1.) A Tale of Two "Ace"s - Yordano Ventura, KC's Game 3 starter and nominal ace for most of the season, is a rather odd pitcher. He's also rather straight forward. You see, Ventura- or Ace, as he's known in this household- throws heat. Like, Mets-level heat. He ranked 3rd this year in average velocity, behind only the Yankees' Nathan Eovaldi (whose elbow may wish he'd done things differently) and Ace's Game 3 opponent, Mets' starter Noah Syndergaard. And, as one might expect from a person who's been able to make a career out of lighting up the radar gun, he relies heavily on that freakish skill. And why not? The best fastball hitting offense in baseball shares a dugout with him. Opposing hitters are at a disadvantage the minute they walk into the park.
But, as is typical of most natural-born fireballers, Ace can have a hard time corralling that cannon of his. And when he does, he goes away from it. When he goes away from it, he typically ends up just going away himself. Banished to the clubhouse after a short, walk-riddled outing and left to watch the bullpen try to make good on his efforts. Whether it be control, hard-hit balls, a perceived small strike zone or run of the mill shit-talking, Ventura typically doesn't bounce back from adversity. And that's because he doesn't fight fire with his own variety.
The below graphic, courtesy of Brooks Baseball, shows Ventura's pitch mix in each of his 32 starts this year, including the postseason. As you can see, it's quite erratic:
Let's look at the obvious first. You can see the dramatic peaks and valleys in his fourseam usage clearly, and those peaks tend to lineup with wins while the valleys signal those outings when Ventura just didn't have it for one reason or another. He threw the pitch more than 45% of the time in 11 starts this year. The Royals won 8 of them. When he's feeling it with the old number 1, he's tough to beat. When he's not, he's not. This would be the rather straight forward bit I'd alluded to.
What's odd about Ventura is just about everything else you see in the graph. For one, take a look at his cutter usage. He essentially buried the pitch in May and only threw it again during a 2-start stretch in August against the Angels and Tigers. More on this a little later, but I have to imagine it's strange for a hurler to shelf a pitch for an entire season only to bring it back in the most high-leverage outings of the season.
Next, you'll notice a steady rise in his curveball usage. The curve is Ventura's put-away pitch, and it's as nasty as they come, inducing whiffs on an astounding 42.39% of swings against it. It's great to see Ventura gaining confidence in the curve, since it's really the yen to his fastball's yang, and also because he's essentially done away with a changeup that he'd been throwing about once every 5 pitches earlier on in the year.
In the postseason, he's added a couple wrinkles. You can see he's eschewed his fourseam cheddar for more sinkers (2-seamers) and cutters. Pretty savvy move by the 24-year old, if you ask me. The cut fastball, especially, should help to neutralize lefthanded hitters in the mold of Daniel Murphy, Curtis Granderson and Lucas Duda. This is a welcome adjustment, and likely has a lot to do with oft-overlooked pitching wizard Dave Eiland, who for so many years with the Yankees worked with some of the best cutter artists this generation has seen.
So maybe we can just throw out the book on Ventura as a fastball-first, power pitcher. With him reversing course in nearly every way in his three playoff starts, maybe the heater doesn't portend success. But, as with anything, we have to keep sample size in perspective. Three starts does not a trend make.
So I'll be watching Ace very closely to start out the game. I'll be paying close attention to the Mets' hitters and how they try to disrupt Ventura and flare his infamous temper. But most importantly, I'll be charting how often he's throwing his fastball, because if he's got it working and is able to hit that magic 45% number, the Royals should wind up one game closer to a World Championship when all's said and done.
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