Jays hope Martin will turn Liriano around
Pitcher’s best work in recent years came when Canadian catcher was his teammate
HOUSTON— Francisco Liriano’s career in Pittsburgh didn’t exactly get off to a smooth start. For one, he was coming off back-to-back seasons in which he had posted ERAs over 5.00, so his arrival was hardly celebrated by Pirates fans, who were at that point still nursing a 20-year playoff drought.
Then there was the curious case of his Christmas prank gone wrong that nearly sabotaged his deal altogether. In December of 2012 Liriano had an agreement in principle with the Pirates on a two-year contract, but before it was finalized he broke his non-throwing arm when he slammed himself into a door trying to scare his kids while at home in the Dominican Republic on Christmas Day. It had something to do with keeping the magic of the season alive.
Anyway, the initial contract was scrapped, but the Pirates liked Liriano a lot — they specifically targeted him as a buy-low candidate for his ground-ball-inducing sinker and his swing-and-miss stuff, which fit into their new organizational focus — so they restructured the deal, guaranteeing him just $1 million in 2013 but including a slew of performance bonuses and a vesting option for a second year.
The Pirates also hoped that Liriano would benefit from working with catcher Russell Martin, whom they had also just signed and similarly targeted for his then-under-the-radar pitch-framing abilities.
The union was bliss from the beginning. Martin worked his game-calling magic to get Liriano to abandon his four-seam fastball in favour of his sinker, while also increasing his use of his off-speed pitches.
The result was the best season of Liriano’s career. He finished ninth in Cy Young voting, played a key role in helping the Pirates end their longstanding playoff drought and was tapped to start the winner-take-all wild-card game, in which he allowed one run over seven innings.
“That’s my guy,” Martin said Monday night, following the news that the Jays had acquired the 32-yearold lefty, plus a pair of top prospects from Pittsburgh for Drew Hutchison. “We have good chemistry. I feel like we work well together. He’s the kind of guy that can take over a game when he’s on.”
The Jays are hoping Martin can help spur another turnaround for Liriano, who has struggled badly this season and leads the majors in walks.
“He’s a good pitcher,” Martin said in a longer interview with The Star on Tuesday. “I just think he’s the kind of guy that benefits when he’s got a (catcher) back there that is kind of willing to do things a little bit differently.”
Martin explained that Liriano benefits from a catcher willing to encourage him to “pitch backwards,” which means throwing off-speed pitches in typical fastball counts and vice versa.
“I keep it really simple and I just kind of go with the flow and it seems to work for Liriano,” he said. “I feel like I’ve always been pretty good at calling a game and understanding a pitcher’s strengths and weaknesses, and that’s kind of just how it went down. After I got a good feel for how he liked to work it just kind of went swimmingly, man.”
In 200 2/3 career innings pitched to Martin, Liriano has a 2.92 ERA; with every other catcher he has a career ERA of 4.28.
Prior to this season, Liriano had been one of the best pitchers in baseball at getting hitters to chase pitches outside the zone. Since 2013, no qualified starting pitcher had thrown fewer pitches in the zone. But up until this season, Liriano had still been able to have success because he had such a high chase rate. This year, however, batters are laying off his pitches more often.
“Guys swing and miss because they look like strikes going into the zone,” Martin said. “For a pitch to be effective the pitches need to look similar. They need to be working off the same plane. When he’s throwing his fastball for strikes, all his pitches work off that fastball and if he’s keeping the ball down it’s even better because the slider works well off that low fastball plane and the changeup works well off that low fastball plane, and that’s how you get swings and misses. He disguises his other pitch with his fastball.”
Liriano is expected to join the Jays on Wednesday and will make his first start on either Friday or Saturday. Martin, for one, is looking forward to reuniting with his former batterymate.
“He’s one of the nicest guys in baseball,” Martin said, praising his “levelheaded” demeanour. “You never see him get pissed off. It’s not that he doesn’t care, but he’s got that temperament where he doesn’t get rattled.”