Power pitching flourishes in National League
Hall of Famer Pedro Martinez is so high on Jose Fernandez that last month he tweeted his wish for the Cuban-born right-hander to someday join the Boston Red Sox, calling him “a special pitcher and human being.”
He’s so special, in fact, the Miami Marlins’ All-Star is threatening to dislodge Martinez from a couple of spots in the record books.
With a major-league leading 12.9 strikeouts per nine innings and a strikeout percentage of 36.6 through the first half of the season, Fernandez has a chance to eclipse two of Martinez’s most impressive feats from his Cy Young Award-winning season of 1999.
That year the then-Red Sox ace set single-season major league records with 13.2 K/9 – a figure surpassed by Randy Johnson (13.4) two years later – and with a 37.5 strikeout percentage, the proportion of batters he fanned among all he faced.
“That keeps blowing my mind,” Fernandez said of Martinez’s comments about him. “I just like to compete. I think he sees that. I’m not afraid to pitch anywhere.”
Fernandez, 23, is at the forefront of a growing group of overpowering National League pitchers whose weapon of choice is the strikeout, which they’re racking up with startling frequency.
The top five pitchers in strikeouts per nine innings ply their trade in the NL, which also boasts 14 of the leading 20 in that category. The rates put up by Fernandez and the Washington Nationals’ Max Scherzer (11.6) and Stephen Strasburg (11.1) would rank among the top 25 of all time over a whole season.
Scherzer, who spent five seasons in the American League with the Detroit Tigers, said making the All-Star team this year was especially rewarding because of the stiff competition. At the season’s midpoint, there are 13 qualifying starters with ERAs below 3.00 in the NL, compared to just four in the AL.
“I know there’s some very talented, highend pitchers in the American League, but man, there are some really high-end pitchers right now in the National League,” said Scherzer, a nine-year veteran. “This is some of the best pitching I’ve ever seen collectively at once in my career.”
A logical reason for the disparity is the presence of the designated hitter in the AL, and Scherzer is the first one to acknowledge it was harder to pitch there.
Not only does the pitcher typically represent an easy out at the plate in games played at NL ballparks, but the batter in front of him operates at a disadvantage, rarely getting anything decent to hit and often having to expand the zone. The enhanced chance to collect strikeouts from the last two spots in the lineup helps account for some of the NL’s edge in that department.
But some players who have spent time in both leagues also point to a few differences between them. The Toronto Blue Jays’ Edwin Encarnacion, who leads the majors with 80 RBI, played his first five seasons with the Cincinnati Reds and said he noticed pitchers rely more on the fastball in the NL, a notion he has confirmed with other hitters.
And Texas Rangers left-hander Cole Hamels, who pitched for the Philadelphia Phillies in his first 10 seasons, has also picked up on some contrasts between the two.
“There’s definitely a different style,” said Hamels, who was traded to the Rangers last July. “You don’t see too many guys swinging on 3-0 in the National League, and I’ve now experienced 3-0 hacking. They’re not there to sacrifice a guy over. They’re there to hit home runs, they’re there to hit doubles.”
They’re getting fewer of both in the NL, and some of that has to do with the emergence of young pitching studs like Fernandez and the New York Mets’ Noah Syndergaard, who averages 10.9 strikeouts per nine innings, just a shade ahead of three-time Cy Young Award winner Clayton Kershaw (10.8).
Syndergaard, a first-time All-Star this year at 23, has the highest fastball-velocity average among major league starters at 98 mph. He can either blow hitters away or make them look silly by pulling the string with a breaking pitch.
“I faced Syndergaard this year and it was just ridiculous,” Milwaukee Brewers catcher Jonathan Lucroy said. “[He] lets go of the ball and it feels like [he’s] 10 feet from home plate. It’s just exploding fastballs.”
Fernandez is a hard thrower as well, but has evolved into more of a pitcher this year. In his first full season following Tommy John elbow surgery in May 2014, Fernandez has tweaked his mechanics and improved his fastball command and pitch selection. He is also relying more on his changeup, giving him a devastating four-pitch mix along with his mid-to-upper 90s fastball and his putaway slider and curve.
The results have been impressive, even for a pitcher who broke in with a rookie of the year season in 2013. Fernandez is holding batters to the fourth-lowest on-base plus slugging percentage in the league at .574, while going 11-4 with a 2.52 ERA and 154 strikeouts. In one stretch he went six consecutive starts without allowing more than a run.
“He can present a slider as a strike and make it a ball,” said Nationals second baseman Daniel Murphy, baseball’s leading hitter with a .348 average. “When you couple that with an elite fastball, he doesn’t give you much of a chance, especially once you get to two strikes.”
Told that Fernandez is now throwing his fastball more to the corners and avoiding the middle of the plate, Murphy smiled.
“Yeah, that’s no good,” he said with a laugh. “Tell him to stop.”