Minnesota's Strategy to Impeach the Judge, and Thoughts on Zebby Matthews and Nick Gordon

[Matt Braun]

Episode two of Matt's variety show focuses on some more eclectic choices. 

Image courtesy of © Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports

Right on Right Changeups to Judge
Quick scenario for you guys: you are Joe Ryan facing Aaron Judge with a 2-2 count. Do you:

1. Throw a slider down and away
2. Throw a high fastball

Either pitch should do just fine. In this era of pitching, the dominant strategy has tightened its focus to these two pitches being the go-to for a pitcher in need of a whiff. Plot twist, though: Ryan did neither.

Sorry for tricking you like that. That pitch selection—a low splitter, easily Ryan’s third-best offering—intrigued me. Ryan is your prototypical four-seam/sweeper guy—the two pitches you would expect most in a situation against a hulking slugger like Judge. But, rather than select those pitches, Ryan tossed a split and elicited a strikeout from possibly the most dangerous hitter on the planet. If you noticed carefully, the Twins actually threw Judge a lot of changeups—all of them right-on-right—and darn it, I want to talk about it.

Since the start of 2022, Judge has seen changeups from righties 9.8% of the time (splitters included; I will be calling them “off-speed” pitches for the rest of this article). During the four-game series against the Twins, Judge saw 40% of off-speed pitches from righties. That’s a big difference, one that seems to point towards a specific plan of attack for the reigning MVP. 

And it’s weird, at least on the surface. Long the ire of baseball people, same-handed off-speed pitches have a reputation for being ineffective—or, at least, not as effective as other selections. I don’t have any data to conclude whether that’s good thinking generally, but the splits bear out that pitchers generally avoid same-handed off-speed pitches unless theirs happens to be elite. Judge from the start of 2019 has performed terribly against right-handed off-speed offerings: his xwOBA against splitters is .309 and .289 against changeups. His numbers looked better in 2022, but that was true for everything across the board; he set the AL homerun record after all. 

Did it work? Well, Judge slashed .167/.333/.500, walked 20.0% of the time, and struck out in 33.3% of his plate appearances. Throw all his numbers together and you get a 130 wRC+. The only off-speed pitch he put into play was a pulverised 105 MPH double against Tyler Mahle that was a few points of launch angle away from becoming a souvenir. The call is up to you, but I would say the Twins limited him about as well as any team can expect; the process seemed solid, at any rate, and that’s all you can ask for. 

Zebby Matthews and The Kitchen Sink
If you habitually skip following the minor leagues, then you may not yet know about Zebby Matthews . The Western Carolina product — a school that claims just 10 big-leaguers, and a former winner of Big Brother — has thrown 10 straight scoreless innings across two starts to begin his 2023 season with the Fort Myers Mighty Mussels. That’s the sort of thing that draws attention, especially in a system now known for elevating under-the-radar college arms.

Matthews doesn’t quite fit the bill of the David Festas of the world, though; his velocity is a perfectly healthy 93 MPH on average, but he will legitimately toss six different pitches, making hitters jitter and guess — so far, incorrectly — at the forthcoming pitch. It’s been just two starts, but it appears that he favors his cutter (26.1% usage on April 8th; 20.8% on April 16th) and fills in the cracks with four-seamers and whatever breaking pitch the situation calls for.

I think it’s cool that Matthews is succeeding not based on a dominant pitch or two, but with an abundance of selections — not quite Darvish-like — that likely causes a lot of guesswork for the hitters. We shall see how he continues to pitch and whether this approach carries him further through the minors. 

Nick Gordon’s Discipline
Nick Gordon is off to a putrid start. Pick any stat you want to measure it: his slashline is .109/.128/.152; his wRC+ is -31 (yes, negative); and the guy doesn’t even have a stray RBI to make up for it. But, somehow, he’s running a 2.1% walk rate and a 6.4% strikeout rate. 6.4! Nick Gordon!

He’s not suddenly Juan Soto, but he has lopped off four points from his O-Swing rate (38.0%, down from 42.4%), while adding five points of Z-Contact (up to 88.7%), making him look the part of a more selective hitter. He’s even swinging and missing at a below-average rate (in a good way). The strikeouts will return, but maybe at a more stomachable level than before. 

The quality of his contact has dropped completely off the planet, though, as the surprisingly excellent exit velocity master we saw in 2022 has been replaced by Astudillo-ian sluggish hits. We shall see if this is a concerted effort to become a more well-rounded batter — it’s only been 47 plate appearances, after all — but it certainly seems that something is going on in the background.

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[jkcarew]

Agree on Gordon. He is not the same hitter, and the difference is too large to ignore, even within the small sample. Really, really low K%, but with an accompanying horrifically low BABiP of 116. I'll say this though...even with the soft contact, the BABiP HAS to go up. I'm of the opinion...let's see how this plays out. I still think he's more valuable than the Solano's and Farmer's of the world, but he doesn't have a ton of time. The opportunities might really start drying up if club health trends swing to the positive direction.

And yes. I'd be GREAT with Judge putting up the same results in the upcoming home series as he put up against us in the recent series at Yankee Stadium.

[JD-TWINS]

15 hours ago, jkcarew said:

Agree on Gordon. He is not the same hitter, and the difference is too large to ignore, even within the small sample. Really, really low K%, but with an accompanying horrifically low BABiP of 116. I'll say this though...even with the soft contact, the BABiP HAS to go up. I'm of the opinion...let's see how this plays out. I still think he's more valuable than the Solano's and Farmer's of the world, but he doesn't have a ton of time. The opportunities might really start drying up if club health trends swing to the positive direction.

And yes. I'd be GREAT with Judge putting up the same results in the upcoming home series as he put up against us in the recent series at Yankee Stadium.

He needs a good series to get some positivity going forward - no doubt. I just keep thinking about 2022 when he hit .289 with 28 doubles & 8 HR after May 1st. Something close to that would be awesome………long way to go before we’re looking at DFAing Nick but we need some offensive contributions.

[silverslugger]

The write up on the strategy of pitching to judge is what separates baseball from other sports.  A one on one game of mental mouse.  Excellent way of bringing it to our attention, thanks!

[John Belinski]

What is the value of Nick Gordon?  Hitting about .100 so gets one hit every 10 at bats.  Hard to understand that the Twins don't have some young players that could do better since they could not do any worse. With a limited bench the Twins just can not  afford a bench player that can not hit.