Woes don’t worry Giles
Grip on closer job not in jeopardy despite struggles
SEATTLE — Consecutive poor outings a week and a half into the season won’t cost Ken Giles the closer’s role.
But the Astros clearly need better from Giles, who sprayed his pitches all over the place in his struggle-filled outing in Tuesday night’s 7-5 win against the Seattle Mariners. If the bats hadn’t built a fourrun lead, Giles’ wild night would’ve cost them.
“Just a bad night for me,” he said. “Just not my night.”
Giles came into Wednesday night’s series finale at Safeco Field having allowed four runs over four innings on the young season. All of the damage came in his last two outings, neither of which did he enter in save situations. Plagued by control issues Tuesday, he needed 31 pitches to escape the Mariners’ two-run ninth. Only 16 of his pitches were strikes. He got only one swing and miss.
“He’s got a lot of leeway. All of our guys do,” Astros manager A.J. Hinch said. “This early in the season, I don’t think it’s necessary to really talk too much
about roles. We want to get the last outs. Outs 21 through 24 and 24 through 27 are all really important. However that happens, I don’t really care what the order is.”
Hinch added that he has “a ton of confidence” in Giles.
“He hasn’t had a great run in his short career so far in April. He’s tough to get out of the box,” Hinch said. “But when he gets in the strike zone, as we’ve seen in the stretches he had last summer, he’s really, really electrifying and can dominate any part of the order.”
Through four outings, Giles has relied more than ever on his power slider. He’s thrown his breaking ball 57 times compared to 53 fastballs. Seven of his eight strikeouts have come on the breaking pitch. Each of his four walks have come on his fastball, which has averaged 96 mph in the early going.
Last season, Giles threw his slider about 47 percent of the time, according to Brooks Baseball. The season before, his last with Philadelphia, he used it only about 38 percent of the time.
“Because he’s got a really good slider. It’s a wipeout slider,” Hinch said of the increase in usage. “There’s nothing more difficult to hit than a power reliever who has a wipeout breaking ball, and he knows it.”
Giles will continue to get the ball in the ninth inning, but if he falters, the Astros have other options in Will Harris and Luke Gregerson, who of course had his own adventures in a six-run outing last Saturday against the Kansas City Royals. Any talk of a change this early in the season, however, is premature.
“I feel fine,” Giles said. “It’s just one of those nights that didn’t go my way. Just got to move on (from) it.”