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

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.