TAMPA, Fla. – The Detroit Tigers have one of the best pitching staffs in baseball this season, but Kenta Maeda has been the odd man out through the first month.
Not much was working for the 36-year-old veteran in his first four starts. His fastball averaged below 90 mph, he had no command of his secondaries, and he wasn’t getting whiffs on any of his pitches.
The results were disastrous. Despite three of his first four starts coming against the three worst offenses in baseball -- the Chicago White Sox, Oakland Athletics, and Minnesota Twins -- Maeda entered Tuesday with a 7.64 ERA, and the underlying numbers supported his struggles.
It sure looked like Matt Manning might soon take the $24 million man’s spot in the rotation.
But Maeda bounced back in a big way Tuesday against the Tampa Bay Rays, firing five shutout innings while striking out five and allowing just three measly singles.
Maeda could have gone longer, too, but a shaky defense forced him to pitch around several unearned base runners.
In the first inning, Maeda induced an easy ground ball off the bat of Yandy Diaz, but it was botched by Javier Baez at short. The next batter hit a weak fly ball to left field, but the play was ruled dead for catcher’s interference.
Instead of nobody on and two outs, Maeda faced an early jam. He got out of it with a foul popup and a 6-4-3 double play.
In the third, Colt Keith fumbled an easy grounder off the bat of José Caballero and put an 86th percentile runner on base to lead off the inning. Caballero stole second base, but was left stranded at third after a ground ball, a timely strikeout, and a weak popup.
That was the recipe for Maeda all night. He induced a season-high 12 whiffs on just 88 pitches, but when the Rays did put the ball in play, the contact was weak.
Maeda only allowed two hard-hit balls on Tuesday night: A grounder off the bat of Diaz and a low line drive single by Ben Rortvedt with nobody on base. More than half the balls put in play against Maeda had an expected batting average below .100.
So what made the difference?
Well, for starters, Maeda’s velocity ticked up across the board. Maybe it’s because he finally got to play in a dome, or maybe he’s just starting to hit his stride a month into the season. Whatever it was, Maeda gained an extra mph on both his fastball and splitter while throwing his slider and sweeper 2.3 mph harder than his season average.
He also adjusted his pitch mix. After throwing just 24 sweepers and no sinkers in his first four starts, Maeda threw 15 sweepers and nine sinkers on Tuesday, with strong results. He got three whiffs with that sweeper and held batters to an 84.3 mph average exit velocity on the sinker.
In other words: Hitters were either putting the ball weakly on the ground, popping it up, or missing altogether.
Maeda scrapped the cutter that’s gotten hammered by opposing batters this season, sticking with a four-seamer that was much more effective with that velocity bump. The Rays swung at 13 four-seam fastballs on Tuesday night and only put one ball in play. The other 12 swings resulted in three whiffs and nine foul balls.
When you aren’t squaring up Maeda’s fastball, you aren’t likely to have success. Especially when he’s commanding the splitter like this:
The teal circles represent every splitter Maeda threw during Tuesday’s start. You can see why this outing went so well.
In his first four starts, Maeda left far too many splitters up in the zone, and specifically, over the heart of the plate. The result was an uncharacteristic .469 expected slugging percentage against Maeda’s best pitch.
But on Tuesday, he finally managed to keep the pitch consistently down below the strike zone, and that made the splitter play much better off his four-seam fastball.
Look also at the location of the slider, indicated by the light yellow circles. Maeda was burying the pitch down and away from right-handed hitters, where they can’t do any damage. That pitch has gotten destroyed when Maeda leaves it in the zone this season (a .636 slugging percentage overall).
For Maeda, the path to success is simple. He needs to keep his four-seam fastball either well up in the zone or down low enough that hitters think it’s a splitter. That splitter needs to end up below the zone, and the slider has to dart down and away.
When he has command of those three pitches, he’s extremely difficult to hit, as we saw on Tuesday, when a solid offense failed to score against him despite three errors.
Maeda’s next start will come Monday night at Comerica Park, and it’s obviously going to be colder than Tropicana Field. We’ll see if that throws off Maeda’s command or if he’s able to build off of this strong start.