When reliever Austin Adams was dealt from the Washington Nationals to the Seattle Mariners back in May, he had something interesting to say about the use of his fastball, which was an important pitch to master:
“Just because fastball velocity has gone up doesn’t mean that fastball usage needs to go up as well. If anything it’s trending the opposite (way). With fastball velocity is going up, (for) a lot of teams fastball usage is going down. As a reliever, if I can have a hitter thinking 50–50 up there, then that’s the more pitches the better I can put in the back of their mind and they have to think about.”
While Adams’ results have been middle-of-the-road, his strikeout rate hasn’t been, whiffing 19 batters in just 13 1⁄3 innings with the M’s.
Just recently, the spokespeople for the pitch-backwards revolution where probably the Yankees, who had the lowest fastball percentage in baseball in both 2017 and 2018. This season... it happens to be the Mariners.
Indeed, their propensity to pitch backwards has increased faster than even the league trend, especially over the last three years:
implementing the strategy at this point can be more important than seeing immediate results
https://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2019/ ... -fastballsYet with a rebuilding team, or any team in transition, the organizational elements of player development are arguably more important than results, for the sheer fact that having actual, talented ball players to implement these strategies are going to be more effective than retrofitting it to an aging Felix Hernandez.
Which is a long way of saying that the analytical footing that the Mariners are on is much stronger than in the Jack Z regime, or really another time since their last successful stretch of teams.
When you see a team implementing robust development strategies that are meant to make the best of players—hell, look at Dan Vogelbach on the position player side—it means you’re converting potential talent into current talent. When that ideology is adopted by a Justus Sheffield, or Jarred Kelenic, or George Kirby, that’s where you see these abstractions converted into wins.
