Six innings, two hits, no runs, 11 strikeouts.
Max Scherzer silenced everybody who was apprehensive about how he’d fare in his first big-league sport since May 18. The Hall of Famer didn’t get a win because the Mets’ bullpen and hitters let him down, however the message coming from Scherzer’s proper arm and now fully-healed left indirect was clear.
He’s again and able to make hitters look foolish once more.
His victims on Tuesday night time had been the Cincinnati Reds, a final place crew with the National League’s 14th-ranked offense. But the Cincinnati lineup on Tuesday nonetheless featured some seasoned professionals, together with veterans Mike Moustakas, Tommy Pham and Tyler Naquin, in addition to Jonathan India, final yr’s NL Rookie of the Year. Those 4 mixed to go 1-for-9 towards Scherzer with 5 strikeouts.
All advised, issues may hardly have been higher on a person degree. Scherzer turned in arguably his finest begin as a Met, racking up his first sport with at the very least 11 strikeouts and 0 walks since becoming a member of the membership.
“Felt great, no issues whatsoever today,” Scherzer assessed afterward. “I felt strong all the way through. I was able to locate the fastball, but most importantly, I felt like I had a really good slider. In my rehab starts, it wasn’t breaking the right way. I knew I was going to need it against this team. I was able to execute that. That pitch really helped me navigate their lineup.”
According to FanGraphs, the Reds have produced practically 19 runs beneath common this season on sliders. Scherzer and the Mets clearly had that data at their disposal heading into this begin, and it resulted in Scherzer utilizing 23 of his 79 whole pitches (29%) on the slider. On the season, Scherzer is throwing the slider 23% of the time, getting a swing and miss on 48.4% of them. On Tuesday, the Reds swung at a slider 9 occasions and got here up empty on seven, good for a 78% whiff proportion that didn’t seem like it was coming from a man who simply missed two months.
The heavy reliance on the slider is each a testomony to the Mets’ teaching employees and Scherzer’s deep reservoir of pitching know-how. His slider has been his finest pitch for nearly his total profession, the one which made him far more than only a exhausting thrower with a fiery demeanor. Even when he’s not going through the bleeding Reds, although, Scherzer could be smart to maintain trusting the slider as a lot as he did in Cincy.
An fascinating aspect of Scherzer’s sport is that he rarely throws the slider to lefties. In 2021, Statcast recognized 542 of Scherzer’s whole pitches as sliders. Only ten of these had been thrown to left-handed hitters. Against the Reds on Tuesday, he didn’t throw a single one to anyone within the left batter’s field. The motive for this, defined as merely as attainable, is as a result of Scherzer is right-handed, which means his slider breaks into left-handed hitters. Historically, his most popular secondary pitch to southpaws is a changeup, which breaks away from them. The Reds’ left-handed hitters (Moustakas, Naquin and rookie catcher Michael Papierski) didn’t put a single certainly one of Scherzer’s changeups in play.
If there’s any noticeable distinction in Scherzer’s strategy throughout his first 9 begins for the Mets, it’s that he’s using a cutter extra usually towards lefties, which breaks in just like the slider however with extra velocity and a barely totally different form. That pitch obtained him out of one of many solely spots of bother he fell into on Tuesday, as he had a runner on base within the fourth inning with Moustakas on the plate. Scherzer snapped off a 1-2 cutter at Moustakas’ again foot to get a strikeout, one thing that indicated that the 37-year-old actually didn’t want any extra time with the Binghamton Rumble Ponies.
In 2021 whereas pitching for the Nationals and Dodgers, the cutter confirmed up on 17.6% of Scherzer’s pitches to left-handers. That quantity has leapt to 21.6% this yr, maybe a direct affect of working with pitching coach Jeremy Hefner for the primary time. For his profession, lefties have fared a lot better towards Scherzer (.242/.310/.406 slash line) than their right-handed counterparts (.196/.242/.328). Busting out an altered pitch utilization technique in yr 15 is each a enjoyable, efficient wrinkle and an indication that Scherzer is consistently on the lookout for methods to turn into much more diabolical.
The different most encouraging signal from Scherzer’s grand return was the fastball velocity. He sat within the mid and higher 90s for all six innings and even obtained away with leaving a few of them proper over the fats a part of the plate with none injury. That won’t work towards, say, the Braves or Phillies’ lineups, however with a pitcher of Scherzer’s ilk, he’ll possible have some new methods up his sleeve for these groups.
In different phrases, whereas there are some things round this crew which can be inflicting simmering concern, Max Scherzer is, undoubtedly, not certainly one of them.
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Source: www.bostonherald.com