Brewers Video
For Peter Strzelecki, deception is the name of the game. The palpable funk in his delivery makes life tough on opponents, both in terms of making contact at all and in terms of hitting the ball hard when they do get the bat on it. He’s thrown enough strikes to dominate through the early going, and he hung another zero in the top of the eighth inning Friday night against the Angels.
That scoreless frame brought Strzelecki’s ERA down to 0.71. He’s faced 50 batters this year, and issued only one free pass. It would be a great story if he were merely mowing hitters down with the high fastball and big, sweeping slider combination that yielded so many strikeouts last season, but there’s more to the story. In fact, Strzelecki has only fanned seven batters. Instead, he’s succeeding with that excellent control and an improved ability to manage contact. He’s inducing more ground balls and fewer hard-hit balls. That’s how he got through that pivotal inning against the Angels, despite going through the heart of their batting order, and despite Mike Brosseau’s throwing error, which put the leadoff man on base.
Specifically, what Strzelecki has done is curious: he’s added a sinker. That doesn’t sound radical, but for a short reliever who already had a functional three-pitch mix, it’s an odd choice. Stranger still, he’s throwing the pitch about equally often against both right- and left-handed batters.
.jpeg.7b817222e6a962802cb76a8536fda738.jpeg)
Usually, a sinker is a pitch with a big platoon split. The armside movement on the offering works well against same-handed batters, especially in combination with a slider that moves horizontally, but it usually creates just as many problems against opposite-handed hitters. When Strzelecki spoke to Curt Hogg of the Journal-Sentinel about the sinker early this month, he talked about using it to attack righties, not lefties.
.jpeg.0777186418a00e47000d5454f2c02fb2.jpeg)
So far, though, the actual usage of the pitch has been much more broad. He’s not missing many bats with the sinker, but he’s throwing it for strikes and getting ground balls with it, even against lefties. His sinker is distinct from his four-seamer, in movement and even (albeit by only a mile per hour or so) in velocity. It almost operates like a turbo version of his changeup.
The best guess here is that, because of his unusual mechanics and good command, Strzelecki can get away with (and even benefit from) something that other pitchers wouldn’t be able to pull off. He throws hard enough, from a strange enough angle, while hiding the ball long enough that any little bit of extra movement puts hitters on the defensive. Strzelecki’s changeup already helped him do that against lefties, but it’s a circle change that gets its movement from the spin direction that grip applies to the ball as it leaves the hand. The sinker, by contrast, spins much the same way as his four-seamer out of his hand, but the orientation of the seams leads it to move more like the changeup.
There are still some important red flags around Strzelecki. His velocity is down two miles per hour thus far, which helps explain the fact that he’s generating fewer whiffs. One has to worry a bit about both his effectiveness and his health, given such a sudden and significant loss of heat. As long as he is healthy, though, the sinker is an interesting solution to the problem of having less intense stuff. His early results tell us that it has a chance to be a good one.
Recommended Comments
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now