Is Joakim Soria Tipping His Pitches?
An interesting column from ESPN Fantasy Baseball analyst AJ Mass on Monday afternoon mentioned Royals closer Joakim Soria as a player who fans should not be overly confident about in regards to regaining once-dominant form.
The piece can be read here: http://sports.espn.go.com/fantasy/baseball/flb/story?id=6578990
Acknowledging Soria in it, Mass states that
[he] has fallen in love with the cutter, and, as a result, he not only has lost a little velocity on his regular fastball but also has altered his delivery on his other pitches, possibly enough to tip off hitters as to what pitch is headed homeward.
Very interesting. While it would be practically impossible for fans to pick up on slight adjustments to mechanics, it’s not out of the ordinary to believe it could be occurring with certain hitters. Mass backs up his claim by acknowledging that opposing batters are swinging at only 17.6 percent of pitches outside the strike zone (that number was roughly 30 percent the past two seasons) and they are making contact at a much higher rate with pitches that they are swinging at.
This Kansas City Star report by Bob Dutton is acknowledged by Mass. Royals pitching coach Bob McClure claims that “[Soria] wants something with a little movement, but he’s run into some snags in his consistency by doing that” and that “[they] just need to get him back on track.”
Sounds simple enough, surely… but remember to consider that some of baseball’s toughest ailments to overcome are not the physical kind, but rather of the mental variety. If Soria is indeed over-thinking out on the mound and inadvertently tipping his pitch types (through his motion) to hitters, a serious cause for concern arises. Especially when it’s involving your 9th-inning shut-down guy.
Because of this, and the statistically evidential red-flags (Soria has allowed base-runners to reach in 13 of 19 games this season, and has a WHIP and ERA well above his accustomed level), serious long-term worry should begin to envelop Kansas City’s closer. Mass poses this question to overly-optimistic, brush-it-all-aside Fantasy owners of Soria:
After all, if it were such an easy and obvious problem to correct, shouldn’t it have been taken care of long before it became necessary to make the problem a matter of public record?
Twitter: @RoyalsTreatment
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