After having Sunday off, the ALCS starts back up again
tonight in Kansas City. With the Orioles
down 2-0, it’s not exactly how anyone drew it up before the series began. While Baltimore found themselves within
striking distance of a win in both games, the bullpen eventually ended up allowing
the go-ahead run(s) to score in the 9th inning or later in each
contest.
One of the key moments in the Game 1 loss occurred in the
top of the 10th inning, when Kansas City left fielder Alex Gordon led
off the inning against Darren O’Day. After
taking a sinker well off the plate and swinging through a slider on the inside
corner, Gordon deposited a sinker over the right field wall for a home run. Gordon’s home run against O’Day delivered the
big blow against the chances of Baltimore ultimately winning this game, at
least in terms of Win Expectancy (resulting in a 35.5% change). I hate to do this to our readers, but here it
is again.
The first thing I thought while watching that ball leave the
yard was, “How the hell did he yank that out of the park to right field?” Based on what I thought I was initially looking
at, it appeared that O’Day made a pretty good pitch up on the outside edge of
the plate. Looking at the pitch f/x data (see figure on left), it confirms that the pitch was literally on the very edge of the upper and outside part of the strike
zone. It’s difficult to hit a pitch in
that location, let alone for a left handed batter to pull it out of the park for
a home run.
However, that’s not the interesting part. The interesting thing about it is how the
hits are distributed. You’d expect the
heat map above to be associated with a lot of opposite field home runs, but as
one can see in the figure below, that’s not the case with Gordon.
What you will see is that Gordon has no problem taking a
fastball opposite field for doubles, but he won’t hit many of them out of the
park. It’s not as if he has difficulty
hitting home runs on those pitches though, as it appears he has the unusual
ability to yank them over the fence to center field and right field, which is
not what what one would expect, especially for someone like Gordon, who is not
thought of as being a prolific home run hitter.
As the figure shows, only 2 of his 12 home runs on fastballs up and away
(since 2009) have not gone to right or center field.
While at first glance it may have appeared that Gordon hit a
good pitch from O’Day, further examination tells us that it was a good pitch,
just not a good pitch to throw to Alex Gordon. There’s a good chance that O’Day
and the Orioles knew that as well, based on where Hundley called for the pitch,
and where O’Day ended up throwing it.
Mistakes in pitching location happen all the time, and sometimes those
mistakes don’t amount to anything. In
this instance it did. And since the
Orioles now find themselves down by 2 games in the ALCS, they’ll need to limit
mistakes like this more than ever.
3 comments:
Nice work, Nate. Cool post.
If you watch Gordon's stance closely you can see why this is a terrible pitch to him and why he is so effective. His stride loads his weight slightly towards home plate, and he does not dive his shoulder towards the plate at all. This allows him to use a fast hip rotation to turn the ball around the other way. Note also that because of where he holds his hands he does not use nearly as much of a drop and upper cut swing as many left handed batters. This probably explains why he generally hits fewer home runs but handles the up and away fast ball much better than a player such as Chris Davis who hammers balls such as this into the ground or strikes out.
Over the last 8 2/3 innings O'Day has pitched, he's given up 7 hits … but 4 have been homers, yielding an ERA of over 7 for that span.
Obviously, tiny sample size, etc., but still … a sub-optimal time for Darren to run into a bad stretch.
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