Padres starters have no idea how to pitch without stuff on their hands
there's no way Larry Rothschild is any help, and they need Max Scherzer to teach them how
I woke up to this text from my dad:
Right now…Snell is the only guy I might attend a game just to booo the player!! He is our number six starter right now… And I’m not even sure who number five is
I feel you pops but it’s so, so much worse.
Here are the ERAs of our four main starting pitchers since June 21st:
Darvish: 5.12
Musgrove: 5.34
Paddack: 7.36
Snell: 4.70 (including yesterday. he’s actually been our best starter outside Weathers)
And what happened on June 21st? Umpires started checking pitchers for foreign substances.
I don’t know anything for sure, but I don’t think the Padres were abusing Spider Tack the way some teams (cough the dodgers) were to reach astronomical spin rates (which makes pitches way harder to hit), because Friar pitchers never had spin rates that high to begin with. Rather, I think they were using some other less nefarious substances to get a better grip than they’re legally ‘allowed’ to have. Probably sunscreen mixed with rosin. They’re still wearing sunscreen (one hopes) and still using the rosin bag, but you can’t rub them together anymore.
It was helping them hit they’re spots. They were quite used to it, especially Darvish, who’s been pitching professionally since the mid-aughts. Now almost all Padre pitchers are missing location, sometimes badly, especially as they go deeper into games.
Many pitchers league-wide are on record praising the league for creating an even playing field, but simultaneously saying the league shouldn’t have banned grip-help substances and especially shouldn’t have banned anything mid-season, Darvish and Snell among the more vocal of them. Paddack had actually dropped his ERA under 4.00 before the policy change, but he’s back to his wild ways in some innings.
If you already had the bias that Paddack and Snell have kind of always sucked sometimes (and you’re right) so why wouldn’t they now, you’re missing this: almost everyone sucks lately. It’s not only the starters—several relievers have struggled mightily since the rule change as well. On June 20th, team ERA was a league-leading 3.13. Since then, it’s 4.65.
One veteran who has been solid lately is Mark Melancon, but he’s never been a hard thrower, so he probably doesn’t have much to offer the rest of the guys in the way of grip advice.
And forget pitching coach Larry Rothschild. His whole method is to get guys to rear back and with maximum effort, overthrow nasty sliders. You know what helps with nasty sliders? Sticky shit on your hands.
That’s why it doesn’t surprise me that we’re hearing reports that the front office might go all out to get Max Scherzer. Even if they don’t, I think they’ll still add a starting pitcher or two. But don’t be upset if they sell the whole farm to get Max. They kind of have to. Because what they really need is player-coach who can help our guys re-learn pitching deep in to games without whatever they were using, and the 37-year-old seems to have kept his form through the new rules era (although his last two outings against the Pads were pretty shit, even if that was a pretty good pitch to Camarena.)
The plan is probably to hope to outscore teams this year including in a potential wild card game, and then hope the offseason will give Darvish, No-No Joe and Sunshine more time to get used to the regular rosin bag. But if lights out pitching shows up in the playoffs, I honestly don’t know if we’ll be ready for a pitcher’s duel or two. Time will tell.