MLB coverage: Bronson Arroyo is slow but sure in his comeback; team power rankings.
Reds veteran pitcher masters off-speed stuff
CINCINNATI There are distinct lines in sports between heroes, dreamers and fools. Bronson Arroyo is too realistic to be the latter and too grounded to be the former. Is he a dreamer? He wouldn’t be pitching if he weren’t.
The Cincinnati Reds pitcher beat the Chicago Cubs on Sunday with the sort of show that makes old guys want to weep and run a marathon. Six innings, three hits, two runs. Sixty-six pitches, 48 strikes.
“Fantastic, man,” Arroyo said. “Fantastic to get through six innings so easily.”
He threw three balls, total, in the first three innings. Two came in the third inning to Jon Jay, who had the audacity to pass on a couple of curveballs that bent early and out of the strike zone.
Twenty-four pitches — 21 strikes — through the first three innings. Some pitchers can’t get off the bus without getting behind 3-and-1. If they’ve finished the fifth inning with 100 pitches, it has been a successful day.
The Cubs came out hacking Sunday because they knew Arroyo’s best fastball couldn’t get a speeding ticket. His curve gets arrested for loitering. His pitches need to be near the plate.
That’s why Arroyo required seven pitches to get three outs in the first inning. It doesn’t explain how he was able to duplicate that five more times. Everyone knows Arroyo’s deal: Slow pitches screw with timing. No one seems able to solve it.
Bryan Price had a wonderful description. “Sensing where the out is,” the Reds manager called it. Arroyo knows what tempts hitters and takes full advantage.
“He has a sense of what (hitters’) intentions are,” Price said. “He has a feel for pitching. He’s a risk-taker.”
That’s a nice way of saying Arroyo is not afraid. Young pitchers who are afraid give managers ulcers. They don’t challenge. They work the edges until they have to work the middle. When they work the middle, they get whiplash watching balls fly over their heads.
Meantime, a man nearly twice their age works over one of the best lineups in the game by throwing 80-mph fastballs across the middle.
Arroyo struck out seven Cubs. He fanned the side in the fifth. Miguel Montero missed a 68-mph breaking ball for strike three, and Reds catcher Tucker Barnhart said he heard Montero say, “That pitch ought to be illegal.”
To start the Cubs sixth, Kyle Schwarber took a 75-mph breaker for strike three. He stared pieeyed at Arroyo as he walked to the bench.
Arroyo does it with deception. What you’re sure you see isn’t often what you get. To do what he did Sunday, he had to spend almost a decade ignoring the wisdom of pitching coaches, in the minors and in The Show.
“Don’t change arm angles, no changeups to right-handed hitters,” Price said. “All the clichés pitching coaches tell pitchers.”
Or as Arroyo put it, “Basically everything I do now on the mound they’d never want a guy in the rookie league (doing).
“It took me eight years to prove I could do it (his way). I pitch outside the box a little. I have a very unique set of skills, the ability to throw some really awkward, strange-shaped pitches in any given count. Just make guys un-
“You don’t see guys like Bronson. Everything now is hard, hard, hard. It’s refreshing what he’s doing.” Reds catcher Tucker Barnhart, on Bronson Arroyo’s repertoire
comfortable. That’s been my career.”
He’s not yet at full speed, or whatever you call a pitcher with an 85-mph fastball. Arroyo’s elbow isn’t yet cooperating to the extent that he can throw 100 pitches. “It’s not the same arm in the first inning as it is in the sixth or seventh,” he said.
That only makes what Arroyo did Sunday seem all the more improbable.
The 40-year-old isn’t going to revolutionize pitching. Scouts are not fanning out across the heartland looking for 18-year-olds throwing speed-limit curveballs. But Arroyo is doing something entirely essential and remarkable. He’s showing the hardball world that it has a place for softballs.
“The velocity of the (pitchers) now, you don’t see guys like Bronson,” Barnhart said. “Everything now is hard, hard, hard. It’s refreshing what he’s doing.”
It’s not easy being Mr. 80 mph in a 100-mph world. Except for one guy, who’s still fooling them. Daugherty writes for The Cincinnati Enquirer, part of the USA TODAY Network.