The Launch Angle

When MLB played their 60 game shortened season in 2020 due to the pandemic, they decided to limit travel. NL and AL West teams played each other exclusively, and the same went for NL and AL Central teams, as well as NL and AL East teams.

On top of that, umpires were also restricted to one geographic set of teams. As a result, teams were seeing the same umpires behind the plates of their games over and over again. This was before ABS, so you couldn’t challenge ball/strike calls. I wondered if there was more than usual advantage in gameplanning around a specific umpire’s strike zone. If a certain umpire was known to constantly give the outside pitch to pitchers throwing to left handed hitters, why not hit that weak spot of the ump’s zone?

It’s something the Astros haven taken into consideration in the past. Brad Peacock, in a postgame interview talked about working with catcher Max Stassi. Peacock commented that Stassi prepares for games not only by studying the opposing team’s hitters to figure out how to pitch to them, but also by being aware of who the HP umpire was for every game, so he would know where he could call pitches to get strikes.

I mentioned this in 2020 to Yankees catching coach Tanner Swanson, who I had gotten to know a little bit when he was with the Twins’ staff and I was writing a lot of catcher metrics pieces. How important is the home plate umpire’s strike zone when it comes to game planning?

“We look at umpire zones, but I think the umpire still places third in the pitcher-hitter-umpire dynamic,” Swanson answered, “I personally haven’t found much value from a game planning standpoint. Diminished returns to ask a pitcher to throw to areas that don’t match their strengths or to pitch to an umpires vulnerable area although it happens to be to the hitters hot zone.”

In his estimation, the rank order should always be “pitchers strength, hitters weakness, umpires weakness.”

This order makes a lot of sense to me. Between the pitcher, the batter and the umpire. it’s the pitcher who is acting. The batter is reacting. The umpire is judging. The priority should be to place as much influence on the outcome on your action, then the batter’s reaction, and lastly the umpire’s judgment.

Tatsuya Imai, the most notable offseason acquisition by the Astros, had a fantastic spring and was getting rave reviews, but apart from a single 5 inning scoreless start against the Rockies, he has struggled in the regular season, to the point where he was placed on the IL with a “tired arm”, even though no tests found any real physical problems. He’s made several rehab starts with Sugar Land (although it’s still not exactly clear what he’s rehabbing from) and they haven’t gone well either.

Nonetheless, he’s back up in the majors and making his first start since being put on the IL tonight.

These early season struggles of Imai are well documented in Chandler Rome’s piece in the Athletic: Another poor minor-league start deepens questions around Astros’ Tatsuya Imai.

One passage from the Rome’s piece stuck out to me:

“Before games in Japan, I can take some time, and I can go to throw inside to the lefty, can get a first-pitch strike with (the) slider,” Imai said. “Here, we do scouting reports, and we talk about the (weaknesses) of the hitters. I’m thinking I want to talk more about the strengths that I have using sliders early in counts, getting more strikes with the sliders and the other pitches more.”

I don’t really know; I’m not in the room with the the Astros staff and Imai, so I’m just making guesses here, but from this quote, it sounds like Imai wants to prioritize his strengths in game planning, and it sounds like the Astros are trying to prioritize the batter’s weakness. Ideally, a pitcher’s strength and a batter’s weakness would line up, but that’s not always the case.

It’s hard to fault Imai for trusting his part as the actor, rather than the batter’s part as the reactor.

It also made me wonder if this approach the Astros are pushing on Imai is the same one they’ve been using for years since Brent Strom was the pitching coach, or if this is different. in the 2019 Ben Lindbergh and Travis Sawchik book “The MVP Machine”, they recounted how the Astros transformed players like Gerrit Cole and Ryan Pressly by sitting them down and showing them what parts of their arsenals work best and what doesn’t, and then change their repertoire accordingly. That sounds like focusing on a pitcher’s strengths.

Certainly, the Astros have factored in hitter’s weaknesses too. All baseball teams do, and Brad Peacock said as much as well in the quote I mentioned earlier in the piece. Imai, though, seems very out of his comfort zone, and maybe the best way to get him comfortable again, is to just let him start with his strengths, and what established himself as a good pitcher to begin with.

He seemed comfortable in the spring. I would think in the spring you’re just pitching and not game planning around a batter. I would think the primary focus is your action, not their reaction.

So let’s go back to that again. I’m not saying don’t game plan around a batter. I’m just saying let Imai get comfortable again, and we’ll figure everything else out after.

Imai faces off against Bryan Woo, 2-2 on the season after 8 starts with a 4.02 ERA, 7.3 K/9 and 1.5 BB/9, a respectable line but underwhelming when compared to this performance last year where his 15-7 record with a 2.94 ERA and 198 K landed him in the top 5 for Cy Young voting.

Starting lineups will be posted in this piece as they are made available.

The game will be broadcast at 7:10 p.m. CT on SCHN with radio coverage on KBME 790 AM.

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