Ethan Pecko began his last start about as poorly as he could have imagined. The Mets’ Francisco Lindor opened with a leadoff homer, 104.2 mph off the bat. Juan Soto immediately followed it with a solo shot of his own, with an exit velocity of 104.1 mph. Then Bo Bichette joined the hard-hit ball parade, but at least it was an improvement. It only went for a single, and only had a 99.0 mph exit velocity.
After that, he settled down. He made it through 5 innings and didn’t allow another earned run after those two home runs that led off the bottom of the first inning. The scoreboard says he pitched well the rest of the way, but the cracks of the bats argued otherwise. After those 3 hard hit balls to start the game, Pecko had 10 more batted balls in his outing, and another 4 of them were hard hit balls. 3 of those 4 had exit velocities over 103 mph.
MLB Statcast defines a hard hit ball as any batted ball with an exit velocity of 95 mph or higher. Through 3 starts, Ethan Pecko has had far too many of them. Over half of his batted balls have been hard hit (20 out of 39).
He hasn’t exactly had good results, but he’s lucky they haven’t been worse. Batters have batted .229 against Pecko, but with how hard they’ve been hitting it, the xBA is nearly 50 points higher at .277.
A Hard-Hit% of 51.3 rates lower than the 1st percentile in MLB. An average exit velocity of 92.1 mph also rates lower than the 1st percentile. Pecko’s 10.3% barrel rates a little better, but still comes in at the 9th percentile. Pecko’s saving grace is that it’s tough to make contact with his pitch, his 27.8 Whiff% would correlate with 70th percentile of pitchers. But when batters do, look out.
It’s only been 3 games, so a small sample size disclaimer applies, and he fared worse in the Yankees and Mets games than he did against the Angels. The Yankees and Mets, in fairness, are top 10 teams for exit velocities, ranking #2 and #9 in MLB respectively, whereas the the Angels rank #25.
The Diamondbacks are closer to the Angels than the New York teams; they rank 21st in the majors for exit velocities. But if Pecko can’t bring down his hard hit ball rate, then it may be he’s not ready to face major league hitting.
Diamondbacks @ Astros Game Information and Gamethread Details
The Astros (73-69) enter game 2 of their home series with Arizona (74-68) in first place by 3 games, as Texas lost to the Rays in Arlington for the first time since 2022.
Facing off against Pecko, Brandon Pfaadt takes the mound for Arizona. A 6’4″ right-handed in his 4th year in the bigs, Pfaadt began the year in the rotation, but after 3 starts was moved to the pen after 3 unimpressive starts. At the end of June, he returned to the rotation and has been strong, at one point pitching 4 scoreless starts in a row.
His last start he went 6 innings, allowed just 2 runs on 5 hits, 1 walk and 1 strikeout, but took a tough loss as the Diamondbacks only mustered 1 run in the game.
For the season, Pfaadt is 7-2 in 15 starts and 10 relief appearances, with a 3.49 ERA, 1.14 WHIP, 2.2 BB/9 and 5.9 K/9.
The game will be broadcast at 6:10 p.m. CT on FOX with radio coverage on KBME 790 AM.
This post will be updated with starting lineup as they are made available.
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