After a good first start last weekend versus the Orioles, Tigers right hander Rick Porcello was much less effective in his second second start last night in San Diego. He pitched 6 1/3 innings allowing five runs on ten hits in a 6-0 loss to a masterful Andrew Cashner and the Padres. What went wrong?
According to Brooks Baseball, Porcello threw a lot of sliders last night - 18 of them compared to just 11 curve balls. His curve is better than his slider, so you may wonder why he would throw more sliders. It might be because his slider was effective last week versus the Orioles - a linear weights value of -1,10 (negative numbers are good). Last night, he was 2.90 (positive numbers are bad) on his slider. He had favorable results on his sinker and change-up in both outings.
Porcello needs to keep his pitches down to be effective and he was unable to do that last night. After getting 12 outs on ground balls in his first start, he he had just 7 on Saturday.
Last night, his location was off versus left-handed batters in particular. The strike zone plots below indicate that he located fewer pitches in the middle of the strike zone versus left-handed batters on April 5 (figure 1) than he did last night (figure 2). The result was that lefties went 6 for 14 against Porcello last night compared to 2 for 11 in his first start.
Figure 1: Rick Porcello's Strike Zone Plot Versus LHH - April 5, 2014
Data source: Brooks Baseball
Figure 2: Rick Porcello's Strike Zone Plot Versus LHH - April 11, 2014
Data source: Brooks Baseball
So, there you have it. Like many of Porcello's poor starts, he couldn't keep the ball down and couldn't get left-handed batters out. Next up, he'll face the Indians on Thursday
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