Porcello did not rely so much on his trademark sinker last night using it on just 23% percent of his pitches. Instead, he threw 36% fourseam fastballs, 30% breaking pitches and 11% changeups according to BrooksBaseball.net. The result was just seven outs on ground balls which is usually a bad sign for someone who doesn't strike out a lot of batters. Last night though, Porcello racked up six strikeouts and generally prevented strong contact thanks to a nasty curve and effective fastball.
The Royals loaded up with five left-handed batters which is typically a smart strategy versus Porcello who is notoriously bad versus batters of opposite handedness. His lefty/righty splits were .603/.806 OPS in 2013 and .603/.806 in 2012 for example. Last night though, he held left-handed batters to 1 hit and 4 strikeouts in 13 at bats.
Of Porcello's 61 pitches to left-handed batters, 25 were fast balls and 13 were curves. The linear weights values (negative numbers are good) on the two pitches were -0.91 and -0.96 respectively. The chart below shows that Porcello did a did fine job of keeping his pitches down and/or off the plate. You can see that the curves in particular were in locations that were near impossible to hit.
Data source: BrooksBaseball.net
So, Porcello had no trouble versus left-handed hitters last night and has actually handled them pretty well for the season sporting a .659/.689 L/R split in a realtively small sample. The 25-year-old veteran still has only 6.2 strikeouts per nine innings overall, but if he can continue to limit the damage versus lefties, he can take a step forward this year.
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