I honestly think Romano’s slider is becoming a Mariano esque pitch. You know the odds of him dropping one are very high, but the depth it has at the velocity he throws it at makes in a nearly impossible pitch to hit, let alone square up. The fact that he also averages 97 on a fastball with good shape is what makes him so good in general. For him, the fastball plays off the slider, not the other way around. He’s been throwing it over half the time since last season and the results keep showing.
I understand the frustration when he’s not commanding it so he’s still spamming it and missing, but it’s not like when Romano struggles it’s because the slider is getting hit around. If he’s not commanding the slider odds are he’s also not commanding his fastball, which to begin with he has a more difficult time putting it in the zone where he wants it.
I think Soto just has a case of the Vlad-itis. He was also putting a few too many balls into the ground. Last season it sort of appears as if he tried to fix it, but in the process went too far in the opposite direction as his FB and IFFB rate shot up, so his BABIP tanked as well. I think he'll regress, he's still walking at an incredible clip, not striking out very much and hitting the ball hard. Once he gets his swing in order and his luck stabilizes he'll be back to being a monster. Hell he had a .406 xwOBA coming into this game, and that's before he homered and doubled today to bring his ISO to .260.
Soto is fine. It's just a bit of overcorrection on his part combined with some bad luck.
17.2 IP, 10 H, 6 ER, 3 HR, 6 BB, 2 HBP, 19 K
26.4% K%, 18.1% K-BB%, .156 AVG, .167 BABIP, 72.5% LOB
3.06 ERA, 4.88 FIP
FIP is horrendous because he keeps giving up bombs. K/BB is decent, would be nice to know what the stuff is looking like.
Thank god Ross didn’t listen to the haters and kept elite lefty option Tim Mayza on this roster, so that our astute manager can use him in the highest of leverage spots so he can dominate elite hitters for the win.
Ohtani is going to see Tim’s nasty sinker in his dreams. Takes one that started in the RHH’s box down the middle, swings at trash because of how rattled he was by the movement, nowhere close. And then he does it again and is lucky to even make contact with it. Totally dominated. He’s gonna think about this during his free agency, whatever team allows him to face Tim f***ING Mayza the least.
After the Royals game fiasco I’d rather just say f*** it and put Swanson and Romano to close it out regardless of the lead. Tomorrow is an off day anyway.