D-Backs’ rotation battle comes into focus as season nears
Take a look at the spring training schedule, count off the days and you’ll notice something. Wednesday marked three weeks since pitchers and catchers reported. Thursday marks three weeks until Opening Day.
For the Diamondbacks, that brings urgency. In the past week, manager Torey Lovullo has begun to take a harsher tone on pitch clock violations and high walk rates, saying, “We’re getting to the point in the spring where certain guys at certain times, we need to do a little bit better job.”
The turn towards spring’s back stretch also brings a focus on the final roster places, none of which is more critical for the Diamondbacks than the fifth spot in the rotation.
“As we get away from getting in shape, facing hitters and now, it starts to get into a little bit more of a competition of being game-ready,” pitching coordinator Dan Carlson said.
When club officials speak publicly about that spot, they refer to four young pitchers — Drey Jameson, Ryne Nelson, Tommy Henry and Brandon Pfaadt. It’s the former two, though, who are seen as being in the center of the competition, at least to start the season.
With their performances late last year, Jameson and Nelson helped spur an offseason of measured optimism. As Carlson puts it, they “looked like Major League All-Stars” in their brief debuts. Jameson had a 1.48 ERA in four starts; Nelson had a 1.47 ERA in three starts.
Through three appearances apiece this spring, their on-field success has diverged. Jameson has given up three runs in 6 2/3 innings, while Nelson is at 11 runs in just 5 1/3 innings.
For Nelson, though, the increased focus on performance has come at the right time. In a game against the Rangers behind closed doors on Tuesday, he struck out six batters and only walked one in 2 2/3 innings — although he did allow four runs.
Part of his early struggles could be attributed to a lack of strategic gameplanning. In the first few starts of spring training, pitchers will often work to gain familiarity with their pitchers rather than attacking a hitter’s weaknesses. Last week, that manifested itself when Nelson surrendered a home run on a middlemiddle change-up to Freddie Freeman, a pitch that he said he wouldn’t have thrown in the regular season.
After that start, though, Nelson’s optimism contrasted with Lovullo, who had issues with Nelson’s fastball command. “It’s a process and hopefully he gets there sooner than later,” Lovullo said then. On Tuesday, the tone was different. “We were very satisfied with how he threw the ball,” Lovullo said.
In particular, Nelson has begun to land his off-speed pitches for strikes with more consistency, which has been a focus of his, according to Carlson.
Jameson, on the other hand, has drawn positive reviews throughout the spring. “He’s checking a lot of boxes right
now,” Lovullo said last week, after Jameson’s second start.
On paper, the third start looked a little different, as Jameson allowed five runs in 2 2/3 innings on Monday, but Carlson saw that outing as a textbook example of spring stats not aligning with performances. One focus for the coaching staff with these young arms has been seeing how they can adjust mid-start. Come the regular season, those little tweaks can help avoid turning a mediocre outing into a full-blown implosion.
“He went out there for the third inning and there was a little bit of a change,” Carlson said. “He started to use his pitches better and he started to expand the strike zone. That’s something for him to know and recognize and he did and then he executed.”
While Nelson has carried an air of optimism — at least publicly — Jameson has, despite his success, offered more introspection.
His biggest focus has been trusting all of his pitches, most notably his sinker and change-up. Evaluators see his sinker as a plus pitch at the major league level, while the change-up is a valuable offering against left-handed hitters. To find success with those pitches, though, Jameson has to trust them.
“When the season comes around and it’s a situation where you might be thinking fastball but your catcher’s calling a change-up, you’ve gotta be comfortable enough to throw that pitch,” Jameson said. “To not be like, ‘Oh, I’m not good at throwing this pitch’ when I know that’s probably the pitch that I need to be throwing. If I’ve done my work, I’ve done everything I need to do so when that pitch is called, I can execute it in the spots and the locations where it needs to be.”
Diamondbacks 2, Rangers 0
At Salt River Fields
At the plate: It was mostly a quiet day for the Diamondbacks’ bats, but Lourdes Gurriel Jr. continued to swing the bat well, going 2-for-3 with a double. Gabriel Moreno hit his second home run of the spring, sending an 87 mph cutter 448 feet out to center field in the eighth off Marc Church, a minor league reliever.
On the mound: Henry had his best start of spring, continuing a positive trajectory over the past few weeks. He struck out three, didn’t walk anybody and only needed 56 pitches to get through four scoreless innings. Henry attributed the success to an ability to land his breaking balls for strikes. “I was able to trust them in a lot of different counts today, which helped get me back in counts,” Henry said. He also got four swings and misses, all of which were against off-speed pitches.
Extra bases: In a fourth-inning at-bat, the Rangers’ Adolis Garcia stepped out of the box with two seconds left on the pitch clock, thinking Henry was going to get called for an automatic ball. Henry got the pitch off in time, leaving Garcia standing outside the box as his changeup went over the plate for a strike. “We got the shot off before the shot clock went off so we’ll take it,” Henry said.