3.34 ERA
3.18 FIP
9.1 K/9
These are the numbers of a pitcher who came to Target Field on Monday night and completely shut down one of the most powerful lineups in the American League.
And believe it or not, they aren’t those of Houston Astros fireballer Justin Verlander — they’re from his mound counterpart that evening, Jake Odorizzi.
After a year that didn’t go the way he had hoped when he came over in a spring training trade from Tampa, Odorizzi spent the offseason training at the Florida Baseball Ranch, an elite training facility in Plant City — about 115 miles north of Hammond Stadium near Lakeland, where the Detroit Tigers prepare for the season.
The results have been strong, including most recently and most notably against the Astros, whom Odorizzi held to just four hits in seven innings with seven strikeouts, one walk and no runs in a 1-0 win.
In Odorizzi’s six starts this year, he’s allowed three or fewer earned runs five times, with a weather-aided bombing in Philadelphia being the sole setback.
A big issue for Odorizzi to this point in his career — at least entering the 2019 season — was his penalty for going through the order a third time. For the uninitiated, most pitchers get progressively worse the more times batters see them in a game, and the third time through a lineup carries a penalty for almost every non-elite pitcher in the game.
Some pitchers are an exception in the positive sense; others are an exception in the other direction.
Here are Odorizzi’s times through the order OPS marks allowed through this point in his career (full seasons only):
- 2014: .565/.766/.778
- 2015: .622/.693/.719
- 2016: .760/.654/.713
- 2017: .620/.764/.906
- 2018: .627/.659/1.159
- 2019: .575/.523/.625
For some added context, the splits in the AL last year were .715/.745/.791.
A few things jump out at first blush. First, it looks as though the last two full years for Odorizzi made him a good candidate to work with The Opener, a new strategy pioneered by the Rays where a reliever starts the game to minimize the number of times a starter — like Odorizzi, in this case — has to face the top hitters in a lineup.
But secondly, Odorizzi has been way, way better this year — of course, in a smaller sample size.
But one can’t really prepare for this thing specifically in the offseason, Odorizzi said.
“You can’t really plan for a third time through the order,” Odorizzi said, clearly aware that his reputation for this type of struggle preceded the question. “You have to get there first.
“Every game is different. You know obviously, the emphasis is there for the third through the order for all pitchers. I mean, I think it gets almost too much, since it’s logical that you see something the third time, you are going to have a better look at it than you’ve seen the first two. (But we did) nothing along those lines (at the Ranch), as I think it is impossible to prepare for. To get there and how’d you get there is the important part of the question.”
The work done at the Ranch is exhaustive and extensive, starting with a body evaluation all the way to monitoring mechanics and checking a pitcher’s mobility.
“They do a body evaluation; they do mobility stuff,” Odorizzi said, counting things off one at a time. “(They have you) throw pitches on high-speed cameras the first time you are there so they can break down your mechanics and areas of need like on your body, your lower half and upper half.
“They had me do certain movement patterns to see like, engage 1, 2 or 3, or yellow, green, red, whatever that may be. And the areas of emphasis, that’s when they start to find the plan for shoulder program, mobility program, throwing programs and all this type of stuff.”
One thing that Odorizzi appreciated was working off a mound. Doing drills on flat ground is one thing, but to Odorizzi, it just made more sense to do drills off a mound since that’s where his metaphorical money is made.
“I did all my work on mounds over there too,” Odorizzi said. “So twice a week when I went over there, I was working on an indoor mound with a net about 10 feet in front of me with targets on it. So I was working on location and accuracy while also doing all my drills on the mound.
“I think the big key was, it’s fine doing things on flat ground, but you pitch on a slope. Why not do all your drills and all your work on the mound when you are trying to get back your mechanics back in order? I think that was really helpful, learning it while I was on the mound, rather than learning it and then taking it to the mound and twist and contort to get right on the mound.”
In Odorizzi’s first start of the season, he got 13 swinging strikes according to Baseball Reference, with nearly all of them coming off his four-seam fastball — a nearly unheard of rate of occurrence.
So part of Odorizzi’s work at the Baseball Ranch was also just reemphasizing his insistence on working up in the zone with his fastballs, even though he doesn’t have the prototypical high-end velocity most associate with working best up in the zone.
“It’s typically what I have been able to do in my entire career. I pitch well up there,” he said. “My stuff kind of plays up better up there. I think I have a high spin rate on four-seamers, so it has that rising action — less sink is maybe the more scientifically correct term of it — but it’s just always something I’ve been able to do.
“Even in the minor leagues when I was young, they kept telling me that if you don’t get the ball down you aren’t going to get to the big leagues. My argument to that was, ‘Well, it’s worked really well here, who is to say it isn’t going to work well at the next level, so on and so forth.'”
The reality is that while every player might find an obstacle in the high minors that means their earlier approach didn’t work, it wasn’t like Odorizzi couldn’t simply adjust his approach to pitching down in the zone if it stopped working in, say, Double-A.
“I don’t know if, looking back on it, that might have been the point of my career where I knew myself better than what somebody at each level was trying to change on me,” Odorizzi said. “Maybe it was my way of staying the course, because I felt like that was my best route. I can still throw the ball down; I located quite a few pitches down yesterday (against Cleveland).”
That’s where tunneling can come into play, too. By working up in the zone with his fastballs, Odorizzi can then work with the split dropping off the table low in the zone, despite looking like a fastball coming out of his hand until the very end of the pitch’s trajectory to the plate.
“It helps me to be able to hit every quadrant of the strike zone,” he said. “High, low, in, out. If you can throw pitches all over the strike zone and they are all strikes, it gives the hitter a lot to think about.
“You can’t look at a certain area, like sinker guys, they live down in the zone. If the hitter only sees it down, it’ll be a tough pitch. If they see it up they are going to swing. Whereas with me, it is on purpose all over. I’m not just like, it’s going to go here or going to go there. There is a method behind it, and it plays off my other stuff, curveball, split. Planes, different eye levels, slider and cutter plays off of that too. I’m trying to hit speed ranges, like changing my velocities for each pitch and having a pitch for each range and design.”
Odorizzi felt vindicated by his approach when all those four-seamers against Cleveland resulted in swings and misses — both from a repertoire standpoint but also from simply the offseason work as well.
“I think it is just the product of me getting my mechanics back in order, to be quite honest with you,” he said. “I’ve always had an effective fastball. It could have been a product of the cold weather for them, it being just a little slow on the trigger as a hitter. Or it could have been the locations I was putting them in. I don’t look too much into it. It is one start, it is the first start of the year.
“If they start snowballing they continuously get swings and misses I know I am doing something correctly. I think for me it is just getting back to how I felt in 2015 and 2016 when I felt I was at my very best. So that’s what we worked on all winter, was to get the separation, lower body/upper body. And when you have that, you’re back just a little bit longer. You are in your legs a little bit better.
“You are getting the most out of your body and that is really what they work on at the Baseball Ranch is getting the most out of each individual and each plan is individualized. Each mobility thing is specific for what your need is compared to say Gibby, who went there too. And that’s where I got the info from was him.”
Kyle Gibson started going to the Baseball Ranch after he was sent back to the minors in 2017, and has been a completely different pitcher since.
“I don’t want to say it has changed his career, but I think it has helped refine his career,” Odorizzi said of his tall righty comrade. “And I think that is what it is for me too, getting back to that consistency that I know I am capable of. Like, I have done it before and it is nice to get back there again. His routine was completely different than what mine was. It is all specialized, it’s all individualized.”
But writers, fans and anyone with a ticket or a television can see the results. How does it feel from a process standpoint?
“I felt vindicated, like the stuff I was doing was the right stuff,” Odorizzi said. “And getting the results the first time out while feeling good is the most important thing. I think we talked a few times last year; you can feel great and have a shitty outing, and you know you didn’t feel bad but it just could be one of those days whatever it was. You could have a good outing, and you felt shitty. To have everything line up, to have the success, to have the swing and the miss. Strikeouts are great, but sometimes they are a product of just days and situations, everything like that.
“(I’ll) gladly take that, getting into the sixth inning with only 90 pitches. If I can do that consistently, then I can get into the seventh inning with 100 pitches. If I can go six, six-plus every time out like I’m used to doing, and not like what I did last year with barely making it through five.
“That was the most frustrating thing for me last year, was only barely getting through five innings up to that point in my career. Back in 2015 and 2016, when I was good, when I felt correct, it was six innings every single time out. From my standpoint, doing that the first time out and having the pitch count availability to do an extra inning. The first start of the year, second game of the year, everyone needs work down there too, but just to know that I have pitches left to go another inning, and the results were good from start to finish.
“From a standpoint of evaluating my first start, the first game of the season was good.”
It’d be hard to argue that the most recent one wasn’t just as good, too.
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