Drabek's 3rd Start: A Step in the Right Direction

Kyle Drabek looked very good yesterday against Baltimore, helping the Jays avoid being swept at home, and his peripheral stats support this.

He threw 103 pitches to 28 batters, which is remarkably efficient. You can do that when you fire strikes (63) and your stuff has good late movement. He threw mostly first-pitch strikes too, and managed an impressive 11 total swinging strikes. Working ahead of hitters will allow Drabek to tally more strikeouts and induce weaker contact—it means he can throw non-strikes in pitchers counts and the hitters will have to offer at them—with his late-moving-high-velocity repertoire. That is an enormous advantage. When hitters attempt to make contact on balls thrown outside of the strike zone, they’re far more likely to swing and miss, dribble a ground ball, or fly out weakly.

His fastball, which has good sinking action when it’s on, was also a huge key to keeping the ball on the ground, and ultimately in the park. Getting grounders limits the damage when the balls put in play do find holes in the defense, as does not providing hitters with free passes. Walking only 1 batter in 7+ innings is probably the most remarkable stat of the day for Drabek—I really cannot stress that enough. As a result, when he did give up a Home Run (Adam Jones’ 6th inning mammoth) it only resulted in 1 run scored for the opposition.

Here are the key stats to take away from the start:

57% GB rate (anything over 50% is very good)
10.7% Swinging Strike Rate (anything over 10% is very good)
1 Walk in 7 1/3 IP
1 HR that travelled a reported 452 feet (eek, get that ball down Drabek, or guys like Adam Jones will do that to you)

Baltimore isn’t the most patient team, and a pitcher like Drabek can exploit that because he doesn’t typically throw a lot of strikes. Just because 63 of his 103 pitches went for strikes, doesn’t mean they were actually in the strike zone. I don’t have the pitch f/x data for the game, but he did appear to throw roughly half of his pitches in the strike zone, and that’s fine. Also, if the other team is swinging at the outside pitches, why stop throwing them there?

The only real blemish on the day was that monster Adam Jones HR (Drabek also gave up 2 other doubles). The pitch was a classic Drabek mistake—a fastball out over the middle that he failed to get any sinking or tailing action on. Hence, his xFIP was merely 3.00, whereas his actual FIP was 3.45. Drabek, historically, has given up 1 home run for every 8 fly balls. Yesterday, he gave up 7 fly balls, and thus it shouldn’t be a surprise that one of them went over the wall (again, 2 of the other 6 fly-balls went for doubles)

Regardless, for Drabek, it was a great start. I’m actually happy that Jones hit that bomb, because it lets the pitching coaches show Drabek that he needs to remain focuses and consistent. In the AL East, every team has several guys like Adam Jones who can make you pay for your mistakes in one swing.

The goal moving forward continues to be working on harnessing that great movement, and focusing on keeping his fastballs down in the zone. This outing should provide some positive momentum in both areas.