Offseason changes helping Nats’ Gray
MIAMI — Washington Nationals pitcher Josiah Gray entered this season with a handful of goals. One was to pitch deeper into games. Last season, he only got into the seventh inning twice in 28 tries.
That’s already going well. Gray has pitched through seven innings in back-to-back starts this season, including Tuesday night against the Miami Marlins. Gray finished with 104 pitches Tuesday and demonstrated that he has four pitches he can trust even when he wasn’t as sharp.
“It gives me that belief in myself that, when my stuff isn’t the best [and] I’m having to grind through pitch usage when my slider wasn’t where I wanted it to be today, I can still use my other pitches to get groundouts, get flyouts, get pop-ups,” said Gray, who also noted he’s done a much better job of staying calm and trusting himself in tight situations. “This outing [showed] what future success can look like if I don’t have my swing-and-miss stuff that day.”
Last season, Gray walked a National League-leading 66 batters and allowed an MLB-high 38 home runs. Those mistakes led to longer innings, which resulted in high pitch counts. His walks per nine innings are down slightly from last season (4.0 to 3.8), but he’s cut down his home runs per nine innings from 2.3 to 0.9.
This season, Gray is getting groundouts in 45.5% of his at-bats compared to 34% a year ago. He’s sacrificed high strikeout numbers for early outs this season, allowing him to hang around longer in games.
“I think I’m starting to really understand about, if I have a runner on first and second two outs, one out, how do I utilize my arsenal to get a groundball to get a double play instead of relying so much on the strikeout,” Gray said last month about efficiency. “To where I might have to throw this guy seven pitches on the black of the zone when I can throw him three pitches, get the ground out and we’re back in the dugout. So just learning about myself as a pitcher and learning more about the process. Each day is a journey, but I’m really embracing it this year.”
Gray has also added a cutter, something that he developed this offseason after he realized that just throwing a four-seam fastball wouldn’t cut it. Opponents had a .305 batting average and .742 slugging percentage off Gray’s fastball and 24 of those 38 homers came off the pitch.
“I was just sort of ticked off at me going out there, throwing 95 plus and now the hitters are seeing it like it’s a BP fastball,” Gray said last month. “So it was kind of like, ‘OK, how can I switch up looks somewhat?’”
Nationals pitching coach Jim Hickey said Gray’s fastball ran well of the plate to his arm side. Those misses made him vulnerable to home runs and walks last year, especially against lefties. But adding a cutter to the arsenal gives him a pitch that runs in on the hands of lefties. He pointed to other pitchers who added the cutter for the same reason. Dodgers reliever Blake Treinen was an All-Star in 2018, the first season he started throwing it. Gerrit Cole, Jameson Taillon and Brusdar Graterol have also added cutters in recent years.
But Hickey said that Gray is simply executing pitches better this year, too. His direction to the plate - a point of emphasis this offseason - is pretty close to the same as last year, Hickey said. But the difference is his backside is allowing him to throw on more of a downward plane. That’s leading to better pitches.
Gray allowed three home runs in his first game, a deflating start to the year. But he’s only allowed two home runs since. He’s seemed to get stronger as games have gone on. And though he’s been critical of his last few starts, he’s avoided any major damage.