Anatomy of an At-Bat: How Royce Lewis Outdueled Chad Green and Flipped a Series

[Eric Blonigen]

For a fortnight now, the Twins have been spiraling downward. No aspect of the game has been working, with shaky starts, a leaky bullpen, and a lack of clutch hitting costing the team multiple winnable games. It looked as though Sunday would be more of the same, with another great Bailey Ober start overshadowed by a lack of hitting. The team needed a hero.

Image courtesy of © Bruce Kluckhohn-USA TODAY Sports

Through seven innings, Twins hitters were 0-5 with runners in scoring position, continuing a brutal trend. To eke out their single run to that point in the game, the team required a walk, a fielder’s choice, an error, and the contact play working on a groundout. That’s a lot of labor for one run.

Then, in the eighth inning, the Blue Jays brought out their closer, Chad Green. He entered the game with a sterling 1.61 ERA and a 0.85 WHIP on the season. After he retired Matt Wallner on a pop-up, Ryan Jeffers and Austin Martin linked together back-to-back singles with one out. Royce Lewis stepped to the plate. Green has been death to righties this season, holding them to a .169 batting average. Luckily, Lewis has even platoon splits, and he was able to rise to the occasion. What followed was an eight-pitch at bat that contained multitudes.

Green is a two-pitch pitcher, throwing a plus four-seam fastball that sits 96 MPH, and a hard but average slider. He throws both in any situation, and looking at his wOBA heat map, he is successful in seven of nine zones. He has both good control and command, and uses this to generate a whiff rate in the 75th percentile.

Every at-bat is a battle of adjustments, with the pitcher changing the look, location, and speed of pitches in an effort to throw the hitter off their timing. Facing a power hitter of Lewis’s caliber, Green’s strategy was to nibble the edges of the zone; to locate in Lewis’s cold zones; and to not repeat locations within the at-bat.

Comparing Royce’s xBA by zone, you can see that Green was successful in hitting his spots with his first seven pitches.

To begin the at-bat, Green threw Lewis a pair of sliders, both well outside the zone. Despite some recent scuffles, Lewis recognized that neither were competitive pitches, and wisely laid off. Thus began the battle, at 2-0. Green threw a third consecutive slider middle-outside, which Lewis fouled off to take the count to 2-1. Fouling was likely the best-case scenario for a pitch in that location, as Royce has a negative launch angle and a ~.200 wOBA in that zone. Often, that pitch induces a double-play grounder.

For his fourth pitch, Green changed the look by throwing a heater several inches high and over the inner part of the plate. Lewis swung through it to even the count 2-2. This was, again, likely the best outcome, aside from laying off, as any contact would likely have been a weak pop fly.

The fifth pitch was another four-seamer, this time high and away. Most hitters are hard-pressed to make contact in this location, but Lewis extended his swing, reaching to fight it off and stay alive.

For Green’s next pitch, he went back to the slider, high in the zone. Once again, Lewis made contact. His wOBA is .000 in that zone this season, and he did well just to foul it off. Having seen the fastball on each side of the plate, that slider in that spot could easily have locked him up or caught him too far in front.

The penultimate pitch of the at-bat was a slider that just caught the plate, middle and away. Lewis battled to stay alive, with yet another pitch in a challenging location. In this zone, Lewis has a roughly neutral batter run value, and the likely best-case outcome would be a single poked the other way. Royce wasn't in the right mode to deliver that type of hit, but he made just the right sort of contact to send the ball foul.

Finally, on his eighth pitch, Green made a mistake and gave Lewis something to crush. He left a slider middle-middle, and Royce had his pitch. It wasn’t his best swing, as his exit velocity was just 91.1 MPH, and his launch angle was a little high at 31 degrees. It proved to be just enough, though, as the ball landed in the left field flowerpots.

This hit put the Twins ahead for good, and was Lewis’s first homer since Aug. 12. This at-bat was typical of one you might expect to see from a crafty veteran hitter. To cover the fastball and slider away, and still to avoid wasting the mistake when it comes, takes a special hitter. Even not quite at his best, that’s what Lewis is. The homer proved that. It also carried one of the highest win-probability swings of any hit this season, singlehandedly improving the Twins’ odds of winning from 24.4% to 85.8%.

Finally, the Twins handed an opponent a brutal loss similar to those they have been on the receiving end of over the past couple weeks, and it’s all thanks to Lewis out-battling a very good pitcher.

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[nclahammer]

Excellent write-up, thorough details.

[LeatherAntenna]

Nice story and your graphics really power your writing even more.

[Doctor Gast]

Enjoyed your analysis. Looks like Lewis is back. Alleluiah! 

[NotAboutWinning]

This article should be in the locker of every Twins batter! Foul off the ones you can't do anything with until you get the one you want. They should be taking fouling off pitches practice along with batting practice!

[Karbo]

Lets hope Lewis is breaking out of this cold spell, (not slump because Royce doesn't do slumps) and gets back to being the game changer he's been.

[JDubs]

Really like this kind of granular analysis. Could be a fun running feature to highlight a pivotal AB in every close game to break down like this.

[Michael (ClassicMNTwins)]

I enjoyed this pitch-by-pitch breakdown immensely, and would enjoy a similar analysis of an old school Twin game that is archived on You Tube, for example; there are scores of regular season games there to dissect memorable plate appearances by Puck, Harmon, Tony O, or Hrbek (first career HR, to make a random pick). Maybe I’m the only one who would favor it, as you’ll you do the era that suits you, and the present is just as fine. Twins hitters have been taking some awesome ABs this season, and Royce’s was a great one to feature!

[Old Twins Hat]

Just say it:

Green threw a hanger in the middle of the plate.

Any MLB'er that doesn't hammer that will be hugely disappointed.

[Fatbat]

Baseball is hard but Royce (your analysis) makes it look easy!

[LambchoP]

Even Lewis admitted he missed the pitch and got it off the end of the bat a bit. Hopefully the fact that our guys finally had a little luck go out way can spark something in them and get them going on a bit of a roll. It'd be a great time to break out of our slump and get hot. Big weekend series against KC coming up. I'm crossing my fingers that Buxton can be activated for Friday night.

[big dog]

14 minutes ago, Old Twins Hat said:

Just say it:

Green threw a hanger in the middle of the plate.

Any MLB'er that doesn't hammer that will be hugely disappointed.

It's staying alive to get to that hanger that was the interesting part. Sorry you missed that.

[Rod Carews Birthday]

“This at-bat was typical of one you might expect to see from a crafty veteran hitter. To cover the fastball and slider away, and still to avoid wasting the mistake when it comes, takes a special hitter. Even not quite at his best, that’s what Lewis is. The homer proved that.”

I enjoyed the at bat.  I enjoyed the excellent analysis.  I’m not sure I’m in agreement that he is a “crafty veteran hitter”.  That would be Carlos Santana, or should be Max Kepler, but probably not Royce Lewis yet.  

[Jeff K]

That was incredibly informative!  Thank you for the analysis!

[Eric Blonigen]

21 minutes ago, Rod Carews Birthday said:

“This at-bat was typical of one you might expect to see from a crafty veteran hitter. To cover the fastball and slider away, and still to avoid wasting the mistake when it comes, takes a special hitter. Even not quite at his best, that’s what Lewis is. The homer proved that.”

I enjoyed the at bat.  I enjoyed the excellent analysis.  I’m not sure I’m in agreement that he is a “crafty veteran hitter”.  That would be Carlos Santana, or should be Max Kepler, but probably not Royce Lewis yet.  

100% agree - I was trying to say you might see this approach from a crafty veteran, not a guy who’s played less than 150 career game. I probably could have worded that a little better though - thanks!

[tarheeltwinsfan]

Excellent article . Thanks Eric.

[KBJ1]

Nice writeup for sure. Flicking the bat and fouling off pitches should be every hitters MO. Not sure why Royce swung at those high heaters, but thankfully he made contact and then got one middle in.

[insagt1]

Yep--only way Lewis got that hanger-mistake was by not whiffing on a few of the closers good 'out' pitches. And Royce has done a fair share of whiffing in those spots recently. It was a great AB...a great analysis pitch by pitch...made me totally re-live the AB, waiting for the big moment.

Twins need Lewis to be that guy down the stretch. Every team needs that go-to guy who can change a game with one swing. (O's have one in Santander, and before injury lately it was Urias..an unlikely one)  Perhaps that HR will restore some of Royce's swagger. (clearly he doesn't seem to be real excited about playing 2nd base!!)

No one succeeds all the time. But there are a few who just seem to rise to the occasion more than others. I know the stat-boys will insist there is no such thing as a 'clutch hitter' and they will pour out all the stats to 'prove it'. And I won't refute what they show us....except that after watching baseball for 70 years, I know there have been certain guys I want up there in game situations and others who I never want to see. Thats why the game is played on the field, not on paper. Its why Judge is so dangerous. Its why they once walked Bonds intentionally with the bases loaded. Its why Musial and Williams were such feared hitters with the game on the line.

Twins will need Royce to do that again and again in the final 3 weeks. Is it too much to ask? Maybe. But we'll be watching!!

[Brock Beauchamp]

11 hours ago, Old Twins Hat said:

Just say it:

Green threw a hanger in the middle of the plate.

Any MLB'er that doesn't hammer that will be hugely disappointed.

Did you watch the at-bat?

Or read the article?

That's literally the point, Lewis got deep into a count to wait for that pitch.

[Schmoeman5]

After pitches 4 and 5 I was pounding my chair. Both out of the strike zone. It wasn't the way one might draw it up. But he then fouled off 2 tough pitches. He hit a mistake. It's not like Lewis set him up. Baseball gods were smiling down on him. The way he's been going I'd call that homer more luck than anything. But Lewis is God. Thumbs down away. 👎 🤣