Here is an embarrassing sentence: After reading the newest Sally Rooney novel, I started playing a lot of chess. I’m not good, but I have been spending a lot of time trying to get better (tips are appreciated). All this chess got me thinking about the cliché that the batter-pitcher duel is like a chess match. One thing I’ve learned? Getting your pieces in a good position to execute a checkmate is not the same skill as actually executing. The former follows a straightforward logic, playing the percentages on any given move, calculating the arithmetic of this or that trade; the latter is an art, relying on second-order thinking to design the final decisive move. Pitching is similar — to get on the front foot, the pitcher needs to throw two strikes before throwing two balls; the pitcher starts with the element of surprise and the hitter in an aggressive mindset. But when the hitter gets to two strikes, he will play defense, perhaps slowing his swing for accuracy while fouling off close pitches. In both chess and pitching, the killer move requires a little pizzazz.
In his return this season from a second Tommy John surgery, Walker Buehler wasn’t even thinking about checkmate. Through August, he was among the worst pitchers in the league at getting to two strikes before two balls. He was nibbling without great command, and he didn’t seem to have the confidence in his fastball to challenge hitters over the plate. Instead, he frequently fell behind, setting up a tightrope act from which he rarely escaped unscathed. In recent starts, however, Buehler appears to be turning a corner — just in time for the one of the biggest starts of his career.
Buehler is lined up to start either Game 3 or Game 4 of the World Series. Whatever the game, Buehler will be charged with going through the order twice with a ring on the line. Those are 18 high-stakes outs. Because of his inability to gain count leverage, the Buehler of August wouldn’t even be in a conversation to take on those outs.
Announcers like to talk about getting strike one, but there is less dialogue about how often a pitcher gets ahead of the hitter. By this measure — defined as the percentage of their counts that started 0-2 or 1-2 — Garrett Crochet was a star this season, unafraid to challenge hitters with top-tier filth. Bryan Abreu, one of the worst command guys at least in the eyes of the Kirby Index, also ranked among the leaders.
Of course, it’s harder to be aggressive with subpar stuff. Think of a guy like Jose Quintana, who famously nibbled his way into tough spots. Quintana himself recognized this was not sustainable — as Jay Jaffe wrote about just last week, Quintana upped his four-seam usage down the stretch after an edict from manager Carlos Mendoza.
For most of the 2024 regular season, Buehler pitched more like Quintana than Crochet. He got ahead of 36% of hitters, ranking in the 17th percentile of all pitchers by get-ahead rate. But in September and into the 2024 playoffs, Buehler moved to the other side of the bell curve.
Pitching coach Mark Prior played a role in Buehler’s progress. Jack Harris wrote a story about Buehler for the Los Angeles Times last month, where he described a wary and uncertain Buehler tinkering with his grips, his mechanics, and his approach upon return from his second Tommy John. After a conversation with Prior, Buehler simplified his mechanics and started to go after hitters.
After a rough start, Buehler is finally succeeding at gaining leverage, trusting his stuff to get ahead of hitters. But he’s still working on that second bit, the endgame — putting hitters away:
Buehler’s issues putting away hitters with two strikes reached absurd levels in the second inning of his first playoff start against the Padres. Five Padres ultimately scored in the inning. Some of that was the result of some seriously poor defense behind Buehler, but some of it was a mind-boggling run of gaining leverage on hitters and then failing to put them away.
In this sequence, Buehler threw 10 pitches on 0-2 or 1-2. Each of them was either a four-seam fastball or his slow knuckle-curve. The pitch selection illuminates the reasons he is struggling so much with finishing off hitters with two strikes.
Even though Buehler’s fastball has returned to roughly the same velocity band as his pre-surgery peak, the pitch has lost a ton of life, dropping two additional inches compared to his pre-surgery levels. It’s possible this is due to an increase in his supination bias, which is the natural tendency to throw more on the outside of the ball.
Buehler sort of showed what that could look like in his next start against the Mets on a punchout of Mark Vientos:
That pitch moved seven inches glove side at 92-mph, elite horizontal movement at that velocity. But this pitch doesn’t have ideal depth: At nine inches of induced vertical break, it hangs up a little bit in the zone, reducing its whiff potential.
His ideal breaking ball is probably a little slower with a few inches more drop, as Remi Bunikiewicz suggested. He’s capable of getting to that shape — look at the depth and velocity on this…
