Pitching Grips

Going into yesterday, Mason Miller had thrown 37 pitches on the season, 19 of them fastballs averaging 101 mph, while another 17 were sliders that elicited a 60.0% whiff rate. There was also one changeup. Delivered to Luis Arraez on a 1-1 count, the ninth-inning offering was wide outside and taken for a ball. Why did the San Diego Padres closer throw his seldom-used changeup to the three-time batting champ on Wednesday night? Low leverage was certainly a factor; the Friars had scored four times in the bottom of the eighth to turn a 3-1 lead into a far safer 7-1 advantage. It nonetheless represented an outlier for the 27-year-old flamethrower. Over the previous two seasons, only 2.3% of his pitches were changeups. I asked him about it when the Padres visited Fenway Park on Friday, “A changeup is a good pitch, but I’m not going to feel comfortable with it if I’m not throwing it,” Miller told me. “I’m picking my spots. There are certain guys it matches up well against. [Arraez] is a ...

Stephen Brashear-Imagn Images The outcomes are truer than ever. The Mariners did not record a single in their first two games of 2026. No team had ever done that in major league history. In fact, only eight teams have ever gone back-to-back games without a single, according to MLB.com’s Sarah Langs . Mariners Box Score March 26-27 Player PA 1B 2B 3B HR K BB Brendan Donovan 8 0 1 0 1 5 2 Cal Raleigh 8 0 0 0 0 7 1 Julio Rodríguez 8 0 0 0 0 5 1 Josh Naylor 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 Randy Arozarena 8 0 1 0 0 1 3 Luke Raley 8 0 0 0 2 3 0 Dominic Canzone 7 0 0 0 2 0 1 Cole Young 6 0 0 0 1 4 0 Leo Rivas 6 0 0 1 0 2 1 Total 67 0 2 1 6 24 9 The reason is obvious. The Mariners didn’t hit a single because they didn’t put the ball in play very often. And frankly, how could they? Guardians pitchers threw less than 40% of their pitches in the zone, and the Mariners were forced ...

Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images On Saturday, in the third inning of their game against the Yankees at Oracle Park, the Giants scored a run. Normally, this wouldn’t rate as particularly noteworthy, but that was one more run than they’d scored in the previous 20 innings while dropping their first two games of the 2026 season. As far as their season-opening series went, it was a one-shot deal, as they didn’t score again. Indeed, the Giants were utterly stifled by the Yankees over those three games. On Wednesday night, when the two teams had the stage to themselves for a nationally televised game on Netflix (don’t get me started about that production), Max Fried and three relievers held the Giants to three hits, all singles, in a 7-0 loss; the Giants reached base just four other times in that one via two walks, a hit-by-pitch, and an error by shortstop Jose Caballero . On Friday afternoon, following a day off, Cam Schlittler and four relievers limited the Giants to...

Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images We did it everyone! We made it through the long offseason. Regular season baseball is back, and it has already delivered the goods. I attended Mets-Pirates at Citi Field on Opening Day to witness the highly anticipated pitching matchup between reigning NL Cy Young winner Paul Skenes and new New York ace Freddy Peralta . Naturally, Skenes had the worst game of his career thus far, failing to make it through the first inning, and Peralta didn’t pitch well either. The two teams combined for 18 runs in the 8 1/2 innings of play. I wrote about the Skenes start, the two defensive blunders by Oneil Cruz in center field that contributed to Pittsburgh’s first-inning fiasco, and the lineup’s surprisingly strong showing. You can read that here . Because I was covering that contest, I didn’t get a chance to watch any of the other early games and saw only a portion of the later ones. That means I missed White Sox catcher Edgar Quero successfully challeng...