Here is a stupendous article by Sam Miller (Baseball Prospectus) describing - with video, and an appropriate sense of awe - how Koji Uehara retired 37 consecutive opposing batters. Go read it. Now.
Uehara's splitter is not about changing speeds so much as destroying the batter's sense of place in the world. ...
We are now 21 batters in, and we've seen one two-ball count ...
Better: Uehara has gone to 3-0 counts three times this year. Three times! You're excited by this fun fact but the fun fact has not begun; I am merely establishing setting and character. The fun fact starts now: Of those three 3-0 counts, two were intentional walks. Uehara struck out the third batter. ...
This completes the hidden perfect game, and over the course of 27 batters he has thrown 104 pitches, just 19 of them balls, 28 of them swinging strikes. The fastest pitch he threw was 91 mph. ...
Total: 143 pitches, 26 balls. Five batters who reached so much as a two-ball count. Nineteen, more than half, never saw even one ball, and only two of those 19 put the ball in play on the first pitch. ...
If I'm reading the numbers below right, the odds of an average pitcher retiring these 37 batters in a row are like 1 in 2 million.
Unhittable:
One of the more disappointing aspects of Koji's streak ending was the fact that it ended with him not even throwing his signature pitch. 3 fastballs. If they'd gone with his standard game plan and the streak ended that way, then it's a "tip your cap" moment. But the way it unfolded, it's like, "Hey, get back here. That wasn't really a triple. Get back here so Koji can *really* pitch to you."
ReplyDelete