A most calamitous outcome besmirched pitcher Yu Darvish’s first appearance in a World Series last season.
It kinda went like this:
Home run, double, walk, single, single, line drive, line drive, double.
And that was just one inning – Game 3, second inning — against the Houston Astros.
The decisive seventh game wasn’t much better. The ex-Ranger-turned-Dodger was hammered for three hits, five runs and a homer, as he again failed to finish the second inning.
His two-game Series totals: 3 1/3 innings, 9 hits allowed, 8 earned runs and, most curiously, no strikeouts.
The Astros hit Darvish like they knew what was coming.
And they did, if you can believe respected MLB reporter Tom Verducci’s story on the Sports Illustrated website.
“According to a Houston player,” Verducci wrote, “the Astros often knew what Darvish was about to throw by the way he brought the ball into his glove in the set position. (Darvish pitches exclusively out of the stretch.)
“The player said it worked like this: Darvish holds the ball at his side when he gets the sign from the catcher. Whether he re-grips or not as he brings the ball into his glove was the tip-off whether he was going to throw a slider/cutter or a fastball.
“ ‘We knew the first time we faced him [in Game 3],’” the player said. “The next time [in Game 7] it was mostly the same.’”
Darvish threw 48 slider/cutters in the two games. Houston hitters swung and missed at only two.
Tipping pitches in baseball is as old as Christy Mathewson’s leg kick. Pitchers fear it. Hitters forage for it.
And yet, pitch-tipping remains largely tradecraft. Ask a hitter about an opposing pitcher’s “tells,” and he’ll shrug as if you’ve asked him whether he’s ever seen a UFO. Ask some managers whether their pitcher is correct to claim he was caught tipping his pitches – as I did one afternoon in Ron Washington’s office — and be prepared to learn some spicy new cuss words.
Wash just didn’t want to talk about it, as if it’s part of baseball’s unspoken code. But it’s there. Lefty Martin Perez, the Rangers’ starting pitcher for Sunday, certainly thinks so.
Martin was thrashed for 10 hits and seven earned runs in four innings in his last start Monday at Tampa Bay. He thinks he knows why.
“I was a little bit on the side with my arm, so the hitter was able to see what pitch was coming,” Perez said, as the Rangers began their current homestand. “That’s why they hit the ball so good.
“Yeah, normally I’m going on top. If I go on the side, they can see what pitch is coming.”
It’s not the first time that Perez has suspected that he was giving away his intended pitch.
“Last year in the first half, I was doing crazy things with my hands and glove,” he said.
A pitcher doesn’t need a 13.14 earned run average (Perez’s current figure), either, to be victimized by real or imagined pitch-stealing.
Cleveland’s Jim Thome hit seven home runs off the young Justin Verlander, four of them in 2006 alone.
Clayton Kershaw has complained about it, as well as Chris Sale. Matt Moore, when he was with the Rays, would tap the ball in his glove as he was delivering a fastball. ESPN analyst John Kruk outed him on national TV.
Ron Swoboda, hero of the 1969 World Series for the New York Mets, suggested that hitters have always studied pitchers’ nuances in an attempt to gain an edge.
“Hitting isn’t easy,” Swoboda told me. “If I can make it a little easier by knowing what pitch is coming, well, yeah – I’m going to look for it.”
Former Toronto manager Cito Gaston is said to have been a master at detecting tipped pitches. Like Yoda, he taught Robbie Alomar and Joe Carter how to do it. Alex Cora, manager of the Boston Red Sox, is alleged to be another with Jedi-like pitch-stealing skills.
“As a pitcher, you’re always worrying about it,” said the MLB Network’s Dan Plesac, who pitched 18 seasons for six major league teams. “There are guys sitting in the opposing dugout – four or five guys on every team – that are honed in on every mannerism you have on the mound.”
From the stretch, a pitcher might hold his glove low to try to get momentum when he’s throwing a fastball. On a breaking ball, a pitcher might hold his hands high.
Plesac recalled how some pitchers who kept their index fingers outside the glove would telegraph their fastball. As the glove hand would thrust forward, the exposed index finger would stick straight out.
At pitchers’ request, glove companies began stitching an extra sleeve of leather atop the glove to conceal the protruding finger.
But there’s always something, and somebody at the railing of the opposing dugout searching for it.
Rangers coach Steve Buechele, who played 11 big league seasons, eight of them in Texas, said, “I think that still goes on today. I know when I played it did, whether it was a flare of glove or you could see muscles moving in the forearm on breaking balls. Little tiny things like that.
“It was wherever you could see it. Sometimes you saw it better from home plate than you would see in the dugout. But, yeah, it still goes on today . . . hitters look for that.”
If anything, the science of pitch-tipping detection has increased over the last 10 years.
“Video,” Swoboda said. “With high-definition video and the resources they have now, it’s become even better.”
As former Yankees manager Joe Girardi put it last season, “Electronics makes things easier . . . more accessible . . . and more dangerous.”
Dangerous? Clearly, that was an old catcher talking. Girardi’s former team in New York was an aggressive pioneer in advanced scouting, which no doubt included any information scouts could cull about pitch-tipping.
Perez said the problem last week with dropping his left arm was sleuthed out by video study and consultation with catcher Robinson Chirinos, bullpen coach Hector Ortiz and the club’s two pitching coaches.
Last season, Perez said, some acquaintances on other teams passed along clues to what their teams had discovered he was doing.
“That’s why it’s good to stay humble and have friends,” Perez said.
Usually, though, whatever information is unearthed about an opponent remains in-house. Sometimes, players don’t even share their work with teammates, I discovered.
The late Rusty Staub played for 23 seasons and collected 2,716 hits and drove in 1,466 runs. A notorious scrutinizer of the enemy – pitchers – Rusty kept a little red book in which he had hand-scribbled every facial tick and glove twitch of the men on the mound.
His Mets teammate, five-time All-Star Keith Hernandez, tells the story of asking Rusty to let him see the book.
“No,” Staub said. “You haven’t earned it.”
Rusty retired from baseball after the 1985 season. On the first day of spring training the next season, Hernandez found an envelope in his locker.
Staub’s red book.
