Chicago Cubs rookie Matt Swarmer is aware of his excessive prolonged leg kick is harking back to one other big-league pitcher.
“People always ask me, ‘Do you get it from Bronson Arroyo?’” Swarmer advised the Tribune. “I simply developed it by myself.
“But I like to tell people it’s from Arroyo,” he added, laughing, “because I don’t know how to explain it sometimes.”
The 28-year-old right-hander is benefiting from his surprising call-up this week. Days after Swarmer’s big-league debut Monday, he was nonetheless in shock because the magnitude of reaching the majors continued to sink in for the previous Nineteenth-round choose.
And after Saturday’s 6-1 victory in Game 1 of a doubleheader in opposition to the St. Louis Cardinals — his first win in his second profession begin — Swarmer once more looked for phrases.
“Oh, man, it’s incredible,” Swarmer mentioned Saturday. “I’ve all the time considered simply being right here, and now I’m competing with the perfect guys. Oh, it’s so cool. I’m simply dwelling within the second proper now.
“I always watched those guys on TV, and now to have a chance to face them, it’s really special in that moment. I have to soak it all in.”
In each begins Swarmer held the opposition to 1 earned run in six innings whereas combining for 11 strikeouts and three walks. At the basis of his success is a nasty slider. He generated 13 whiffs together with his slider Saturday after producing 10 on Monday. Another 12 sliders over the 2 begins resulted in known as strikes.
“When he’s at his best, he has a unique slider — just the way it looks when it comes out of his hand, the way it moves,” pitching coach Tommy Hottovy advised the Tribune. “A whole lot of instances you’ll see guys have two pitches which can be energy pitches, however he additionally has the flexibility to maneuver that slider round and find it the place he must. As lengthy as he can command these two pitches and transfer them round, you are able to do a variety of actually good issues.
“Sometimes guys get here and they try to do too much. He’s not a guy that is going to try to do more than what he knows he can do.”
Swarmer depends on two pitches — a four-seam fastball and slider — at a frequency that’s unusual for major-league starters. Through two begins with the Cubs, they accounted for 97.2% of his pitches.
But it’s his means to control his slider, basically creating two pitch shapes, that makes the pitch so efficient. When Swarmer is seeking to put a hitter away down within the zone and even simply attempting to get the pitch over the plate, he’ll take one thing off his slider and generally get extra across the baseball. If he stays on high of the ball together with his slider grip, it creates sharper vertical break.
A key to his success is holding the identical arm angle when using every slider sort whereas additionally tunneling it off his fastball. Swarmer initially used his slider grip in 2018 however misplaced it throughout the 2019 season. It took till final July to lastly get it again to the place he wished it.
“For hitters like this, you have to be very selective where you’re going to throw because they’ll hit it if it’s around the plate,” Swarmer mentioned.
The success of his two-pitch combine two video games into his big-league profession doesn’t imply he’s abandoning the event of a 3rd pitch, a changeup. Swarmer is aware of he might want to incorporate the pitch extra as groups construct a scouting report in opposition to him. Of the 178 pitches he threw in his first two begins, solely 5 have been changeups.
Swarmer believes he may need discovered a changeup grip that works for him, however he continues to tinker.
“The only way I’ll know if it’s good is if I throw it to hitters,” Swarmer mentioned. “And if I don’t, you basically won’t know until you face hitters like these.”
It comes right down to discovering a low-leverage scenario or figuring out the correct hitter to deploy the changeup in opposition to, Hottovy mentioned. Before the National League adopted the designated hitter, the pitcher spot was an excellent alternative to work in a growing pitch.
“On the flip side of that, we want guys who attack with their strengths,” Hottovy mentioned, “and the one thing that pitchers do have an advantage with is the hitter doesn’t know when we’re going to break out a new pitch.”
Swarmer’s stellar first two begins — in opposition to division rivals no much less — function an incredible jumping-off level for taking the following steps as a big-league pitcher. For Swarmer, that entails locking in on all sides: honing his changeup, controlling the working recreation and in-game conditions and harnessing the technique facet.
In the minor leagues, a variety of success can come from simply executing pitches and getting outs. With the Cubs, Swarmer might want to show he can work by a lineup and blend his pitches properly sufficient to maintain hitters guessing.
But maybe most significantly, Hottovy needs Swarmer to maintain having enjoyable and being himself as a result of that’s an enormous a part of what has made him so good.
“I worked so hard for this,” Swarmer mentioned. “In the minor leagues, you have to just be true to yourself and say, hey, if you just keep putting in the work, you’ll have a chance to be successful one day. I just kept competing and I thank God I’m here.”
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Source: www.bostonherald.com