Sweepers, Pitch Design & Colorado with Adam Ottavino and Early Hitting Metrics that Matter
Rates & Barrels: A show about Baseball
The Athletic
4.7 • 873 Ratings
🗓️ 26 April 2024
⏱️ 64 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Eno and DVR are joined by Mets pitcher Adam Ottavino to discuss sweepers, pitch design and development, and the success he had during a long run in Colorado. Plus, they examine the quick demotion for Jackson Holliday, several surprising starting pitchers, and hitting metrics that move the needle despite limited samples from the first month of the season.
Rundown
0:21Adam Ottavino Joins the Show!
8:44 How Adam Throws His Sweeper
16:35 Citi Field's Unique Park Factors Based on Game Time
21:22 Players Entering the Game with More Pitches, Even as Relievers
27:11 Jackson Holliday Sent Back to Triple-A
36:57 Erick Fedde's Successful Return to MLB from a One-Year Stint in the KBO
43:01 Ranger Suárez's Early K% Jump
47:37 Graham Ashcraft: Casey Mize in Reverse? Ks Preceding Better Ratios?
51:24 What Matters for Hitters in Smaller Samples?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Rates and Burials. It is Friday, April 26. Derek Derek Benrym, I'm Verino-Sair is here with you. |
| 0:21.9 | We've got a special guest joining us at the beginning of today's show. It is Mets reliever Adam Adavino. |
| 0:27.6 | Adam, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. A pleasure to be here, guys. We want to start today by taking a trip back in time. |
| 0:19.4 | I want to go back to your time in Colorado, |
| 0:21.5 | because one of the recurring themes on our podcast is |
| 0:24.2 | we think Colorado is the most difficult place to win in Major League Baseball, regardless of ownership or anything like that, just because of the conditions of the park. |
| 0:46.7 | You had a lot of success as a Rocky, your third all time in ERA among Rocky's relievers and franchise history, second in strikeout rate. |
| 0:55.8 | Simple question. |
| 0:56.9 | How did you do it? |
| 0:57.7 | What do you think about your arsenal worked well in a place that so many pitchers have |
| 1:02.9 | struggled in? |
| 1:03.7 | Yeah, it's a good question. |
| 1:05.7 | When I first got claimed off waivers by the Rockies, I think a lot of people would have in my shoes would have been like maybe upset about that knowing the situation there. But I was really excited because I was in St. Louis before that and I just wasn't getting a lot of opportunity and I figured, hey, if I go to Colorado, people are going to be pitching poorly. So I should get a chance here. And I just kind of embraced it from day one. |
| 1:28.2 | I think that's the first part, it's just the mental part of it. Like I understood the challenge. |
| 1:32.4 | And I kind of understood the difference between the C-level movement and the, you know, |
| 1:37.6 | mile-high movement pretty quickly. And I just tried to adjust as fast as I could. I do think that my arsenal worked there for a couple of |
| 1:48.0 | reasons. I think, you know, the sweeper, to me, kind of protected me against those hangers a little |
| 1:54.5 | bit. I would throw a lot of them, and I wouldn't worry about how high they were or low in the zone, |
| 2:00.1 | and a lot of guys would swing under them you know |
| 2:02.4 | the ball just kind of would never come down it would kind of just sweep across the zone at the top and I |
| 2:06.5 | think it was just a different look than other guys were seeing and I actually remember being on first base one |
| 2:11.5 | time and Carlos Lee was the first baseman and he said you know popper you're nasty and I was like well |
... |
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