rates in your first MLB season.
Sonny Gray doesn’t care about all that though, and has gone all-in on the opposite strategy: he’s a contact manager that’s learning to get more K’s along the way. Now 33, the undersized righty has made a living keeping the ball off the barrel of opposing bats through very good command and a deep, varied arsenal.
Like Ray, Gray has had some ups and downs. In some years, it’s harder to pull off than others. That was certainly true in his stint with the Yankees, but Gray turned it around with his best seasons immediately after in Cincinnati’s hitter-friendly park.
Gray throws about 92, but has a great sinker he throws righties, and a cutting dart of a four-seamer he throws lefties. He pairs them with a slider, curve, and a rare change. He’s experimented with a cutter as well. There’s nothing eye-popping about his movement or velo; he has slightly higher spin rates, but I think his location makes more of a difference than spin.
When he’s on, he mixes pitches and (correctly) follows pitch-type splits to minimize platoon splits: over his long career, he’s held lefties to a .288 wOBA, just under righties’ .294. With the Reds, he took his bat-missing to a higher level, smashing his previous high K% every year. Part of the reason for this is the slight sharpening of his slider, making it more of the en vogue “sweeper” with tons of horizontal movement. The other part is refining his mix based on batter handedness. To lefties, he’s almost Lance McCullers-like, throwing about an even split of four-seamers and curves. He’ll even sneak in some two-strike sinkers to give them another look, even as he keeps the four-seamer as his primary heater to them. Righties get the sinker/slider mix that can be so effective against same-handed bats.
The approaches look very different at the season and especially career levels, but game to game, they can look pretty similar. Gilbert’s best game of 2021 was his sheer befuddling of the Yankees, who mis-hit and swung through fastball after fastball. Likewise, when Gray’s on, he can rack up a ton of K’s. We’ll see who’s sharper today.
1: Frazier, 2B
2: France, 1B
3: Winker, LF
4: Haniger, RF
5: Toro, 3B
6: Kelenic, LF
7: Rodriguez, RF
8: Crawford, SS
9: Murphy, C
SP: Gilbert
Good to see Julio and Adam get their first hits as Mariners–and at just the right time.
Still trying to figure out how that wasn’t a balk that caught Kelenic off guard.